EXP
#<UNK>, at some point, you get to a basic level, not too different than frankly, what we saw a few years ago in housing starts.
You get down to a necessity level for that, but we're down pretty low.
Look we ---+ kind of the first half of calendar 2015, I'd say demand as we had spoke was down 50%.
We've seen another leg down, which gets you down to that down 80% in total.
So that it's happened pretty swift.
We'll see what happens in drilling activity from here.
But we're at pretty low levels at this point.
Most of that has been done, right, on the oil well cement.
But that's happened.
Again, you've got the weather comparison from the prior year, so we'll see how weather goes through the rest of the year.
But the oil well shift has happened.
What we do know is the rig counts are down.
The oil service companies continue to struggle financially.
The E&P's continue to reduce capital.
There's little pressure on price.
We think we're approaching the bottom.
We also think the second half of our fiscal year will be a little bit better than the first half of our fiscal year.
That was really through ---+ mostly through the end of the March quarter, the 1 million shares that we commented there.
There's some shares that settle post the quarter, just the way the shares are settled through the financial institutions.
Once you enter a blackout period or an earnings period, there's is some limitations on the stock repurchases.
So the vast majority of that 1 million shares was in the March quarter and the first few days of April.
As we speak, we are working with our customers to renegotiate supply agreements.
We're looking a little bit different customer base than we originally sold.
We're also working with customers to reduce costs delivered to their well, so we are actively working that at this point, yes.
Our focus now is to breakeven in the short term and position ourself to make some good money in the long term.
If we do those things right we will pick up a little bit of share.
Yes, <UNK>, in the frac sand business, there's a number of railcars that are underutilized, as you would expect.
We are going through the process currently of trying to improve those lease rates as best we can or utilize those cars in other parts of our business.
So, that is well under way.
That's part of the negotiation process that we're in right now, to make sure those lease times ---+ those cars as necessary are used and to the extent not necessary, renegotiate the timing of those leases and the underlying cost of those leases.
I wouldn't put much ---+ attribute much to the weather at all.
I think a lot of it is the market growth.
We're very fortunate the markets that we play in grew faster than a lot of the other markets.
We took full advantage of that.
But I think very little had to do with weather to be honest with you.
That's my read, yes.
First of all, four of our five gypsum plants are on natural gypsum ---+
So we feel very good.
We have decades of supply.
In South Carolina, our plant does run on synthetic gypsum.
We have the ability to run on actual gypsum and more importantly, we're teamed up with a terrific partner in Santee Cooper.
We built our plant on their property.
We have a 52-year lease on that property and a 52-year agreement for supply.
We fully expect Santee Cooper to continue to live up to their agreement.
But I will tell you that there are trends for fewer coal-fired power plants ahead.
Those that have invested in scrubbers have a greater likelihood to keep running.
It's really a situation that's plant and market specific.
This also applies to fly ash as well as synthetic gypsum.
<UNK>, obviously, we wouldn't talk about any specific opportunities.
But needless to say, look, we continue to look for growth in the heavy side and adjacent businesses in slag and fly ash would certainly meet that right criteria.
It will come down to valuation.
I'm not going to overpay for the privilege and generating higher than industry average returns.
That's something that we've always been focused on.
We would like to thank all of you for joining us today.
We look forward to sharing next quarter's results with you at the end of next quarter.
Have a great day.
