Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Trey Grooms - Stephens Inc.
Trey Grooms - Stephens Inc.
First question, you guys have been talking for quite a while about how cement costs should start improving and it looks like that’s definitely been the case and it looks like, I guess unit production cost of cement declined from of the high $60 range or so last year to about $58 this past quarter. Could you give us some color on one exactly what is driving that decline and then secondly whether this, current production costs are sustainable at this level?
Craig Kesler
About $4.50 of that is due to the lower cost of fuel and the lower cost of purchased cement. We also had about $1.50 per ton decline in overhead. All of that is real we did not have a lot of maintenance this quarter, but, again if you look at a rolling 12, we probably have another $4 or $5 advantages just in reduced maintenance cost that will hit over a normal sequence which is a major maintenance hitting about once every 12 months.
Trey Grooms - Stephens Inc.
Then on the cement volume it looks like wholly-owned cement volume was actually up just a little bit or maybe I guess about 5% or so. Can you guys give us some color on what volume was like in the quarter in each of your markets? I know you touched on Northern California and Austin a little bit, but and also to the extent that you can, you touched on your expectation for volume to be up in 2010, in cement, but to the extent you can could you quantify that at all or at least maybe give us an idea of what your thoughts are going into the slower winter months and into 2010?
Steve Rowley
The real up tick in our volumes really came out of the Midwest out of our plant just Illinois cement. The reason for that a year ago we had a major customer that was purchased by a competitor, so we had just for a period, a lot lower opportunity. This year and going into the year when we kind lined out business, we had not assumed that so this year we knew that was the case and so we knew there was a lot of bid work out there and we were pretty aggressive going after bid work in that marketplace.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
