Armstrong World Industries, Inc. Q1 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-05-04 17:14:06.0

Tags: Armstrong World Industry Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Keith Hughes - SunTrust.

Keith Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

On the payables, is that something that is going to correct itself as the year goes along? Is that going to be a timing issue like inventory?

Nicholas Grasberger

Yes, it should. Certainly will have probably not to the same degree but a further negative on payables in the second quarter but then as we begin to lapse the weakness in our businesses in the second half of the year, it should level.

Keith Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Within the revenues in the Hardwood, you talked about the macro stuff going on. That’s what’s going on most of last year though and your results have been pretty impressive. Was there anything specific in the quarter, a program you were getting out of that you had to sell at a discount or anything along those lines that made it specifically worse in the first quarter in Hardwoods?

Michael Lockhart

First quarter of last year or just first quarter?

Keith Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

First quarter of this year.

Michael Lockhart

The one thing we had this year is we’ve been investing in putting our displays with more than Big Box customers, special order displays, and we’re continuing that process. Otherwise, the business performs as you would expect. I think the North American Floor business suffered both Resilient and Wood from inventory adjustments by our customers. So both our distributors and our retailers have adjusted inventory and that had a significant impact in the first quarter which we would expect to lessen.

You listen to the calls by the Big Box guys, they’re all pushing on inventory and so we would expect to see that continue to push on ours but there’s a couple of mid-single digit effect on sales from inventory declines in both Resilience and Domestic Resilience and the Wood business.

Keith Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Are you taking some pricing actions in Vinyl and Laminate in the second quarter in response to the Raw Materials we discussed earlier?

Michael Lockhart

Yes, we’re seeing some higher prices in the Vinyl businesses and the Laminate business are average on its values up substantially due to mix. And so if you look at the break down of our business, we actually see substantially higher sales of Laminate in the first quarter this year than we did last year.

 

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