When it gets too low they curtail hours, if it goes lower they shut us down. I have been told to stay home only once in 35 years. That is in the same mill through three different owners. In 2008/2009 we came very close to mothballing the mill but managed to pull through. I feel very lucky several mills that were here when I was growing up are gone.

I am just going by the financials that they are reporting to the IRS & SEC. Both are public companies and I would be very surprised if they and their auditors are lying about those numbers.

Prices are sky high in Canada. Osb 7/16 took a jump from $13/14's to 39.99. 2x6" studs and 8 ft priced at $10.99. Canadian! Today's prices.I don't understand how tariffs can be the cause for the increase.

Grammy
Does Canida import lumber from the U.S.? The tariffs I was talking about are on Canadian lumber coming into the U.S.. I had never thought about wood going into Canada and having tariffs placed on it.

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

I think the lumber market has been stimulated. Housing is one of the governments favorite industries to stimulate.

I worked for LP for five years up until about three years ago. The plant turned a profit one of those five years and we were constantly under the threat of the mill shutting down. More recently, they've been considering manufacturing a pressed siding.

There are a lot of big players in the OSB game and the competition is stiff. It drives the price of OSB into the dirt. It's not the manufacturers making the big profit.