VMC
#<UNK>, it's <UNK>.
Our view is pretty straightforward.
We think there's substantial runway left.
As you'll recall from our investor day, and we laid this out on a cash gross profit basis on investor day, but as we continue to move forward in the recovery, continue to move back toward normal levels of demand with the kind of pricing environment we expect, we should be able to continue converting that incremental revenue at about 60%, and doing that through this period of time gets us to a cash gross profit number that instead of being a little bit less than $6.00 this quarter would be a little bit above $8.00.
So substantial room left.
I'd remind people that as an entire construction complex, more and more people are appropriately focused on earning fair returns on capital, and earning these kind of incremental margins is consistent with that view.
So we're very, very focused on it.
And we don't see anything, from where we sit, that should limit our progress on that dimension in the near term.
Hello, <UNK>, it's <UNK>.
While I appreciate the effort, we're not going to give guidance for 2016 on this call.
But I would just reiterate what we've said which is, as we sit here today in early November, the core trends that we see in terms of demand recovery and the pricing environment, we see continuing into the fourth quarter and into 2016.
So we don't see a significant shift in overall trajectory, but we're not prepared at this time to give specific guidance.
Thanks.
I think we've got some watch points.
I'm not seeing deceleration anywhere.
The watch points, as I mentioned earlier, one was non-res, just because of some of the leading indicators.
As I said earlier, we're not seeing that on the ground, what we're bidding and what we're shipping.
But we see that, we watch it.
I think our folks, in talking to, are very confident.
The other place to watch is, as we talked about earlier, is to watch Texas, with the reduction in exploration drilling and the impact on jobs.
While we've not seen anything impact yet, it's been an odd year in Texas, where it was the rain in the first half of the year back loaded the year.
So if there is a drop-off, it would be masked.
And some places we're watching.
But other than that, I think we're pretty confident.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I would remind folks on this, as <UNK> was saying, on both price and volume there is, of course, as there always is, a lot of variability across our portfolio geographically.
So if you were to look at the rates of volume growth to the rates of price growth, they're pretty well dispersed around the average.
And so we have, of course, as we get a little more clarity on our 2016 plans, we're going to have some geographies that are certainly slower growth than others and some that are faster growth than others, and we'll have to incorporate all of that into our guidance for next year.
I don't know that I could put a pattern to it, but we have seen a number of our customers run into bottlenecks which impacted third quarter shipments and will impact fourth quarter shipments.
Now that volume is not going away.
It will be shipped.
So whether that's in ready mix business, it's trucks and drivers, it's finishers.
In the asphalt business, it's crews and lay-down machines, and they're not going to ramp up ---+ they'll ramp up a little bit, but not that we're going to add, just have it slow down.
I think what is key to what we saw in the third quarter, and see happening at the end of this year versus last year, is the sense of urgency by our customers.
When I say that, last year if they got delayed, they just put it off for the next week or until the weather got right, whereas this year, we're seeing contractors work on Saturdays and Sundays.
We're seeing a lot more sense of urgency of getting these jobs done, which is very good news for us because that means they have backlogs now that they've got to get this work done so they can get onto their other work, which really signals, from a macro perspective, that there's more work out there, and we continue to see the steady growth.
I think that, as we said earlier, usually the places where we are further along in the cycle, we see better pricing.
So we saw better pricing in Texas and in a number of places where the cycle is further along.
And as we go into next year, I think that pattern, that trend tends to hold true that the places where the cycle is a little more mature, you have a little more confidence in momentum and pricing.
Stan, this is <UNK>.
One thing I'd continue to underscore for those on the call, is just as with volume, and I'll highlight both, but if you look at pricing by our, we call them general manager areas, if the average for the Company was around 8% for the quarter, we have ---+ and I'm just looking at the numbers we have in front of me, we have some that are 14%, 12%, 12%, 11%, 9%, and we do have a couple that are 3%, 2%, negative 1%, negative 3%.
So there's a lot of dispersion based on local market factors, and in a single quarter, mix of business and other things.
The same is true on the volume side of the business.
If the average volume is roughly 7.5%, then you've got some that are up 20%, 19%, 13%, 11%, 10%, 10%, but you also have a couple, as we highlighted, that are nearly, like Illinois, nearly down 10%.
And so again, any single quarter view is going to have that kind of dispersion amongst our geographic businesses, and therefore all the more reason to make sure you also take these trailing 12-month or longer term views of the business.
That's really hard to put a number around.
You know it's happening.
You can see it happening, when you talk to your customers and in the different markets, it's pretty widespread.
But to put a number on that's pretty tough.
Thank you.
I think it's primarily ---+ this is <UNK> ---+ primarily a one-time issue.
And you saw some, if you will, elevated above recent trend costs and relating to other income and expense, and a lot of that had to do with some one-time environmental charges, including some settlement of past liabilities.
So I would think most of that is one-time.
Southeast.
Let me had add to that, that wasn't the demand was off.
Demand was poor.
It just wasn't as good as they had hoped it would be.
And <UNK>, we've talked about it a lot.
There are going to be, as we continue to transition our crews and our scheduling levels, like many in the industry, from operating most of our plants with shared crews to having fully staffed plants again, there's going to be a little ---+ the transition is not going to go perfectly.
The key for us is to monitor it, manage it, correct it, and to stay on top of it.
But there are going to be some things like this as we transition from such historically low shipment levels back to something that's more normal, particularly given that we've been operating in some of these markets with shared crews across two or three plants.
Just changing that staffing model is not going to be frictionless.
Well, thank you very much for your interest in Vulcan.
As you can tell, we will finish 2015 strong, and we're very excited about what lies ahead of us for 2016.
We look forward to talking to you next quarter.
Thank you.
