Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, sir. (Operator instructions) The first question comes from the line of David McGregor with Longbow Research. Please go ahead.
Garik Shmois - Longbow Research
Hi. Good morning. This is Garik Shmois for David. Just wondering if you could talk about, first off, what markets you expect to see the best pricing this year?
Michael Harlan
This is Michael. You know, that’s a little tough question. I would say right now our West Texas market is doing fairly well from a pricing standpoint. We also had a January 1 price increase announcement in our Dallas market that began to take hold, really, more in February than, I would say, in January, and we’re contemplating another increase in that market if we see material costs begin to move up. And so I would probably say those two have the greatest traction at this point.
Another market that we’re watching fairly closely is our Northern California ready-mixed market. One of our competitors had been a little tardy in getting out some price increase announcements, and we’ve been picking up some intelligence that they have now begun pushing increases and quoting jobs with escalators, and so we’re evaluating that to see how we react, but if anybody knows us, you know what our reaction is, is to lead on prices, not follow, and so we’ll be out there ahead of that if we can.
So I think California is another area where we could see some. I don’t see a lot of traction in Michigan, and New Jersey as well. I think those are probably our two weakest price increase markets.
Garik Shmois - Longbow Research
Okay and you talked about the strength in your backlog in Northern California, the infrastructure side. Are you seeing those projects starting or getting close to starting, or is this more of a second half of the year story?
Michael Harlan
No. Some of those projects are starting - I talked about last quarter, we’ve got a real nice project, and it’s called the Devil’s Slide Project, which is a new tunnel that’s being built on the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s already begun. We’ve secured a nice parking garage at the San Jose Airport and then a couple interchanges in and around the area.
We’ve also got quite a bit of work that’s bidding here very shortly. We’ve got over $700 million in Caltrans work that’s scheduled to be bid in the East Bay. Well, $700 million of Caltrans work in the East Bay for the year, of which $500 million is yet to be bid.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
