AYSI- Just called Austrailia and talked with
Alan Winduss, the CFO. He was very knowledgable, and I have good news! I will go over one by one the questions I asked him. He was in a hurry to get to a meeting, so I had to go kind of quick.
The men work 6-6.5 days/week. In the Dec qtr, there were around 14 days of downtime, however in the Mar qtr there is expected to be only 4 days. He couldn't remember the number of days down in the Sept qtr, but there were little. I then asked about the second shift. The second shift worked 95% in the Sept qtr, but only 60-70% in the Dec qtr, and are expected to work 100% in the Mar qtr.
Next topic was margins- They were bad in the Dec qtr for a couple reasons. First there was a sudden chrome and steel cost increase in the Dec qtr which was temperary, and has already come back down to about Sept qtr levels for the Mar qtr. Second, they had a couple of large contracts they had to get out which brought lower margins than normal.
Next I asked about seasonality- there isn't much, except that the Dec qtr is usually their weakest because of so much downtime. I asked when the second Mill was going in production. Alan told me by July. I then asked him what tax rate going forward- he said 30%. Wade
