Matt Tobin: Got it. No, that’s helpful perspective. I’ll jump back in the queue. Good luck.
Sean McLaren: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is from Hamir Patel from CIBC. Please ask your question.
Hamir Patel: Hi. Good morning, Sean, I wanted to get your thoughts on the BC Land Act changes that are under consideration in the province. And what impact do you think that might have on existing tenures and your future investments in the province?
Sean McLaren: Yes. Good morning, Hamir. One thing I might highlight is really the Forest Act was first changed in 2019. So we’ve been operating under joint decision-making in British Columbia for a number of years now. Will additional regulation and additional kind of joint decision-making be helpful? Probably not. But saying that our teams are already well into this, working through it. So I wouldn’t expect materially different than what we’re already experiencing, which is — which needs to improve. So that’s one thing. The second thing I might highlight relative to your question on investment is, look, we’ve got VCs where the company was built, where it was founded. We’ve got great people. We’ve got assets that are competitive, saying that access to timber is the focus.
And for investment, we need that. And largely our company now is well positioned outside of the province. Our BC team is important to us. It’s important to the company. We’re working hard on access, and that will determine what investment we do.
Hamir Patel: Okay. Great, great. Thanks, Sean. That’s helpful. And just turning to the European business, do you give us a sense as to how pricing levels there for OSB compare to North America? And are there perhaps some opportunities to bring product from Europe to North America?
Sean McLaren: Yes. No, thank you, Hamir. First off, what I would say about Europe is things are slow over there, so pricing is down. Saying that we have a really good business over there, strong team, well capitalized asset, good cost position. We’re focused on Europe. And from time to time, we do look at opportunities in North America. Pricing is higher, but there’s a long lead time to do something like that and really, it’s not as quick as this is what the spot market is, and let’s move product. So we have typically focused our efforts in Europe and opportunistically looked over to North America, but it’s not a huge priority for us.
Hamir Patel: Great. Thanks, Sean. That’s all I had. I’ll turn it over.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Sean Steuart from TD Securities. Please ask your question.
Sean Steuart: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Sean, a question on the CapEx plan. One of your competitors has suggested that capital costs for discretionary sawmill projects have increased to an extent that returns are compromised and it’s contributed to a lower CapEx budget for that company. Be interested in your perspective on long-term sawmill IRRs given your commitment to continue with aggressive CapEx in 2024.
Sean McLaren: Yeah. Good morning, Sean. I’ll speak to our guidance for 2024. A lot of that capital, Sean, is projects that are in motion. And West Fraser for a number of years has been modernizing our portfolio in the US. A big piece of that is our Henderson project, which is a — will be a new mill on our site in Henderson, Texas, that supports our whole integrated platform and one of the — frankly, one of the best regions to be operating in. Our — those project — that project has been in motion now for the better part of a year. And so are costs are — we’re not seeing that cost inflation. So we’re on budget on that project and excited about the return and what it’s going to do for our platform. Saying that, I think when we think about next projects coming on, like anything, we always look to what makes a company stronger, what achieves our hurdle rates.
I don’t know if there’s been material inflation over where we were a year ago or 18 months ago. Saying that. I know in West Fraser, our focus is on delivering what we have in motion, and that’s really our priority today. And new projects will be based on our readiness to take them on as well as the returns on those projects.
Sean Steuart: Okay. Thanks for that detail. Chris, hoping you can give us some context on this, but in the Pulp & Paper segment results for Q4, can you give us a sense of what the contribution was or the losses were for Hinton and the Mechanical Pulp mills, just as we think about run rates for that segment going forward?
Chris Virostek: Sean, I think that’s actually called out. If you take a look at the year-end MD&A, we’ve got the full year contribution from those facilities there. And then I think similar data was there in the Q3 as well. So I think it’s there to be derived from those two documents that are out there. I think, as we’ve said before, right, there’s five assets in that segment. It’s not proportionate that three of those five make up 60%. Those three make up the lion’s share of the results in those facilities because the other two are both 50% joint ventures. So the majority of what goes on in the Pulp & Paper segment, positive or negative, has typically been contributed by those three assets.
