Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). We'll take our first question from Howard Rubel with Jefferies & Co.
Howard Rubel - Jefferies & Co
I just have two. First, Dave, you talked about factory days in the quarter. How might we think about factory days for the fourth? I mean you do have some holidays in there, but you also had August in Europe.
Dave Berges
Well, historically, the fourth quarter is pretty similar to the third quarter. The strong quarters from a seasonal standpoint historically at Hexcel are strongest in the first quarter, pretty strong second quarter, and then weakest third and a pretty weak fourth. So typically, to your point, we do have a lot of holidays and downtime in December as we do in August.
We did take some pretty violent actions in the third quarter, and until we see some demand pressure build, we'd likely do the same in the fourth quarter because we don't want to build inventory. We are trying to work the cash flow basis.
Looking at it plant by plant is not a very practical method, or we'd offer you some information on that. You go from an extreme example of a carbon fiber plant that's got very high fixed costs and very low labor. We've closed the plant in Spain, the new facility in Spain, for quite a number of weeks in the third quarter and will likely also in the fourth quarter. So it doesn't take a lot of labor costs out. It doesn't even really get a lot of fixed costs out, but it's what we want to do to stay positioned for the recovery.
Howard Rubel - Jefferies & Co
Then while I know R&D is lumpy in any given period, can you talk a little bit about what you're doing either to improve your penetration in some of existing models or to give us a little bit of look forward to some other opportunities you see on the horizon?
Dave Berges
Well, we are always actively involved with almost all of our customers for their next aircraft or next turbine or next product. So we've often got a lot of activities going on individually with customers, most often with confidentiality agreements in place and a lot of basic research. The pop-up this quarter was more about actual qualification activities, specifically in the A350. We expect that the year-to-date average is probably more typical. I don't think that that's the start of a new trend. So I don't know if that helps you.
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