Horizon Lines, Inc. Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-10-24 13:51:10.0

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Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you, sir. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions). And our first question comes from the line of Peter Wahlstrom with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, sir.

Peter Wahlstrom -- Goldman Sachs

Good morning.

Mike Avara

Good morning.

Chuck Raymond

Morning, Peter.

Peter Wahlstrom -- Goldman Sachs

Given kind of your outlook for slowing US economy, have you considered adjusting your ships schedule more temporarily taken vessels out of service in any of these markets to really better align capacity with near-term demand?

John Keenan

Yes, Peter, good morning, this is John Keenan. Yes, we have. As we constantly look at our markets as well as our vessel utilization. We've evaluated specifically in Puerto Rico. We've looked at our service, our gaks [ph] vessel and our gak service and at this time we still think it's a right, right time to keep that vessel in, however, we put in place triggers and areas where we figured if or see that if the volumes fall below a certain level, that we'll, we'll implement a change in that service. We've also evaluated our Hawaii service, and have looked at the two major strings that we operate. The peck string and a search [ph] string, and look at we've changed departure schedules to have better fuel conservation and reduce some of our costs as well our cost in our terminals. So we are looking at that and put in place some triggers if the volumes continue to deteriorate.

Peter Wahlstrom -- Goldman Sachs

Okay. And following up on that, can you give us a broad sense of what sort of magnitude volumes might have to drop before you consider taking vessel out?

John Keenan

I think, if you look at Puerto Rico, Peter, the gulf is our smaller market there, so in that market, I would say, the volumes have to drop at least probably 15% before we pull a vessel out, and in Hawaii, we're still evaluating that.

Peter Wahlstrom -- Goldman Sachs

Okay. Fair enough. I realize that you're facing near-term challenges in Hawaii market. But taking a step back and looking may be at prior cycles, does Hawaii tends to lag at U.S. economic recovery, or does history or maybe your experience in this region show otherwise?

Brian Taylor

I'll be happy to take that one. This is Brian Taylor speaking. Peter, I believe that the Hawaiian economy tends to lag the U.S. economy, and historically, as we look at what happened back in the '90s in 2,000, the impact to the Hawaiian economy tend to follow what happened in the US Mainland. So we'll probably see this continue a little bit beyond the recovery that we might see in the US Mainland.

 

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