Mr. Lucas: The business itself is not faring too well these days and that's not a terrible surprise, given how quickly things came to a screeching halt at the end of 2008. Companies have been aggressively right-sizing the business levels for volumes 10% to 20% lower than what they had experienced over the past year, and when we look at order trends and sales trends, really, volume is just not there. While it does appear that we are in a bottoming process, as evidenced by some of the recent economic data, the bottom is still not here.
TWST: You said they're getting prepared for business down 10% or 20%. Is that
what they have been seeing or do they just expect it to get that bad?
Mr. Lucas: That is generally what companies have been seeing at this point. If
we look at the first quarter, volumes were down anywhere between 10% and 25%. If
you look at a number of monthly order data that we've seen from a handful of
companies and then you take a few of the companies that are on a different
fiscal year, not a calendar year, and see their results, I would say that the
calendar second quarter would be similar to the first with volumes down
somewhere around the 20% level.
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