Daniel S. Fulton
Analyst · UBS
Thanks, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning. On this call, I will provide you with a perspective of our quarterly results. Overall, I'm very pleased with our performance during the quarter. All of our businesses were profitable. Importantly, business improvement initiatives within our Wood Products segment are yielding clear results above and beyond those realized from an improving housing market. Our aggressive actions to improve performance are beginning to show the strength of our businesses and to position us to capture the full benefit of the market recovery as it unfolds. Our work is not yet done, and we will continue to focus on improving our performance to capture the full value of our businesses. As you know, U.S. housing is very important to us as it affects 3 of our 4 businesses: Timberlands, Wood Products and Real Estate, which I'll be referring to as WRECO. Since the beginning of the fourth quarter last year, we've been experiencing a gradual improvement in the housing market that extended through the spring selling season this year and is continuing into the third quarter. Last quarter, we reported a 30% increase in our WRECO sales year-over-year. Our momentum continued to build through the second quarter, and at the end of the quarter, year-to-date WRECO sales are up 38%. During our first quarter call, I noted that we had not yet seen a significant effect on our Wood Products sales due to the time lag between new home sales and starts. Now it's clear that sales by WRECO and other builders earlier in the year, together with improved sales activity in the second quarter, are resulting in increased starts across the country, boosting demand for Wood Products. Improved demand for Wood Products is in turn increasing domestic demand for logs from our Timberlands. Housing construction is on a path to return to long-term trend levels necessary to meet the needs of a growing population and household formation, although we're well aware that the recovery is still somewhat fragile. Now I'll comment on the performance in each of our businesses in the second quarter. In Timberlands, our earnings improved 10% over the prior quarter. Harvest levels were up 5% overall, somewhat more in the West than the South. Third-party sales volumes increased for both domestic and export customers. Third-party domestic sales volume increased 16% as a result of increased demand related to housing activity as well as seasonal pickup in the West. Export volume grew a healthy 6% during the quarter, with a shift in mix among our 3 primary markets: Japan, China and Korea. Japan continues to be by far our largest and most stable Asian market, representing over 75% of our export volume during the quarter. Log sales volume to Japan increased 5% to meet demand driven by increased Japanese housing starts. Log shipments to China had slowed in the latter part of 2011 and early 2012 after significant increases in 2010 and early 2011. We were not expecting much recovery from China until the latter part of this year, but we were able to capture better-than-expected demand during the quarter, leading to a 44% increase quarter-over-quarter. Though a much smaller percentage of our export activity, this increase in volume to China helped to raise total export volume and offset a decline in Korea shipments. In Wood Products, we had a strong quarter as a result of improved market conditions and our improvement initiatives. This was our best quarter since 2006 point 2. EBITDA was $63 million for the quarter, up $80 million compared to last year. Sales volumes for all products increased quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Production rates increased across all product lines in response to increased demand, allowing us to capture production efficiencies. The good news for our Wood Products business is that there was a spring this year, as buyers returned to the housing market and builders followed through by increasing housing starts. Our improvement during the quarter was of course helped by increased housing activity, but we're also seeing the payoff of improvement initiatives across our business. These initiatives have resulted in increased revenue from new products and new markets and reductions in cost to production and operations. Year-to-date, earnings in this segment have improved $103 million from last year, more than half of which is attributable to our business improvement efforts. While we still have more work ahead of us to improve our competitiveness, we've made great progress and we're better positioned than ever to profit from improving market conditions that will come with the housing recovery. Shifting to WRECO. We had a solid quarter, with earnings from land sales and single-family operations. Though our overall community count is down slightly from 1 year ago, year-to-date closings are up 4% and sales are up 38%. Our backlog is up 53%, which will lead to a continuing increase in closings in the third and fourth quarters. Further signs of market stabilization are a 39% decline in our unsold inventory from 1 year ago and a firming of house home prices across most of our markets. Prices for new sales in June were 5% higher than 1 year ago. I know that you like to have a bit of color on what's happening in our markets, so here are some highlights of our sales activity during the first half of the year. Southern California, Las Vegas and Arizona were some of the markets hardest hit during the housing recession, and each are beginning to rebound. Our sales have more than doubled in Arizona. In Las Vegas, our sales are up over 60%, and in Southern California, sales are up nearly 20%. In the Seattle area, sales are up over 40%. Houston has been a steady market for us throughout the housing recession, and sales there are up nearly 20%. And in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C., sales are up over 20% and we're underway with our first project in nearby Richmond, Virginia. Based on our own WRECO experience, our message is that the housing market conditions continue to improve as fundamentals stabilize and confidence begins to build. My final business comments relate to our Cellulose Fibers business. Demand for our Cellulose Fibers products held steady during the quarter. Planned maintenance and some unanticipated operational issues, which are now resolved, led to lower production levels during the quarter. With the exception of these onetime operational issues in this quarter, this business has been operating extraordinarily well. We continue to make progress during our planned shutdowns to make changes that will allow us to transition to an 18-month maintenance cycle. During the quarter, we received regulatory approval at our Longview mill to move to an 18-month cycle. And now I'll turn the call over to Patty to discuss third quarter outlook, as well as our financial highlights.