Bill Furman
Analyst · Bank of America. Sir, your line is open
Well, I always liked chattering about cycle apprehension. Once you go through a down cycle, like 2009, everybody gets a little gun-shy, I suppose. Look, this low energy prices have created a very good -- a boon for consumers, that's what was needed to have consumers kick in and buy, and they're doing it. Automobile shipments are up; we're seeing some revival, even in housing, enquiries across our product mix. We don't see it, I guess, you do see it in the CapEx, you see some CapEx softening in the energy field, but these energy prices longer term we think, are likely to be much higher than they are today. We notice that the FTR, one of the industry groups just revised upwards its models for '17, '18 and beyond and actually increased its view of 2015 in shipments, and 2016 shipments. So I don't see it, I know people are afraid of it. We don't see it yet, or I would not have said it's not as good as it gets. By the way, I want to make it clear that, without damaging our balance sheet and giving up the great liquidity and leverage we have right now. We are looking at continuing to diversify this model so that with the several years that we got of open runway, the best visibility I've ever seen over 30 years in this business, we should be able to put the Company on a very solid footing for a growth in the future, where we won't be as highly reliant on the business cycle for freight cars. The leasing models does that, our repair model does that, our parts and the wheel model does that. And we will continue, as we have said, to work on the excellent foundation we have, not only in Latin America through our base in Mexico, but with our European subsidiary reaching initial markets with that company. And I think that over time the diversified model will serve Greenbrier very well. It's not your mother's Greenbrier, it's a totally different company that it was five years ago.