Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Robert Spingarn - Credit Suisse.
Robert Spingarn - Credit Suisse
Marshall, could you give us some specifics on how the A320 and 737 aftermarket flowed in the quarter and particularly relative to the first quarter? I think in Q1 you were up a little bit.
Marshall Larsen
Yes, we were in some areas flat with it but also down a little bit in our aerostructures business from Q1 to Q2. We’ve seen as I said in my opening comments about 170 to both the A320 and the 737MG temporarily parked. About two-thirds of those are A320s and what typically happens, they park them when they get close to a maintenance cycle. So probably some of the older aircraft in it. As we looked at our sequential aftermarket sales, as I said, we had four different business units out of nine had sequential upward movement in aftermarket sales and for instance, actuation is one of them and actuation is not on Boeing aircraft, they’re on primarily A320 family, and they were up sequentially. So it’s a little bit mixed but there were some signs of stabilization and improvement.
Robert Spingarn - Credit Suisse
Are these signs to some extent attributable to seasonality with these narrow bodies just coming in for the summer or are you concerned at all that they go back out in the fall?
Marshall Larsen
It doesn’t appear so. When we look at our landings data in wheels and brakes, June was up and that’s the first uptick we’ve seen and we’re taking into account seasonality.
Robert Spingarn - Credit Suisse
Just to close the topic, from an OE perspective you talked about being fairly well prepared should Airbus and Boeing take down narrow body rates. Can you talk about that a little bit, either you or Scott, with regard to absorption and how you would see that work? We know it’s a lower margin business but at some point absorption has to be an issue.
Marshall Larsen
I’ll start it off and I’ll turn it over to Scott. We have been very, very focused on controlling what we call discretionary costs. I’m speaking to that and I’ll have Scott speak to the absorption, but all of our business units have done a great job in really,,, Things like office supplies. Mundane kinds of cost cutting have saved us a lot and if you think about our margin for the quarter being down about one point from last year, well, we had over a one point headwind in pension expense, so we had to take costs out in order to maintain that 16% margin and we expect to continue taking costs out in the rest of the year.
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