Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Our first question comes from the line of James Bank with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed.
James Bank – Sidoti & Company
Hi, good afternoon.
William Gehl
Hi, James.
James Bank – Sidoti & Company
So, Tom, I was wondering if you could elaborate or even Bill, you as well. Retail activity declined 24% in your telehandler group. It’s a little bit different than what we’ve been seeing in the first half. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit.
Thomas Rettler
Yes, the retail activity actually in the quarter declined. You’re talking industry or ours, James?
James Bank – Sidoti & Company
Yours, because I think the industry has sort of been down in this 30% range, whereas you guys have actually been growing up until this quarter.
Thomas Rettler
Right. The industry demand was down 35%, as we’d mentioned. We declined 24%. Our largest customer, as we compare against last year, we had very heavy shipments in the third quarter of last year and that’s the quarter that we really started to take market share. So I think there’s a shift between more seasonally adjusted shipments of that product. So I guess the comparison was the top comparison. We continued to take pretty substantial market share. Our third quarter share was up 200 basis points year over year in telehandlers.
James Bank – Sidoti & Company
Okay. So would you say a normalized comparison would probably happen in the telehandler group, probably about third quarter ’08?
Thomas Rettler
Yes.
James Bank – Sidoti & Company
Okay. That’s helpful. Now, it doesn’t seem though as if the industry shipments are getting any worse. Again, the telehandlers are down in this 30% range. Skid steers had been down double-digit and now only down about 7%. Do you see any improvement? Are you seeing any stabilization?
Thomas Rettler
Well, let’s step back to telehandlers. Through the first six months they were down 25%.
James Bank – Sidoti & Company
Oh.
Thomas Rettler
And so year-to-date they’re down 28%. So the third quarter they were down 35%. So we have seen a little deterioration on the telehandler side. Offsetting that, though, as you point out accurately, through the first six months skid loaders were down 15%. Now on a year-to-date basis we’re down 12.5%. So for the quarter it was down just right around 7%. I don’t know that you can extrapolate purely the third quarter performance. I think the year-to-date performance is probably more indicative of where we’ll see the year end up.
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