Ronald M. DeFeo - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Analyst · JPMorgan.
Yes. It's a good question, Steve, and in fact the way I think about it is, it is reflected in my 12 by 12 in ‘10 goal, because when I committed to the 12 by 12 in ‘10 goal, I certainly did expect that we would have both positives as well as negatives. The currency won't always help us, but raw material costs won't always be as strong a headwind as we have here as well. And we won't always have Construction at very low margin and Roadbuilding and Utility at a very low margin, nor did I expect necessarily that the AWP would stay at an 18% to 20% margin all the time, but nor did I expect Cranes to continue when we started at the high-single digits margins, which is now in the 13% operating margin. So I really looked that this in the fullness of a cycle and said, hey we ought to be able to deliver 12% operating margin when not everything is going well, okay, which means that if it per chance, and it’s never happened since I’ve run this company now for 15 years, everything goes well. Our margin ought to be in the mid-teens, on the flipside if everything goes bad all at once, which has happened once or twice but not recently, but now I think we got ourselves positioned so we are in the high-single digits at least. So, I really think our business is so different today than it was a number of years ago, and it has to be almost by definition. We have come from nothing, we’re a $10 billion $11 billion company that has the best returns on capital in the industry, and if not the best clearly right there with the best. And so my feeling is that we have totally changed how this company has been positioned. Yes, we don't have deeply rooted processes that we can say are as sustainable as we like to have, which is why we are building in the lean processes, why we are building in a Terex Management System, why we are changing our manufacturing footprint supply chain, why we are initiating many supply chain programs. That's what is going to take Terex from being a sophomore in high school, which we aren't quite yet, to the university. And so I'm very optimistic, but I know we have some choppy markets and choppy situations to still work through.