West Fraser CEO Says No Upturn In Forseeable Future

Monday, April 28, 2008 08:49 AM

Prince George, B.C. – Hank Ketcham, CEO of West Fraser Timber, says while the company recorded a net loss of $69 million dollars, he considers the company’s losses to actually be $113 million because of write downs of inventory.

He told investors on a company conference call this morning, he expects the lumber market to be “depressed for the foreseeable future”.

Ketcham says the bright spot in the first quarter is that a NAFTA decision was in West Fraser’s favour and there would be no further taxes added to shipments made during the period that was under dispute.

West Fraser has curtailed production to remove 800 million board feet from the market, but Ketcham says it will take some time for that reduction to flow through to the markets. “We will continue to adjust operations according to markets, and we will continue to work towards reducing log costs.”

Ketcham says while the Province has made moves to reduce log costs, that will have little impact on West Fraser over the second quarter as Ketcham says the company does not expect to bring many logs into the facilities over this quarter.

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Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 08:49 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: lostfaith on April 28 2008 5:27 PM

"Ketcham says while the Province has made moves to reduce log costs, that will have little impact on West Fraser over the second quarter as Ketcham says the company does not expect to bring many logs into the facilities over this quarter."

Because they are better off exporting their raw logs south of the border to their US mills.

Posted by: zoopdingle on April 28 2008 6:29 PM

All the lumber companies seem to have adopted the Canfor motto, "Are roots are in the community, but the rest of the tree is down in the States."

Posted by: northern taxpayer on April 28 2008 10:12 PM

if our premier had gonads he or she would tell hank and his hench men to go back to the U.S. and start cuttimg their own trees at a decent stumpage, only reason he's here is cheap logs from our sell out gordy next he will be paying hank to rid us of these awful logs so we can pave over the mess like the lower mainland is,pretty ugly clear cut.

Posted by: metalman on April 29 2008 7:32 AM

The shareholders must be fed.
They never go on a diet.
metalman.