West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. (NYSE:WFG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Hamir Patel: Yes. Fair enough. Thanks. That’s all I had and Ray all best in retirement. Thanks.

Ray Ferris: Thank you, Hamir.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And your next question is from Sean Steuart from TD Securities. Please ask your question.

Sean Steuart: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. A couple of questions and Ray or Sean, I want to just follow up on the CapEx question. With respect to supply chain lag and longer lead times for equipment, I guess I would have expected that with weaker markets, there might have been a little more slack in that element, potentially some of your competitors slowing their discretionary spending plans because markets have weakened. Is there any particular part of the supply chain, particular pieces of equipment where you’re seeing these lags intensify? Just any more detail you can give us on that front.

Ray Ferris: Good morning, Sean. I’ll take a crack at it first here. Look, I mean I guess we’ll see what happens over the next few years here. But I would say there was so much stuff in the pipeline that I think as we look out you can see that things are improving and easing, but the things that were in the pipeline are still in the pipeline. So I think there are certain segments and parts that where you can see equipment and things coming quicker and others, which quite frankly, haven’t changed at all yet, but they may down the road. But look, the one thing that hasn’t changed is access to people and what I call contractors and people that can actually build and build a project. So labor is still the primary constraint, assuming you’ve overcome your equipment part. So…

Sean McLaren: Good morning, Sean. Not a lot to add to that. I really think the Henderson and some of the delays we have experienced have been due to the backlog, and that is getting better. So I think on future projects, it might be some, a bit faster, but there’s still a backlog over there.

Sean Steuart: Okay, thanks for the extra detail there. A question on your European EWP business. Weakest margins we’ve seen there for a while, which I suppose is entirely surprising given the macroeconomic backdrop. Can you give us a sense of, given that it’s a less transparent market, ongoing pressure you’re seeing into the fourth quarter and maybe early next year? And it sounds like you’re curtailing your shipment guidance a little bit for that business. Do you have a sense of any incremental downtime that’s being taken elsewhere given skinny margins for that business at this point?

Ray Ferris: Well, Sean, look, I don’t really have anything in respect to other curtailments or what, but I think if you look at the trends over the last year, I mean the economy certainly has continued to slow steadily throughout the last year, and it remains weak at the moment. I think our visibility into next year is probably the same as yours. And I think we’re just really focused. What I would say is we’re really quite pleased with how our operations are performing over in Europe, really operating to meet available customer demand. So what I would say, in a very difficult demand market. I think we’re pretty happy with where we’re kind of, so it gives us quite a bit of confidence that even as things slow down a little bit more that our team has figured out how to kind of weather that storm, if you will, if that’s the right way to put that.

But I guess we’ll see, but I do think that our outlook is, it’s probably much more little bit slower going forward at least in the short-term.

Sean Steuart: Okay. All right. Thanks very much for the detail. Congrats to both Sean and Ray on the transition. We look forward to seeing what comes in going forward.