Tim Solso: Over a long period of time, no. We are good where we are now because we wanted to pay down debt that was a message we had. We want a strong balance sheet. That’s why we’re getting pensions in order. We have increased the dividend, we’ve completed $100 million stock buyback and we’ve bought last year another 500,000 shares. We did a little bit in the first quarter this year. We want to pay down debt, we want grow the business and we want to give a return back to the shareholders and we are trying to balance that and we are in a good position right now.
Peter Nesvold: When do you anticipate making announcements to the OEMs or to the public regarding what the technology is going to be for 2010 and for what different applications?
Tim Solso: We are in discussion with most of our partner OEMs across markets because many of them have been involved all along in evaluating the alternatives any way. We’re working it through with them to make sure that they’re, okay with the choices that we’re making and once we get through that process with all of them, which will probably be more towards of end of this year we’ll become more public as to what our strategy is. Our view for some time has been focused on where do we need to be come 2013. A lot of our decisions that we began to make in pre-2002 and the path we chose to take both frankly on highway and off highway was with an eye to where do we want to be come 2013 and have tried to work with our long-term OEM partners on that basis. When we get a little bit clearer with them and a little bit more towards the end of the year, we’ll be clearer more publicly about what choices we’ve made by market. You should not assume that we will make one choice. Market by market, the right technology matters and that is still very much our approach, building off common building blocks on both the engine structure side and on the sub system and electronics side to make this all work.
Peter Nesvold: The EPA proposed guidelines about three weeks ago. Did the EPA guidelines is roughly in line with your expectations or where you also thinking that while this seems like a little stricter than what we were anticipating?
Tim Solso: No big surprise on the guidelines. They are clear about what they’re looking for. There are issues that have been on their mind for years. We have been talking to them for years about it. We have some familiarity with some of these issues based on things being a little bit further along on the SCR side in Europe. We were anticipating what they ended up doing.
We talked about 2010 emissions and you’re talking 2013. Is the after market treatment solutions that are looked at besides Urea being developed internally coming or are they using external processes?
Tim Solso: You’re talking about our emissions solutions business and the core technical group of that is a group we had developed in the engine business and then work put it together with some of the capabilities that we picked up and frankly in the Nelson purchase. The core group, in terms of development of the system, the design of the system, the speck of the system, the control aspect of the system are Cummins engineers. Now we have partners that we work with, depending upon which after treatment device you are talking about. They are not all the same. That we work with quite closely in terms of developing the system as a whole. But this is a business where we’re very strong technically, have a great core of designers and engineers as well as controls people working on developing our system for the future.
Cummins’ heavy duty market share grew in the first quarter from 26% to 28%. You said that you’ll maintain market share. With the new engines are performing well, why wouldn’t you continue to grow market share this year?
Joe Loughrey: There is a lot of uncertainty still on market size, there’s uncertainty relative to competitive positioning. How well our products stack up versus the others, right and the final analysis, but I will be personally a little surprised if we don’t see our share pop up a good bit in Q2. Now, how relevant that is to volumes, will depend a lot on how many trucks actually go out the door and many of the truck manufacturers have taken build rates down in Q2. But, we could see a market share gain in Q2 and I’ll be surprised if we don’t on the heavy duty side. What happens the rest of the year will depend a lot on how our products stacks up with the alternatives as everyone gets a little more field experience and end users begin talking about how well the products of the trucks are working for them.
What’s the expected CapEx for all of this year and can give us a little peak into your thinking about next year on CapEx?
Tim Solso: What we’re seeing is somewhere between $320 million and $350 million and I would expect that level to be about the same. Our target is to be 3% of sales, it might go up a little bit depending on how we increase the capacity. This is not readily visible, we’re trying to make it more visible, we’re spending a lot of capital in our joint ventures, but the vast majority is self funding. We’re putting more money into the business and more money into growth opportunities than we have for a long time.
On Power Gen, was the pricing instituted at end of last year or during Q1?
Tim Solso: For the emissions side, we announced it last year and depending on when people purchased it, it was on all the new purchases, but the answer across our industry is it depends on the region and the product. But we introduced price increases across our alternator business in Q4 and some in Q1, and then in the genset business, depending on which region again it was mostly last year, with effect this year. The emissions business divisions products are being you purchased over time and our mix is still increasing in those. We do expect price benefits to continue throughout the year. We still think we’ll get more price realization on the increases we have instituted now as we go through the year. |