Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Mike Schneider with Robert W. Baird.
Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird
Good morning guys
Lewis Kling
Good morning Mike.
Mark Blinn
Good morning Mike.
Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird
First I guess I need to say that Lew and gang its just an incredible transformation you guys have done with this business over the last seven years. So, I have to give you due plenitude but this is truly incredible that you arrived at this point in the cycle with basically no debt and highest margins you have seen and best global platform you have seen in this company's history.
Lewis Kling
That's right, you know Mike thank you. And you do have that historical perspective and that's why we are optimistic going into these market opportunities and challenges.
Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird
So on to the business now I guess the question I have is really around the aftermarket, if we look at the key difference you guys have invested an immense amount of money to try and cushion this business in the down cycle with an aftermarket presence. And during the quarter it looks like aftermarket revenue was just up a point or two. Did you see any change in maintenance schedules or maintenance budgets at your major customers and the orders being up 5%. That's a clear deceleration, just maybe give us some insights as to what's going on in this period with the refineries and other customers in this aftermarket business?
Lewis Kling
Yeah, I mean, let me answer the question straight on. I mean the 5% in itself didn't concern us in terms of the end of the trend or any indication that we are not executing on those strategies. I mean as you can, as you can imagine Mike and I think you mentioned in it in your note, with what happened in the fourth quarter of last year, I think it basically paralyzed everybody. And so we are actually quite pleased to see that we continued to execute well and got 5% growth in that period of time and what we feel is, we are going to continue to execute on our strategies and drive to take share and ultimately with the market goes as well. So as we said before, we can call one quarter a trend especially a quarter like we had in Q4 where all companies in the global economies were facing a tremendous amount of uncertainty
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