Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q4 2008 Louisiana-Pacific Corp. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Becky, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. Curt Stevens, Executive Vice President of Administration and Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed.

Thank you, Becky. And thank all of you for joining us on this conference call to discuss our financial results for Q4 of 2008 and for the full-year of 2008. Becky said I am Curt Stevens, the CFO and with me today are Rick Frost, LP's CEO as well as Mike Kinney and Becky Barckley, our primary Investor Relations contacts. As I usually do, I will begin the discussion with a review of the overall financial results for both the quarter and the full-year. It will be followed by some comments on the performance of the individual segment and the balance sheet. Rick will then take over to discuss his perspective on the operating results and some thoughts on the near-term outlook. As we have done in the past, this call has been opened up for the public, and we are doing a webcast. This can be accessed at www.lpcorp.com. Additionally, to help with the discussion, we have provided a presentation with supplemental information and this should be reviewed in conjunction with the earnings release. As I go through my comments, I will be referencing the page numbers of these slides in my comments. And last Friday after the market closed we did filed our annual Form 10-K report to the SEC. And that is available either to the SEC website or directly from the LP website. Before I get started I do want to remind all the participants about the forward-looking statements comments that is included on slide 2 of the presentation. Also be aware of our use of non-GAAP financial information, concluded in slide 3 of the presentation and the appendix with the necessary reconciliations is attached to the presentation. I am not going to read these statements but I will incorporate those with these references. Now moving…

Thanks, Curt and good morning everyone. I do thank you particularly this morning where I guess the East Coast and the Northeast are getting hammered by blizzard that you are able to get on the call. As you can see we did changed our format this year quarter for our earnings release to try to provide you more initial detail and initial color and we hope that is helpful to you in understanding the quarter and we would expect to continue to use this format going forward. As Curt pointed out the largest impact on our Q4 results was taking the non-cash goodwill impairment charge of about $273 million or $2.66 per share. Like many companies we now have goodwill off of our balance sheet going forward. As well as a tough year I think I will start off with some of the bright spots for 2008. I usually mentioned safety and compliance on these calls because they are part of our core values and in safety we achieved another company best this year and an industry best with a total incident rate of 0.78. In our environmental compliance effort we had our first year ever with zero notices of violation from our operating facilities. I think both of these milestones are significant particularly in light of the fact that they were accomplished under the most chaotic operating conditions for our people and our facilities. But we always do our best to operate safely and within the law, because they are part of our core values these are significant as well because these results provide significant savings in the immediate and the long-term of our company. Worth mentioning is, was the continued contribution of our Lean Six Sigma teams which achieved for the year over five to one returns against…

Thanks Rick. Becky, I think we are ready to open up for questions.

(Operator Instructions). And your first question comes from the line of Mark Weintraub of Buckingham Research. Please proceed. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: Thank you. Just wanted to follow-up on the tax refund, what is the level of confidence on getting that $60 million in the next I think you said, did you say weeks, did I hear that right?

Our level of confidence is pretty high, we have filed the return and we are just waiting for the refund to come in. And now that, Mark, just as you know, what we talked about in the release in January is that we were expecting about $90 million in total tax refunds which should include both 2007 and 2008, the 2007 we hadn't yet received at the end of the year plus 2008 and that is offset by about $10 million in payment. So the net that we expect for the full-year is 80. What we filed so far is just the federal piece of that. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: Okay. And I guess the context of the question, I don’t want to get in to the weeds, you had put out a number for the fourth quarter in terms of the tax refund you expected that didn’t play through. Are we in a different situation now or your level of confidence is much higher on this one than it would have been for the numbers in the fourth quarter?

Yes, the difference is that we filed in various foreign jurisdictions largely in Canada but also in Chile and Brazil, but Canada is where we were expecting the tax refunds that we didn’t get. There is no statutory time limit and the use of the provinces or the federal government in Canada to pay the tax refund. In the US, there is a 45 days statutory period that the IRS has to refund the money. That’s the wild card. And the other wild card, of course, is any refunds coming from the states. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: Okay. Great.

The states are under their own rules. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: And then, also, there had been a joint venture or there had been something on the Pacific Northwest, at one point where you had committed to put some money to work. That seems to have been placed on hold. Can you just update us on the status of that situation?

Yes, that’s not going to happen. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: Okay.

We have looked at this market and we have come on agreement with people that we were talking to and we are not going to do that. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: And then, finally, you mentioned, you had a couple of non-operating divestiture opportunities that you hoped to realize in next near while. Is there much that could be sold beyond those opportunities that you could update us on?

We probably got a list of upsides. Of course, it depends on buyers and people's availability for money, but a list of upsides, they are equal to that again. Mark Weintraub – Buckingham Research: Okay. Thank you very much.

And your next question comes from the line of Gail Glazerman of UBS. Please proceed. Gail Glazerman – UBS: Hi. I was just wondering if you could walk us through your assessments of OSP industry supply demand. There has been so much, I guess, from the supply front recently?

Yes. Let me give you a 30,000 foot view of it, but this is probably the shortest way to explain it. There is about 30 billion feet of capacity out there near as we can tell which includes everything that's either completed or to be completed. Of that 30 billion feet there appears to be about 10 billion to 11 billion square feet that's either been shut down permanently or shut down indefinitely. And so, I think the number of permanent shutdowns are somewhere a little bit below 5 billion and the amount that's been indefinitely shutdown is little bit above 5 billion. So, the industry capacities that's available to run right now appears to be somewhere between 18 and 19. And then at the rate that the industry is operating at now Delta has been dealt with by intermittent. Is that helpful to you? Gail Glazerman – UBS: Yes, it is.

I think the only thing I would add to that those were annual capacities of course, you have seasonality in this business. In the fourth quarter and the first quarter historically low usage periods. Gail Glazerman – UBS: I understood. In terms of the start-up cost that worsen, are those narrowing at all is those $21 million for the full-year, I mean were they significantly lower in the fourth quarter versus lower year-on-year?

They are lowering, the way that works as we bought that mill after the first half of last year and we really had no salable product coming out of that mill at all. So, all of the product they were using before the qualification was not salable. We did begin selling that product in the third and fourth quarter, but as Rick said introducing a new product into a declining market is probably the challenge. So, that mill is running very sporadically at the current time, but the run rate is significantly lower than it was in 2008.

I think the bright spot for Houlton and LSL is that we recently we did achieve the 1.75 MOE rating that we were after and we do have, immediately have orders for that. So that's a significant thing for us which happened right on our time line for this year so we are pleased with that it should help us a little bit. Gail Glazerman – UBS: Okay and in terms of the FX you gave an updated exposure of the Canadian dollars is there any sort of guidance that you can give on your exposure to the Latin American currencies?

Yeah there really is not a lot of net exposure because we sell both largely in local currency and our expenses there in the local currency and there is some. The only, there will be some revaluation of the debt but we do have $39 million worth of debt in the Chilean facility or the Chilean operations. So there will be some revaluation there but that will be largely non-cash. Gail Glazerman – UBS: Okay and then just last question and I apologize if I missed it, did you make any comments on your agreement about the government subsidies for the Clarke County mill and where that stands?

There was an article in the local press, I do not think we published anything on that but it's not material it's less than $0.5 million a year. Gail Glazerman – UBS: Okay great thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Peter Ruschmeier of Barclays Capital. Please proceed. Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Thanks and Good morning

Good morning Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Rick I was hoping you could comment on how Brazil may have helped or hurt in the quarter and your outlook for the Brazilian market?

Yeah, Brazil got pneumonia when the rest of the world did in Q4 and so our expectations for Brazil for this year are less than what they were the last time that I talked on this call. Their economy has slowed down and our sales plan that we had put together as late as November of last year is some what reduced. So our expectations for this year based upon what's going on with Brazilian activity down there are less. It won't be tremendously significant in total I think South America will perform closely, pretty close to where we looked at it, Chile has rebounded some what basically pricing has improved for us in Chile. So we are going to be little bit better than what we thought in Chile and probably the same amount of orders in Brazil. Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Any comment that Brazil is cash positive or negative?

Goal is going to be probably being neutral. Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Okay, coming back to the US and into the.

Our goal was higher earlier but they pretty well caught cold so why we are very, very. Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Okay, Rick coming back to the US and just big picture looking at cost if you always be volumes, down 50% year-on-year. I think your headcount I think the solid headcount is down 12% from when you started. How do you think about right sizing the labor force, your forecast for housing starts does not suggest a very significant up tick anytime soon, so how do you balance the, the challenging question of what's the right size of the footprint?

No, we put took our first stab in that last quarter and I think that where our math right now and just to put it very blindly, the question you are going ask yourself is do we have a better chance with the staffing that we have right now to make our plan or do we have a better chance to make our plan without the staffing. And at this point in time, I like the way we are staffed based upon what we have on our plate to accomplish and, so that's a constant question that we ask our self as we are adapting to the market but we accomplish the lion share of what we identify that was we felt cost positive to us in the fourth quarter of last year. Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Okay. One more question and I will turn it over. Operationally I am curious down at Clarke County, how much cash do you, need to start Clarke County, I would think that the cost structure would be sufficiently positive enough to provide a pretty quick payoff. But how do you think about pros and cons of whether that should be restarted at the and instead of some higher cost assets that you may have?

I think out of the bucket to get that thing up and running, we probably have to consume about $6 million of working capital. And so that went into our decision last year as we looked at do we want to bring Clarke up and take some other mills down. Managing on a cash basis it would take a while to recover that plus we would then incur severance charges at some other facilities to make room for that wood. So it makes more sense to us on our short-term cash basis to leave Clarke down till the market improves and our cash situation improves and then we would be thinking that. Peter Ruschmeier – Barclays Capital: Okay. Thanks very much, I will turn it over.

And your next question comes from the line of Steve Chercover of D.A. Davidson. Please proceed. Steve Chercover – D.A. Davidson: Thank you, good morning.

Good morning. Steve Chercover – D.A. Davidson: First question, with respect to Houlton LSL, are the startup costs behind you, I mean do you think that it might not be cash flow positive, but is there going to be there $20 million loss or anything that magnitude?

Our startup costs are behind us. The problems we got there now is we just don't have enough volume. So we have got real inefficiencies in running, but that now with the 175E completed, which was a milestone for us. The trick is going to be, you just got the inefficiencies in running the mill on such as short-time basis, but in terms of developing the products, making sure you got product for sale. As you come up, remember this is a brand new process and brand new product. Those are behind us. Steve Chercover – D.A. Davidson: Are you happy with the quality and market acceptance for the product?

We like the product, everybody that has looked at it, likes product. The problem is there are just not many takeaways right now. Steve Chercover – D.A. Davidson: Understood. Okay, and then switching gears. It looks like in January, the new permits were closer to 500,000 than 600,000, so don't know if this is a proper word, but are you properly capacitized? If volume comes in even lower than the 600,000 predicted, Rick?

Well, I think, we are all looking at nuclear first quarter. I mean, the first quarter of this thing is worse than any one quote of gas. So I think what we are trying to do it do, is we are adapting on a weekly basis based upon our takeaways and the intense pressures that we have on our operations around managing working capital. So we are just adapting and evidence of that is the recent announcement we made two weeks ago where to me like an engineered wood products to keep that running. So we just went ahead and took it out and got more of the fixed cost out of there, but that's a week-to-week time.

Steve, the only thing I would add to that is obviously with the recent actions that government has taken with a various stimulus packages in housing recovery. There is a fair amount of money going in to the system and there are certainly a concentrated efforts to, I think, in much greater recognition that housing is important to the recovery. That’s why you saw the $275 billion being targeted for housing where you saw the $8,000 tax credit going to new home buyers. And we also saw on the budget that there was an increase in the housing and urban development budget most are foreclosure and to encourage people to stay in their homes.

It is positive glimpse, and it's pretty hard to define any, but I think January was first month where permits exceeded starts, and that's nice place to be. So we do anticipate some seasonal up tick. I mean it's not going to be the normal seasonal up tick. Certainly, the North fars out there is going to be a seasonal up tick. Steve Chercover – D.A. Davidson: And one other question if I could, I just want to make sure I understood what you said. Closures we will see $30 million and then the right-sizing at corporate when that is another $40 million is that correct?

That's correct. Steve Chercover – D.A. Davidson: Okay thank you.

I think we have time for one more question Becky.

All right, your final question comes from the line of Richard Skidmore of Goldman Sachs. Please proceed. Richard Skidmore – Goldman Sachs: Hey. Good morning, guys. Curt could you just talk about the cost side of things? I think you mentioned $30 million to $40 million of may be cost savings in 2009. I would assume that's obviously cost of good sold, but what are key bucket is it wood fiber, is it resin, is it obviously, probably energy as well. But could you elaborate a little bit? And then, second point to that would be, is the market sufficiently competitive right now that you would expect to actually give that away in the form of pricing, or do you think the market is taking sufficient downtime and people are seeing the pain enough that prices kind of stabilizing actually, see the benefit of those cost reductions?

Well, let me take the cost piece first. I think, fundamentally, what I would expect in 2009 is that we will get back to the level of pricing on the raw materials that we had in 2007. For that perspective for us, if we compare the full year 2008 versus the full year 2007 on comparable volumes, our raw material's cost were up about $48 million. When that broke out, about a third of it was in wood, about 20% of it was in electricity, natural gas and electricity and then resins and wax made up the rest of that. Though, we would expect that given the fall in oil pricing, that's going to affect the wood cost. And the other effect of the wood cost is that the pulp business is much depressed from where it was last year, and that's the primary competition we had throughout raw material. We have already seen a significant reduction in [NVI and PF resin] as we went into the first quarter and we see a further reduction in the second quarter. Then, natural gas, you will recall last year, about this time, we were selling to 12 bucks, and I think it's a 12.80 today. We will see those reductions. I would expect to recover most of the increase that we had in 2008, and increase we had in 2008 should get back to 2007 levels. As far as in a competitive marketplace, we are in a very competitive marketplace and always have been. I am encouraged though when you look at your 11 inch pricing it stayed up. They were pretty flat for really last couple of quarters we got a slight increase in the first part of February that's held. I think last week we had a couple of reasons come up a bit, but it is very regionally based and it also is reflective of the delivery cost to the facilities. Richard Skidmore – Goldman Sachs: Can I just ask one other follow-up? Can you just provide what your natural gas consumption might be and maybe an order of magnitude on the resin consumption?

Well, business how much we are running. Historically, we have used about 100,000 pounds of MDI about 100,000 pound not 70,000 a PF roughly. I am sorry 100 million. So historically, our resins have been about a $200 million spend but was greatly reduced run schedule we got it's going to be less than that. Our natural gas, our spend has generally been about 35 million to 45 million again it depends on where you are running. Richard Skidmore – Goldman Sachs: Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

I appreciate all of you that are joining us on the call. As usual, Becky and Mike will be available. Again I am pleading with you don’t ask us about liquidity because we can't say anything more and I don’t want to shut down on your question, but I am not going to talk about that at this time. Thanks again. Becky if you can give up the playback information, I would appreciate it.

Certainly, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This conference can be heard again through our replay that can be accessed through the toll free number 888-286-8010 using access code, 18457024. Once again that's toll free 888-286-8010 and the access code is 18457024. Thank you again for your participation in today’s conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.