White17
Are those numbers for second and third quarter profits this year or before that? I just can't believe they didn't do better than that since April.
End of the third quarter. Sept 30, 2020.
OK I don't normally pay any attention to WY or LPX but I dug around a bit in their last 10K &10Q reports as well as the last annual reports available which is for 2019. I can understand how this looks so deceptive.
In 2019 both companies had net losses of multiple millions of dollars mainly due to forest fires. So the margins we are seeing now reflect the write-offs of those losses against current revenues and earnings.
We also need to remember that both companies operate outside the US also and are engaged in other types of business ( mining) so it isn't all making and selling OSB in the USA. One thing that I learned is that both companies are complaining ( warning actually) that their cost for resin is accelerating. That would make sense if they are using more of it while their supplier can't keep up with demand.
So the 7% I cited is for the whole company and all segments of their business in the aggregate.
No question that their OSB lines of business are doing well. But there is more to the story than that segment.
There was a little chart in the report that was interesting. I can't get it to paste here with the format. But this is the gist of it:
Wholesale price of 7/16" OSB per thousand square feet reported in Louisiana Pacific 2019 annual report
North Central USA 2017 = $ 353; 2018 = $350; 2019 = $210
Western Canada 2017 = $326; 2018 = $ 307; 2019 = $166
Southwest US 2017 = $ 334; 2018 = $ 319; 2019 = $ 177