Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions). And we'll take our first question comes with Jim Rollyson with Raymond James.
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
Good morning, Peter.
Peter Socha
Hey, Rolly.
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
C.K., Beth. Peter, you did some, looks like from your notes you did some re-contracting or adjustments to contracts for this year. And what it looks like is you replace some $108 coal with $70 coal and push the 108 out to 2011 and '12. Is that, am I reading that right?
Peter Socha
Yeah, yeah, that's a fair comment.
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
Did that help lead to the 2010 coal that you booked at $70 a ton as well?
Peter Socha
That was trade-off. Yeah, that was the trade-off Rolly.
Jim Rollyson - Raymond James
Okay. So that was --
Peter Socha
Let's say I don't want to go too much into detail on it. Because I mean they are customer sensitive conversations. But from my view point, what happened was really the background here was, utility had a number of major industrial customers in their area; major, major users of electricity. And so they came to us, and I said we would love to be able to work with these customers to keep these plants, to keep these manufacturing plants going and to preserve the jobs and to help the local community if there anything that you can do for us. That was their need.
On our side, we were a little bit under price for 10. Last summer when we did our contracting in June, July, I really wanted another half a million to a million tons for next year, for operational reasons. I mean what this... I can't even begin to tell you how this help C.K. operate the mines and keep all the mines going. And when he and I talked about it after the fact, that was what I was really pumped about, was that it helps us enormously on their operation. So that was the trade-off. That was our need was to go ahead and price up some additional tons within (ph) that their need was to try to work with their industrial customers in '09.
But the other thing that, the other goal that I had going into it was I haven't looked at your models recently. But I think by most models, we have pretty well nailed down free cash positive in '09 and '10, in 2009 and 2010. 2011 was more on the bubble. We've got tons price, but we didn't have a lot of tons and the price was great. But as far as gross margins, as gross operating margin, it was on the bubble or whether or not it would be free cash positive. I think it will be just based on what the market does. But nevertheless, I wanted to go ahead and nail down '09, '10, '11. And in doing this, I can't say we nail it down, but we certainly made a lot of progress on it.
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