John Plant
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please, go ahead
Okay. Well, first of all, let me comment on profitability in the second half. That was, I'll say, fundamentally impacted by the fact we -- as it turned out, well, we thought we'd recruited to the right outline demand. As you know, because of those cutbacks, not only did we not produce as much, but some of what we did produce inventory, we eventually therefore, we didn't make the profit on it. The worst condition we were in is that, in actual fact, even though across Howmet, labor was pretty flat in the fourth quarter. So we -- let's say, net we didn't hire back where we were slightly down on labor. But in our engine products, we were down significantly. So more than 100 people down as -- which is most unusual to think about, we were cutting labor, given the underlying engine demand and basically because we were holding costs, which we did not need to be able to produce what we required. So we were in that pretty lethal band of having unfortunately stepped up to what customers had scheduled and then didn't require. We carry excess labor, and that labor we had was obviously not effective as it might be, because new labor does produce scrap. So we ended up with new labor producing higher rates of scrap combined with the cost of that. Now, we do expect that given the actions we took, trim labor, we're on a steadier -- we are back in recruitment mode, which we do have some cause for optimism for the future. In terms of rate builds and increases, even though we've chosen to be cautious about it is that -- I see no fundamental issues, not restoring those margins to at least the first -- the rate of the first half of 2022. And so, I never like to use the word like don't worry about it, but it really is. I don't think if you worry about it.