Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And we will take our first question from Scott Levine with JPMorgan.
Scott Levine - JPMorgan
Good morning, guys.
John Casella
Good morning, Scott, how are you.
Scott Levine - JPMorgan
Very well, how are you?
John Casella
Perfect.
Scott Levine - JPMorgan
Okay. With regard to the solid waste pricing trends, the numbers look pretty good. Anecdotally it sounds like you guys are still seeing a rational environment or perhaps on the landfill side maybe seeing a little bit of a slowdown. Could you give a little bit more color regarding what you are seeing out of your competition, both larger and smaller players there? Is there any real change in the environment or is it kind of just a one quarter anomaly?
John Casella
I think it's fair to say that we really haven't seen any change. I think that the discipline that has come into the industry remains. I think certainly that the function of where we go from an economic perspective out into the future, but certainly at this point in time I think we're not seeing any change there at all. I think from our own perspective, though, I think that we have a change that is ongoing and that is a really renewed focus on price and volume growth with Bill Hanley and Paul's efforts in terms of putting the database in place. Reconfiguring our sales force over the last year and a half, reconfiguring how we go to market.
Also from a practical perspective we've also put the landfill sales transfer station landfill pricing initiatives also under Bill, so that we have that collectively now all tied together. So I think, Scott going into the future that should add some real value in terms of our overall pricing volume and also as we said when we went into the economic downturn in late '06 early '07. We really chose to be a little bit more conservative recognizing that we were going to have over million tons of additional capacity to ramp up. We've chosen to be a little bit more conservative there. So I think we will begin to look at that differently and test that as we go into the end of '08 into the beginning of '09.
Scott Levine - JPMorgan
Got it, great. Then regarding your debt balances. Could you remind us what percentage of your total debt is at floating rates net of hedges and I think you said 7.7% was the normalized interest rate for the quarter. Just want to confirm that as well.
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