Verso Paper Corp. Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-11-05 09:47:07.0

Tags: Downtime, Call Transcript, Earnings, Booking, RBC Capital Markets, Seeking Alpha, Allen-Vanguard Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Mundy. (Operator instructions). And our first question comes from the line of Bill Hoffmann with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Bill Hoffmann – RBC Capital Markets

Good morning guys.

Mike Jackson

Hi Bill.

Bill Hoffmann – RBC Capital Markets

Mike I want to ask you to talk a little bit about this some of your fourth quarter guidance, kind of interested when you talked about the downtime being similar to the downtime you had last year. And trying to get a sense on what kind of real visibility you have especially when you get into towards December, when most orders kind of stop?

Mike Jackson

Yes. Bill just to be clear, my comment was, similar to the third quarter that we just took. So we are going to be close to that number that we took this year not last year. And last year, I was just giving you a base saying that we took 74,000 tons of downtime last year, it will be much less this year.

Bill Hoffmann – RBC Capital Markets

Okay. And just from a sort of an outlook standpoint, because you have got order backlogs at this point in time or like is it – why do you feel more confidence now than you did maybe two or three months ago?

Mike Jackson

Yes. I think honestly it’s a simple matter of our bookings. I mean our bookings are were up 30%. Now remember, these are coming off of pretty anemic booking levels last year. But they are clearly up in that 30%, 35% range and that’s been steady for the last couple of months. And the other thing is, which we talked about is, we continue to build momentum with these new products.

Bill Hoffmann – RBC Capital Markets

Right. And can you just talk a little bit about the new products and sort of how much – you talked a little bit about the volume improvement quarter-over-quarter, maybe give us some further detail on whether those were sustaining volumes and whether they will get some seasonality to them as well?

Mike Jackson

Well, certainly there is a little bit of seasonality that relates to the Clarity Plus, which is our new FCA Plus grade, which has really been a significant grade for us, of new business. By the way, this isn’t taking our coated groundwood business and substituting it for Clarity Plus, this is – these are new customers, a whole new marketplace that we had not really been significantly involved in the past. But there are other grades as well that are candidly non-seasonal and that’s what we are trying to Bill, we are trying to take our core competencies of rolling lightweight product because of that access to north and south wood fiber and our coating capability.

 

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