Knoll, Inc. Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-10-16 10:21:11.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Earnings, Knoll Inc., Benefits, Human Resources, Seeking Alpha, Call Transcript, Earnings, Knoll Inc., Benefits, Human Resources, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Matt McCall of BB&T Capital.

Matthew S. McCall – BB&T Capital Markets

So backlog about 20%, I know you’re up against... I think a seasonally stronger comp from a year ago. Can you talk about the order trends as you’ve progressed through the quarter and what they’ve been like since?

Barry L. McCabe

Backlog is up which speaks for itself. I think one of the things when you look at the backlog and we’re encouraged by it is a piece of that backlog probably more so than historically is product that will probably ship in the first quarter and not in the fourth quarter. Again we talked about activity in terms of million dollar orders, mock ups, customer visits, and those continue to remain strong.

Matthew S. McCall – BB&T Capital Markets

No change in patterns in recent weeks?

Barry L. McCabe

I say no.

Matthew S. McCall – BB&T Capital Markets

Okay. So you said commodity costs are going to get more difficult. I know you’ve got some pricing actions in place. Can you talk about the net pressure or net benefit from either price or cost in Q3? What’s expected in Q4 and how that should look I guess directionally, I think you said it should get better in ’09, by how much?

Barry L. McCabe

I think we’ll have to wait to look at ’09 and see if the deflation in the commodity costs continue. Again, as we said and I said in the script, we have been able to postpone a lot of the price increases that have been coming everyone’s way and they will peak in the fourth quarter and until then, spot prices come down to what we’re paying, we really won’t see the benefit, so in terms of pure inflationary pressures, it will be higher in the fourth quarter than any of the other quarters this year for us. But on the positive side, we expect those to peak and we expect to benefit in the end of 2009 if everything continues the way we see it today.

Matthew S. McCall – BB&T Capital Markets

How much variable is the benefit or was there a benefit from the Canadian dollar, I think you mentioned the Euro as well, in Q3, and what’s the expectation in Q4?

Andrew B. Cogan

I think the way we always do our forecasting, we look at what the currency is at the end of the month going into the quarter and we really plan off of that so I think you can go back and look at the Canadian dollar at the end of September, I think it was in the $0.90 to $0.92 range.

 

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