Earnings Labs

James Hardie Industries plc (JHX)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 18, 2014

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Transcript

Louis Gries

Management

Good morning, everybody. We’re going to follow the same format as we normally do. I’ll take care of the operations stuff. Matt will take care of financials, and we’ll come back for Q&A. On the Q&A, we’ll go with investors first, media second. I guess [Oreck] is announcing at 10:15, so we’re on a tighter schedule. Some of you follow that company, so we’ve committed to be done by then. So Matt and I will try and by 9:45 walk through slides, give us enough time for questions for both investors and media. We have updated the slides, so hopefully they’ll kind of get to the point a little better than the ones we replaced, and start from there. Okay, I’m at slide six. This is our summary slide. You guys have seen 12% increase in sales for the group, pretty similar to last quarter. With the results, it’s really been in the latest quarter, is the bottom line is better than last quarter, pulling four year up to 7% comp. We have in here that the housing market is below expectations. It’s a little different than last quarter. Last quarter, we kind of got fooled by the forecast, and it resulted in some production scheduling issues at our plants that resulted in some inefficiencies. This quarter, we were aiming kind of where the market’s settled down at housing start-wise. So even though it continues to underperform, the forecast in the market, we’re now in sync with our production scheduling and market demand. So we don’t have the same problem we had in the first quarter. Pretty much everywhere volumes are up to varying degrees and sale prices are up to varying degrees, so revenue’s up. In the U.S., I commented on the production scheduling. We had a few other…

Matthew Marsh

Management

Good morning. As Louis already covered, sales volumes and prices were up across all of our major businesses. We’re still seeing higher input costs, both in the market. The plants, although they’re running better across the network, we’ve mitigated some of the Q1 operating inefficiencies in the second quarter, so you can see that in the margin rates. Organizational spend’s up as we continue to invest in growth, largely around headcount and discretionary spend in product and marketing related discretionary items. Net operating cash flows are 34.1 for the half year. Those are down year over year, largely because of the AICF contribution. We’ll cover those in more detail on the cash flow slide. Louis covered the capital expenditures through the first half are about 160, 158, through the first half. In the second quarter, we drew down about $380 million on our debt facilities in line with I think what we’ve been communicating and in line with our financial policies and financial management objectives. Louis already covered the $0.08 dividend, in line with last year, and the previously announced second half of $0.32 and the two specials, paid in August, which you’ll see on the cash flow statement. So reported results, net sales up 12 on higher volumes and higher sales prices in local currencies and both major segments. Gross margins were up about 30 basis points. So sales price, partially offset by variable costs. Variable cost’s a combination of input costs, which are mainly market related. For the most part, we’re outperforming market price increases on the sourcing side. SG&A expenses are up, as I said on the previous slide. Mostly headcount and some market and product related investments, some of which we’ve pulled back on in the second quarter, but still up year over year. And between…

Louis Gries

Management

Okay, we’ll start with questions. Yes?

Emily Smith-Deutsche Bank

Management

Emily Smith from Deutsche Bank. A couple of questions, please, Louis. I think you mentioned that [indiscernible] in the Q1, leading to ramping up plants and things would last a couple of quarters. So I just was hoping we could get a bit of a sense for if there are any costs in the Q2 that might not be there in the Q3 as that’s sort of worked through. Secondly, on U.S. market share growth, just wondering if you can make a comment on that. And maybe a question for Matt. If you’re able to give us any more color around the capex expectations for this year and next year?

Louis Gries

Management

Okay, so unit cost coming out of the factories Q1 versus Q2, Q2’s down, but what we actually produced in Q2 was down greater than what was booked, basically. So we do have some of that coming through the Q3. Having said that, we’ll produce less material in Q3 than we did Q2, so I don’t know if it kind of all balances out or whatever, but we’ve got some benefit of the lower unit costs produced in Q2 coming through to Q3. As far as growth against the market index, we’re in the mid to kind of higher PDG, so 5 to 8, and that’s four quarter rolling average. And it’s relatively consistent, so I’d say the market’s kind of doing what it’s doing, and we’re doing what we’re doing, and the difference in what our actual PDG is and what we’d like it to be is that LP’s doing better than we’d expect them to be doing. So that’s kind of how we’re working. We’re LP positive, vinyl negative, but we feel we’re not getting our full share of the vinyl decline at this point. So that hasn’t changed over the last six to eight quarters. It’s letting out, but not going the other way, which is what we’re trying to do. As far as capex, I’ll take that question for Matt. Like we said, the guidance for the three years is about the same. We’ll come in closer to 300 this year than 200, and we’ll come in closer to 100 next year than 200. Now, that’s pretty far out, so it might change, depending on demand, but that’s what it looks like to us. You know, a bit of a spike this year, dropoff next year, and coming back to what we see as the underlying number for the third year.

Jason Steed-Morgan Stanley

Management

A couple of questions. Lou, you referenced yourself, in terms of the breadth of the effect of the second half guidance, about $30 million on that second half. Is your concerns around where the market might land, is it cost concerns?

Louis Gries

Management

It wouldn’t be internal concerns. So it would be the exactness of the market forecasts, yeah. And right now, usually I give a head’s up where we’re at on our order file when we announce results. Right now our order file is similar to what it’s been the last two quarters. If it’s anything, it’s a hair short, rather than a hair long. But it’s very similar growth against the market we’re looking at right now. So it’s a pretty wide range. We have big debates, but then we thought, what is it? It doesn’t change much, so we just left it where it was.

Jason Steed-Morgan Stanley

Management

And then a question for Matt. I might have this wrong, but my recollection was in the first quarter, on the mesothelioma issue, there was an indication that this quarter, if they would clarify in terms of [KPMG advice] as to whether that peak was going to occur later. And so the result in that, I think they said a 22% increase in that central claim. [indiscernible], a lot of this has gone down. I presume that’s maybe more FX, but where are we on that? Because maybe it’s just me, but when we look at those points around that liability, there’s quite a variety of issues going up and one incidence going down. So can you talk about that specific issue in terms of where your liability stands?

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yeah, so from a liability, it went down this quarter, because of FX and only FX. So the liability only changes really once a year in terms of its substantive underlying assumptions, and that’s when the actuarial report is issued, and that’s issued as part of our March results. And it’s really only at that point in time that a full study is completed, and any changes in either the claims cost that are anticipated, or the claim numbers in the future would get adjusted. So KPMG has not typically made any adjustments in a period or at the half to what those trend lines would normally do. So when you see the other three quarters of the year, for the first half result, it’s just changes in foreign currency.

Jason Steed-Morgan Stanley

Management

And I guess to the extent that you’re seeing those claims continue to rise, is this the indication that we’re headed towards a high number, or will you sort of reserve judgment on that at this point?

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yeah, I think it’s best to reserve judgment on that, and I think you’ve got to keep in mind that the liability has several big assumptions, one of which is claims, but another of which is the average claims cost. The average claims cost is trending below both the actuarial estimate and the prior year, and that has partly to do with the type of claim, and it has part to do with the size of claim, and it has part to do with foreign exchange. And so because those four variables can really move the liability quite a bit, and we talk about that in our MD&A, we don’t feel like it’s appropriate to go through an adjustment on an individual quarter or on the half, not to mention that the only time we would go through an adjustment is the annual study, and the annual study that KPMG does is only done once per year.

Andrew Johnston-CLSA

Management

Matt, just a question on cash flow. Just taking out the asbestos, what’s happening to the cash flow in the business?

Matthew Marsh

Management

Well, we’ve obviously had a large cash outflow related to the dividends that we declared last year and paid in August, so there was three dividends that made up the $355 million on the cash flow. That was probably the largest outflow. That’s the second half ordinary for fiscal 2014, the 125 special from fiscal 2014 and the special dividend from fiscal 2014. So those three dividends were paid out in the first half. So that’s the largest outflow, and then really capex, I think, is at 158 at the half year. So those two outflows, which are in line with, from a capital allocation standpoint, and from what we’ve been communicating, are in line with kind of what our expectations were. The underlying operating cash flows are very good in the business. You know, operating EBIT is up more at the half than revenues are across the segments. And the underlying working capital performance is in line with expectations. It was the use of cash for the quarter, largely related to inventory. We built about $10 million of inventory. That was largely with the recommissioning of the plants, as well as a little bit of replenishing, but nothing really material. The underlying operating receivables are performing well, and the underlying operating payables are performing well. We had that one sundry receivable item year over year that didn’t repeat. So in terms of how I think about underlying operating cash flows in the company they’re quite strong. Free cash flow is in line with where we thought it would be, given that we went from a net cash position to a net debt position over the last 12 months.

Andrew Johnston-CLSA

Management

And Louis, just on the housing starts numbers, we’re seeing a bit of a divergence between the official numbers coming out of census and what we’re seeing out of some of the major home builders. Just wondering if you’ve got any sort of comment on your views on that. And then your business tends to do really well when the market’s running really strongly in terms of PDG, primary demand growth, but you’re still putting some pretty reasonable primary demand growth numbers, even though the underlying market is flat. And just sort of interested to how you’re seeing the business now in relation to that past relationship of market share growth versus PDG.

Louis Gries

Management

I think the last time the market grew really strongly for housing was really back before the downturn. I think the main difference in our PDG growth rates during the downturn and before the downturn now is just LP. So LPs getting some of the vinyl decline, where before the downturn, they weren’t getting much of it. They were holding a position with panels and trim, and that was about it. That was how they were participating. So they’ve had some market share growth since then, and that’s what’s kind of dampened our PDG a bit. So it’s obviously something we’re working on. You know, their value proposition is they’re cheaper than Hardie, they’re easier to install than Hardie. But we don’t think that offsets the benefits you get on our product in durability and maintenance versus their product. But we haven’t demonstrated that. We can show that to the market, to start turning our trend line the other way. So we’re still working on that. As far as the market itself, I saw some of the big builders came out a little bit more optimistic. There’s theories that big builders are getting more to market, so they would do better than the overall start. If that’s the case, we’re well-positioned with the big builders. We sell 20 out of 20 of the top builders. A lot of them are tied exclusively to us, either in fiber cement or what we call hard sidings. So when they grow, we grow. They still use vinyl in vinyl markets, but where they use fiber cement, they use Hardie. They’re a lower priced segment. A lot of [indiscernible] goes into that segment, so we get the volume benefit, but not the same degree revenue benefit. But it’s still a good business for us. As far as the housing market itself, to me it’s been very similar when you look at it maybe two years now. Everyone’s expecting it to take off, and it does get better, but it doesn’t take off. So that would be our guess next year as well. It will be up, but it won’t be up significantly. And I think some of the forecasts did have it up significantly next year, and now they’re coming back to more moderate increases, and we’d be planning below the moderate increases. As far as being able to grow demand for our product in a market like this, we should have no problem. So like I say, it’s really a one factor equation for us, and vinyl continues to shrink, LP continues to grow. The problem for us is LP, taking some of that vinyl decline. So that’s what we’re working on.

Michael Ward-Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Management

You made the comment that organizational costs were up in the period. Can you just maybe elaborate on what that actually is? And then secondly, whether or not, given the market’s clearly softer than you thought it would be, would you actually maybe pull back on some of that investment that you’re actually making?

Louis Gries

Management

No, we think we’re pretty well balanced, actually. Again, I know some of you would like to see us in the top of our 20 to 25 range. That’s not where we’re trying to be. We’re trying to balance the financials with the investment in growth. We’re very comfortable where we’re at. [indiscernible] cost is up for obvious reasons. Headcount would be one. And then programs we’re running in the market would be another. And we do have some headcount going into capacity on that, which is obviously related to growth. If we didn’t have the growth, we wouldn’t need the capacity, but we’re pretty comfortable with where we’re at. We’re spending money, I think, pretty effectively. So if we were spending it, you know, at a rate that we weren’t doing it well, we’d definitely pull it back, but I don’t see that being the case.

Michael Ward-Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Management

A few years ago, you were investing at a rate maybe well above where the market was. It’s not [indiscernible], it’s at a lower level than that, you would think, is what you’re suggesting?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know, a few years ago, basically if I look at the history of the business, I’m just doing it off the top, we were really a new construction company until about 2005, and then we started focusing resources on repair and remodel. And as we got into the downturn, we really reallocated a lot of resource away from the construction onto repair and remodel, quite successfully. And you know, so when we’re coming out of a downturn, we’re holding and adding to some of those remodel programs. Those of you that were there in September would have heard about the Ambassador program, but we’re also ramping up new construction, so reallocating back in the new construction. And we need to do more in small markets, so we’re pretty well situated in all the tier one markets, but there’s tier two and tier three markets that we’re underweight in, so we have to get resources up into those tier two and tier three markets. You know, I think the reality is that as the business model evolves, the year after is harder than what you’ve already gotten, and sometimes it takes a bigger investment. And then for the first time, we’re having to look behind us at the same time as we look forward, meaning we’re having to look at LP, trying to put a hole in the bucket at the same time that we’re trying to create more demand against vinyl, so that adds to it a little bit as well. So our Midwest resources, which is by far LP’s strongest region, have gone and will continue to go up. We need to do a better job in the Midwest.

Matthew Marsh

Management

And maybe if I could just add, I’d say that we did adjust spending in the second quarter versus the first quarter, and you can see that in the operating EBIT leverage. So for the second quarter operating EBIT was up 17% for the half. It’s up 11 on sales at 12 for both the quarter and the half. So for the quarter, which gives you a better indication of run rate, while we’re still investing, we’re not investing ahead of top line sales. So that would be one thing to look at. The other thing is I’d say SG&A as a percent of revenue, while SG&A dollars are up, revenues are also up versus 2013 levels. So as a percentage, those are broadly tracking in line.

Michael Ward-Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Management

Can I also just ask, on capital management, I appreciate you giving us a bit more detail around that, but there was sort of a distinct lack of any captive management in the quarter. I was just wondering if you can give some further comments around what factors may have influenced that this year.

Matthew Marsh

Management

It’s a good question. We talked a little bit about this in September with a few of you. I think if you were to look over the last several years, we’ve historically not been very active in the first half of the year from a share buyback perspective. The main reason for that is if you go to the financial policy slide that we laid out, it obviously starts with underlying group results, and we feel like those are good, but second is around transparency and governance. And there’s a number of blackout windows and dates within the first half of the year, just given how we’ve historically released results. So May, we do obviously the final year results, June we announce the annual general meeting, and August we do the general meeting, we do the first quarter results. My bias is, on any kind of share buyback program, to be more programmatic than opportunistic, and to move an adequate amount of share activity within a period, that program’s got to run over a longer period of time. And when you have a lot of blackout windows, it makes it difficult to put an effective program in place that I feel good about standing up in front of everyone and saying we had share buyback activity in the quarter and it was material. So it becomes very difficult in the first half of the year to do that, given some of those constraints that we put on ourselves. That being said, I think the activity that we had in the first quarter is very consistent with what we’ve historically had as well. Traditionally, at the half, we’ve only done kind of an ordinary dividend. Any special dividends have only really been considered at the full year results. So at least from our perspective, what we’ve done for the first six months of the year is very much consistent with what we’ve historically done. We probably haven’t done as good of a job of explaining why the share buyback activity doesn’t tend to occur in the first half of the year, and it tends to be biased more towards the second half of the year, with some of those blackout windows, and you don’t have as many of those blackout windows to navigate.

James Rutledge-Morgan Stanley

Management

Just on the reference to Fontana and the ramp up inefficiencies there, just wondering if you can give us a sense of the timeframe of those inefficiencies [going] into that ramp up, and how significant those extra costs are?

Louis Gries

Management

I can’t remember if we gave you the magnitude in the last quarter. No? Okay. So we’ve got one machine running at Fontana now, and it’s pretty close to design. So it’s, over the last couple of months, ramped up from about 60% to now it’s approaching design, which is very good. The time to get to kind of 60% was longer than it should have been. But having said that, that’s a two-line plan, so we won’t get our good unit costs out of that plant until we have it utilized at about 75% or something like that. And that will probably take a little while, meaning even next year, with a good summer, that still may only be about two-thirds utilized, that facility. So when you look at it, we brought up Waxahatchee last year, extra line at Waxahatchee, and we’ll bring up, like I said, at the end of next year, we’ll probably bring up Cleveland. So bringing up a line is kind of normal. It’s going to happen a lot over the next three to four years if the market keeps expanding. What I tried to flag is we just didn’t do it well enough. Now, we’re kind of past that point. We’re doing it well enough now so that problem’s behind us, and that doesn’t mean we don’t have higher unit costs in Fontana, and we will in the future, but that will be more utilization related rather than how well the plant’s being managed.

James Rutledge-Morgan Stanley

Management

So would you say what’s embedded in the result today is, as you go forward and roll out more plants and ramp up those other plants, it’s kind of on a run rate basis, embedded in the results?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, it’s certainly in our 20 to 25. I mean, we talk about these things on the margin. And then we won’t repeat our mistakes at Fontana. So to me, those are one-off mistakes that we won’t repeat. Right, it looks like we’re done with questions in the room. Do we have any investor questions on the phone?

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Simon Thackray from Citi.

Simon Thackray-Citi

Analyst

Just a quick one going back through the rising cost and the input cost strategies you’re talking to, Lou. I’m sorry if I’ve missed this. Could you just talk about the strategies that you want to adopt in terms of the input cost strategies? Is it more around the pricing environment? Or are there other strategies that need to be engaged to deal with the rising input costs that you talked to in terms of cement, electricity, gas, pulp, etc.?

Louis Gries

Management

No, I don’t think we have any big strategy. Commodity costs only go up as market demand improves. And I think when you look at cement, power and gas, that’s likely to continue to be the case. Pulp, for some reason, has been running on a different curve. You know, it was expected to soften. The demand hasn’t been that high, and they’ve held their prices. They’ve gone up a bit more, so that’s been a little bit off the forecasted curve. So what we do with those commodities is we buy against indexes, and as Matt said, we try and make sure, if something goes up 10%, we don’t go up the full 10%. And we’re kind of in that, so we’re buying pulp a little better than the index. I don’t want to mislead you, we buy pulp well discounted to the index, but our increase is slightly less than the increase in the index. And power’s a little bit different. It’s not as competitive a market. Some of our sites are tied to certain providers. Gas, more, again, a pure commodity. We’re not that sophisticated in purchasing in gas, but we’re okay at it. And cement, we’re probably pretty good, because we’re a base load for most of the plants we do business with, so we end up at the bottom end of their price range for their net realized price back to mill. So other than just a basic purchasing strategy, on how you buy things in different types of markets, we don’t have anything. You know, you can’t substitute power. We don’t use coal or anything, substitute gas. We don’t use anything to substitute pulp, and we don’t change our formula when the price of cement goes up.

Simon Thackray-Citi

Analyst

Not to read too much into it when you say you’re going to look at import cost strategies is the point, which is what you put in your release.

Louis Gries

Management

Oh, okay, sorry about that. No, that’s just procurement. Just trying to become more sophisticated in how we buy things.

Simon Thackray-Citi

Analyst

No, that’s all right. No drama. And of course, Lou, the whole issue around capacity and capacity expansion you’ve talked to in detail, and quite eloquently about that. The point of staying ahead of the competitors in terms of making sure you’ve got the capacity to absorb the market when it moves, and so they cannot establish a competitive foothold, is clear. What are you seeing, what are you anticipating in terms of the competitors and their capacity, and also, some discussion about LP, with its same product, making a move back into Texas?

Louis Gries

Management

Okay, we’ll start with the direct competitors. Fiber cement, we’re not aware of any expansions in fiber cement capacity in North America. Those businesses have kind of been in the position where they are for several years now. When we get to LP, that’s where the change is taking place. LP has added capacity in response to their success in growing market share. Texas, not so much. Most of their gains, from our perspective, are still trim. Kind of in broad markets. And a lot of that trim goes on our homes, so Hardie siding with LP trim, so they have a good position there. But their growth in planks would be largely in the Midwest. So Texas, not so much. I’m sure they have some increases in Texas, kind of just as we do, because it’s a good market right now. But that wouldn’t be where most of your market share gained. Most of your market share gain would still be in the Midwest.

Simon Thackray-Citi

Analyst

Weren’t there issues the last time LP was in there with the product in terms of its performance in the climate?

Louis Gries

Management

LP has two basic technologies. One’s hard board, which goes back to the 60s, and one’s OSB siding, which goes back to the 70s. And both of those products did have product performance issues, and most of the participants in those technologies have gotten out of the industry. So you would have had most of your big [forest] products companies in there, like Weyerhaeuser and GP, Boise, of course Masonite I think was the category creator for hard board. LP was the category creator for OSB. Omni [would have followed] LP. So almost all of them have gone out. You have LP in there, and you have some smaller players, like Collins, up in Oregon, small company. LP has [can excel] in Canada. There’s a company called [Mirtech], who I think is owned now by Masonite doors. I can’t remember if they sold it, but they’d be a trim producer. So yes, there is a history of product performance. Obviously, LP is successfully communicating to at least some of the market that those performance problems wouldn’t be the same in their current day product as they have been in the past. So I guess that remains to be seen.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Leech from UBS.

David Leech-UBS

Analyst

You mentioned Carole Park was expected to show some unit cost improvement, so I was just wondering if you could give us some sense of what percentage, or just some sort of a feel for how much more competitive you’ll be in the Australian market?

Louis Gries

Management

Good question. I don’t have an answer for you. I’d tell you, it’s not a game changer. When I say that, what I’m trying to indicate is almost all of our capacity is competitive enough to where you can’t build a new line and shut one down and come out ahead. But what you do sometimes get is either a freight or a product advantage with new capacity, and what they’ll do is, in Carole Park, they’ll get some unit cost advantage through the sale of the machine, but the main unit cost advantage they will get is in freight and in the product itself, because that line will eventually produce products that are currently being shipped up to Carole Park from Rose Hill. So that’s where they get the edge, but we built that new capacity for demand creation purposes. We would not have built it if the size of the Australian business were going to be the same in 10 years as it is today. We wouldn’t have built that capacity, just on a unit cost basis. We would not be ahead investing the amount of money we put into that plant if all we got back was a unit cost advantage. But since we have invested it, you can kind of incrementally get an advantage by bringing it up and reducing freight, reducing some product cost, and then getting the scale advantage.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew McNee from Goldman Sachs.

Matthew McNee-Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Just on the recent data, I know it’s hard to track, but the A&A data we’ve been seeing is a bit softer. Is that what you guys are seeing as well? Or how are you seeing the A&A market tracking at the moment?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, I think they forecast that right. I think they came in pretty bullish at 7%, and they’re well off that now, which I think is right. Having said that, we do like our growth in what we call R&R. Now, are you talking A&A in Australia?

Matthew McNee-Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Yeah, R&R.

Louis Gries

Management

R&R in the U.S. originally came in with a really high forecast for the year, 7%, which is super high for the R&R segment. And they’ve come off that some. We’re getting good growth in the segment. Part of that’s due to the segment being better, and part of it’s due to programs against vinyl have done very well.

Matthew McNee-Goldman Sachs

Analyst

And so do you think year to date, would it be 3%, 4% growth, or 5%, something like that, do you think, in that underlying R&R?

Louis Gries

Management

Matt says 4% to 5%. He keeps track of that stuff.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Johnson from the Australian Associated Press.

Steven Johnson-Australian Associated Press

Analyst

Just in terms of your four year forecast, you’ve kept the guidance the same as the previous quarter, but you do have some short term concerns about the U.S. housing market. Could that affect your full year guidance?

Louis Gries

Management

I’ll be honest with you, we had that guidance in August, and we stuck with the guidance. Now, the business has really done what we thought it would do in the second quarter. So far in the third quarter, pretty much on track. Housing’s pretty much where we thought. You know, with the U.S. market forecasts moving around a lot, we just didn’t think tightening up the range did us much good. So I think most people know kind of where we think we’ll come in. Our EBIT margin in the U.S. kind of drives a lot of it. We’ve already confirmed the guidance there. That was just one of those things we didn’t think it was worth changing. We didn’t think the market would learn anything by us moving it around, because that’s where we thought it should be in August, and that’s where we think it should be now. And I acknowledge that three months have gone by, so we could have taken a little bit off the range, but we didn’t take anything off the range.

Steven Johnson-Australian Associated Press

Analyst

And Louis, just to add, in your statement, you say there’s continued uncertainty about the short term recovery. Could you tell me what you think the uncertainties are, and what the variables are with the U.S. housing market [for much of your earnings]?

Louis Gries

Management

I’m not an economist. When I say uncertainties, I just look at the forecasts the guys bring us. And it seems to me the forecasts are always kind of downgraded as you move quarter to quarter, rather than there’s no forecasters up there that I’m aware of that are actually showing higher forecasts than they would have thought three months ago. The U.S. economy’s not in bad shape. Housing is not recovering at the anticipated rate. I’m sure there are some good underlying reasons for that. I’m not sure I can pinpoint them. But I think the important thing for our investors is number one, do you believe that housing’s going to continue to increase rather than go into a downturn, and we certainly feel that it will continue to increase. And then two is the level of market activity kind of play to our strength as far as organic growth and balancing that with financial returns, and we think we’re in a decent window, even though it’s only a million starts, which is historically low for the U.S. We still think it’s a good window to operate in, so outside of the manufacturing blip we had earlier in the year, we’re doing what we want to do, and then I’ve covered, again, we don’t like that LP’s getting what we consider more than their fair share, especially in the Midwest. So we’ve got some work to do there.

Steven Johnson-Australian Associated Press

Analyst

And then also, on Australia, I know it’s a smaller part of your market, but do you think that attached housing segment of the Australian market is looking relatively promising?

Louis Gries

Management

I think yeah, the Australian market’s good right now. It doesn’t play as well to our strengths as we’d like. We’re more a single family, new construction type product in Australia than we are medium density. And the density’s moving in Australia, so we’ve got a little work to do on kind of product line development to make sure we’re more balanced across the segments in Australia. But I don’t want to underplay how well the Australian business has positioned itself and how well they’re currently running. I think we have a really good business in Australia.

Steven Johnson-Australian Associated Press

Analyst

And finally, asbestos liabilities, do you see any unanticipated increases coming up in the full year?

Louis Gries

Management

Well, no. Again, our asbestos liability is tied to the [indiscernible] so that’s a calculation on our net operating cash flow. So we have our forecast for our cash flow, and we know what percentage we pay into the fund next July. So I’d say that’s as accurate as our financial forecast. There’s nothing outside of that.

Operator

Operator

It appears as though we have no further questions.

A - Louis Gries

Analyst

All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it.