Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question does come from Jim Rollyson. Sir, your line is open.
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
Good morning, guys.
Owen Kratz
Good morning, Jim
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
Hey, Owen. Tony you'd mentioned on the construction side, you obviously have backlog visibility at least kind of going through the first half and I think you mentioned you are expecting that to weaken a bit in the second half of '09.
I think Tony you said margins kind of going back from the fourth quarter levels towards the more historical number normals. Can you kind of talk about how you see that margin picture in the first half and contrast that in the second half just given you the view of the market?
Owen Kratz
Okay. Well, I think typically in this industry you have about six-month visibility, so we have good visibility for six months. And that is I would say what we normally experienced. But again our margin suffered in Q4 because of the large pipeline job in India, it inherently as a low margin job because got a lot pass through experiences that go through it.
But we were also taking a fairly conservative stance on our percentage of completion accounting. So, all in all based on what we know is in our backlog and type of work in our backlog, I think we should expect margins to return to more historic levels on the services side.
Back half of '09 we are being conservative because its, what we do not know certainly we have sufficient backlog to carry us through as we normally do in first half of the year.
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
And just by more historical normal regions, are you thinking more, you have ranged from kind of the low to mid 20s overall to the upper 20s pushing 30%, over last year when you were to kind shoot for 30%, as things were pretty strong. So I am just trying to get where in that range you are kind of targeting as a realistic view?
Tony Tripodo
I think realistically we have got some carryover in '09 on this Pipe Lay job in India which will tend to keep margins slightly down from the higher levels you might have seen in the past. But I think the low 20s is a good place to be here.
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