Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator’s instruction) Our first question comes from the line of Gail Glazerman, please proceed.
Gail Glazerman – UBS
Just starting, your results were a little bit stronger than maybe suggested at the end of September. And I’m wondering if there is any particular (inaudible) that contributed to that?
Curtis M. Stevens
Well, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t over estimating our results. So that was part of it. But September did end the quarter pretty strong in all three of our major businesses.
Gail Glazerman – UBS
Okay. And looking at OSB pricing. Your quarter and quarter improvement seems a little bit lower than maybe random links would have suggested. Is there some sort of lag that we’d expect to see benefiting early in the fourth quarter or was there just something with Nicks or some other reason?
Curtis M. Stevens
Well, there are a couple of things that happened there. One, we did have a higher percentage of value added products. And some of those products don’t follow random links. There is kind of a delay where we price it for a month at a time. And so there is a bit of a delay on some of the specialty.
The other is that we did take some block buys at the end of Q2 that we delivered in Q3. And so we didn’t get the full up tick on the pricing. So that was a decision that we made late in Q2.
Gail Glazerman – UBS
Okay. And just last couple questions. Can you give any sort of update on asset sales as well as tax refunds and what you expect moving into next year?
Curtis M. Stevens
Well the asset sales have been going darn slow, Gail. We did have one asset sale last quarter that we had about a million dollar gain on the sale of miscellaneous timber land. We’ll probably have another asset sale similar to that in the fourth quarter. The big one that we have been struggling with all year is the St. Michel Saw Mill. OSB Mill and that still remains on our target to close soon. But until I have the money in the bank I can’t really give you a whole lot better background on that. It’s very difficult to sell assets in this environment.
The hang-up there is related to securing a timber supply to allow them to operate the mill the way they would like to. So that’s where we are. We have been making progress on that over the summer. And so hopefully we’ll have something here near term.
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