Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Hamzah Mazari.
Hamzah Mazari - Credit Suisse
Thank you. Could you give us some color on what you are seeing with the inventory in your distribution channel? On the filtration product side, you commented on some de-stocking and some market softness there, as well as on the technical product side, on the electrical side, could you give us a sense of where we are in the de-stocking process? What you’re seeing in the channel?
Randy Hogan
I mean, I think consistent with what you’re hearing from other companies out there, inventories are low. I mean as a general rule of thumb, where we have been able to see our sell through, where we have very clear visibility between our customers and the end markets, our sell through is generally mirroring or is a little greater than what our sell to the distributors has been.
So, I think that would confirm what you’re hearing from everybody else, that distributor levels are low and the nature of the order is still reflected. A non-stocking order usually is smaller than most skews are, and we are still seeing a lot, a higher portion of those kind of orders. So I don’t think that the restocking, to whatever extent it will happen, has really begun at all.
Hamzah Mazari - Credit Suisse
Just a follow-up, on the technical product side, you talked about sales coming in worse than expected. Is it fair to say that you saw end markets within Technical Products get worse during the quarter, but now we’re running sequentially flat and then is that fair, one; and then could you give some more detail on end markets within Technical Products. For example, last quarter you said datacom was down 50%, has that gotten worse and could you give us some detail on what the industrial side is running and the electrical side as well?
John Stauch
I’ll take the first part and I’ll hand it over to Randy for the color on the vertical marks. Really, what we saw in technical products for Q2 to Q3 was a modest decrease, $207 million down to $202 million. What caused the disappointment was we had assumed that sequentially Q2 was the bottom and that we would see a pickup heading into Q3; that in fact did not happen.
The year-over-year our growth rates for Q2 and Q3 in Technical Products were generally the same, down 32 and down 32. So I think it was more hope that we would see recovery quicker than we have and I think when we look at the way we’re exiting September and heading into early October, we feel comfortable we’ll see sequential growth from Q3 to Q4.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »



