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Earnings Calls: 
3M First Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Rozalina Destanova
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Last Update: 2:37 AM EDT May 08 2008


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Sales rose 8.9% to $6.5 billion, topping analysts'' forecast of $6.32 billion. EPS fell to $1.38 per share, from $1.85 per share a year earlier. The year-earlier results included a one-time gain of 57 cents per share from the sale of the company''s branded drug business in Europe. International sales were solid and that profits increased in four of its units. Profit declined in its consumer and office and display and graphics businesses.

 
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George W. Buckley: It is a four segment business. It is the LCD TVs, the handhelds, the notebooks and monitors and essentially this particular story is about LCD TVs. The handheld, attachment rates, monitor and notebook CR monitors, while they jump around have largely remained okay. It is at least stable. There has not been the same intense pricing pressure in those markets simply because the value proposition for somebody is high brightness films, it is strong because it held battery life. The whole game is essentially down for the LCD TV market. The market in many respects is still trying to find bottom, it is trying to find that where this ball is is, the bill of material that he can get to with an acceptable performance from a set for a customer. What might happen is once the bottom is found at the lower end of the market, if you think about it as a sort of good, better, best, once the bottom of the pricing is the lower end of the market, the top end of the market will be found and there is going to be re-contenting. There are some positives in the energy area for example, 3Ms films can tuck in the small television. A third of the energy usage in the bigger television more, but in the end that maybe not be replaceable. It will sell you more televisions. But you might get the customers to make choices left and right on a sort of low energy versus a high energy set. What we are also doing is putting a sampling of lot of inexpensive but still relative high performing diffusive the films into the markets. We can supply that bottom end of the market and get some more leverage there. I think that still during the 2008 in summary, we are going to see more turbulence in that market as the set manufacturers in particular scramble for share and they are prepared for digital switch over and I do not know if it is fully commoditized yet I suspect not, but I think this first bumpers totally will be in the worst bump.

Jeffrey Sprague (Citigroup): What your dental growth was in the quarter?

George W. Buckley: Dental growth in dollar terms is north of 10% on a local basis mid single digits.

Patrick D. Campbell: Dental is greater than double-digit, the orthodontic business was stronger there at almost 25% growth in the orthodontic business part of that due to an acquisition we had. Combined oral care on an ex-currency basis was around 7.

David Begleiter (Deutsche Bank): Good performance in the industrial, but no operating leverage margins fell. Can you comment to that?

George W. Buckley: Having a low 20's margin in a mainstream industrial business is a good performance. Our objective in that business is not to grow margins, as much as get to the top line growing. They can keep the top line growing the way they have, keep margins the way they are I would be happy with that model. You have heard from HC Shin, in the past that he has got a lot of focus on operational excellence to continue to drive productivity to get cost out reinvest back into the businesses. One of the things that does hurt industry from margin standpoint is we have made some acquisitions in that space that have not been necessarily at the same margin level that some of our core businesses have so it takes a while to build those profit rates up. I am not at all concerned with the level of margins within the industrial.

David Begleiter (Deutsche Bank): You mentioned optical films being a good growth business. Referring to a new revised space not from last year’s base, correct?

George W. Buckley: Correct.

Deane Dray (Goldman Sachs): You said 7 cents from FX this quarter and that was 2 to 3 cents from pension. Is that correct?

Patrick D. Campbell: Yes. I do want to clarify. FX the way we calculate it, is if you just literally take rate differences on both transactions and translation and that is where you get the number. It does not pick up any of the other input related impacts of say a weaker dollar on commodity prices and alike. It is an exaggerated example of what the real impact is on the bottom line.

Deane Dray (Goldman Sachs): How about your assumptions for the year when you look at that 10% plus where would FX and pension combine represent of that 10%?

Patrick D. Campbell: Pension will be give or take $0.10, FX is in the 25, 30 range.

Deane Dray (Goldman Sachs): What are you using for your Euro exchange?

Patrick D. Campbell: It is 158 at quarter end. That is what we would have extrapolated in our last forecast.

Deane Dray (Goldman Sachs): Where does capacity expansion stand and you are also cutting CapEx. Is that related at all?

Patrick D. Campbell: The $100 million reduction does reflect the economic situation we are in and so forth, as because if your growth rates do slow because of economic conditions, there are some things that we were to looking at relative to capacity in these and so forth. Out of the 19 plants, we are schedule to have about 13 of those up and running here by the end of the first quarter. Russia is the plant that we thought we would have up and running right now. We still are struggling getting final occupancy permit for that facility.

Stephen Tusa (JPMorgan): Do you have any worries about the economy and the impact on growth on the dental side?

Patrick D. Campbell: It would be fair to say that there are some discretionary decisions that customers make about, when they have a dental work done and as people get more and more concerned about discretionary income, it could affect people's buying behavior. It would be fare to say that there has been some feedback that may be dentists have started to see, some slowing in discretionary treatments and so forth. My comment is that it is hard to get into dentist's at times as well, especially orthodontist.

Stephen Tusa (JPMorgan): Could you expand on the optical side?

George W. Buckley: What was happening in the end mark is the set managers make us scrambling for share. That sort of there is a reordering of the powerbase in the marketplace, the leverage has swung more to the set manufacturers than it was previously in the panel manufacturers or even the upstream manufacturers and those dynamics are extraordinarily difficult to forecast accurately. You have to look at 3M in its total context. In 3M's total context, the core of 3M has done well. It was able to overcome and surpass the challenges in Optical roundly.
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