But on that spot transactional side, what we’ve seen is it’s still competitive. It’s still a price market. And when you have the commodity curves we have and we’ve had, one month doesn’t make a trend. So, even if prices stabilize and come up or commodity bellwether stabilize and come up, you really need three to four months in the service center sector before you really start to see that come into your price book and in your margin in a positive way. Really, the worst thing that can happen is prices tick up for a month and then they turn back and they go down again, and then you get a compression on both sides, because your cost of goods goes up. but the spot price goes down in the market and then you kind of get a Malachi crunch, if you will or you get like a double squeeze.
So, we’re really looking to see prices get some momentum for two, three, four months, so they get in the price book and they stick especially on the spot bill material side and the transactional business, which is attractive business.
Alan Weber: Okay. Thank you.
James Claussen: Thanks, Alan. Okay, great. Pratham, do you want to — we have a question that got sent in…
Pratham Dear: Yes.
James Claussen: So, we have a question to…
Pratham Dear: In the chat online portal and I’ll be asking management. How are the investments in customer experience going to unlock greater than historical operating leverage as the cycle improves?
James Claussen: Yes. So, a part of the answer, I articulated to Alan. but let me just say this. In our industry, we’re governed by certain fundamentals can you quote fast, can you quote complete, do you have a competitive lead time, can you fulfill and deliver on time consistently over and over and over again? And as simple as it may sound, it is the opportunity industry to really differentiate yourself in how much of metal selection can you provide from very basic pick pack and ship all the way through to finish part. And can you do that completely and competitively and deliver consistently time after time. And the investments we’re making, although the competitive differentiation may not be smoothly linear, we believe and our conviction is strong that we’ll hit these tipping points.
As we move forward in the future and these investments really start to kick in. We do think we’re going to have a competitively-differentiated business model. And that’s been the point of the exercise is to develop the systems and integrate them into our physical assets and the way we do our business every day, and a part of that — that’s what made the ERP conversions so necessary was to be able to get these generation tools and get the benefits from these tools, and bring a better operating model to the marketplace for that differentiation. These things were necessary. And they’re challenging, they’re difficult, but they’re worthwhile. And we have strong conviction that we’re going to be successful at it.
Pratham Dear: And there’s a second part to that question.
James Claussen: Sure.
Pratham Dear: And do these efforts differentiate you enough versus competition to accelerate share gains in the future?
James Claussen: We believe so, I mean, we believe so. Stay tuned for more. Operator, I think we’re good with questions.
Operator: Thank you so much. It does appear we have no further questions at this time. Mr. Lehner, I will turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Edward Lehner: We appreciate your support of Ryerson and we look forward to seeing all of you and being with you in good health next quarter.
Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
