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spk00: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the West Fraser Q2 2021 results conference call. During this conference, West Fraser's representatives will be making certain statements about potential future developments. These forward-looking statements include certain statements about West Fraser's future financial and operational performance, including the impact of foreign exchange rates credit ratings, and mill maintenance shutdowns. West Fraser's business outlook, including forecasted U.S. housing starts, market conditions, demand for products, and available supply and expectations concerning costs. West Fraser's capital plans, including the completion and ramp-up of capital projects and the benefits of such projects. the softwood lumber dispute, including adjustments to duty rates and related proceedings, the integration of Norboard into the West Fraser business and expected synergies, and recent developments, including the impact of wildfires on production and shipments and the completion of our substantial issuer bid. These statements include forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian and United States securities laws and are intended to provide reasonable guidance to investors. The accuracy of these statements depends on a number of assumptions and is subject to various risks and uncertainties that may cause future events to differ materially from the events implied by these statements. Actual outcomes will depend on a number of factors that could affect the ability of the company to execute its business plans, including those matters described under risks and uncertainties in the company's annual management discussion and analysis as supplemented by other risks and uncertainties as set out in the company's quarterly MD&As. These filings can be assessed on Wes Fraser's website or through CDAR for Canadian investors and EDGAR for United States investors. Accordingly, Listeners should exercise caution in relying upon forward-looking statements. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by 2. Mr. Ferris, you may begin your conference.
spk04: Thank you, Michelle, and thank you for that disclaimer. Well, listen, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 2021 conference call. I'm joined today by Chris Verostik, our Chief Financial Officer, and Chris McIver, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Development, and several members of our executive team. This morning, I'll make a few opening remarks. And then I'll pass the call to Chris Sporostic for a review of West Fraser's second quarter results before I make my concluding comments, and then we'll take your questions. I'd like to start with a couple of important housekeeping items. Today, we will limit the scope of our comments to those already provided in our Q2 disclosures, and we'll refrain from addressing any questions related to our company or market outlook beyond what has already been provided. in those disclosures. Further, after this morning's earnings call and in the absence of any material developments that would require a news release, we do not intend to make any additional comments to investors or analysts until after our substantial issuer bid expires, which currently is intended to expire on August the 17th, 2021. Finally, you will have noticed in our earnings release that we have announced a virtual investor and analyst event to be held on September 16th at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, 11 Pacific. We are planning for the event to be approximately two hours in duration, and we'll have further details at a later date. With that out of the way, let's move on to our comments for this quarter. It has been a captivating time for Forest Products. Being a meaningful part of an industry that provides sustainable and renewable building products, required for a low carbon economy, simply by participating in the life cycle of the forest that we live and operate in. Manufacturing building materials from a sustainable and renewable forest is but one very important part of the required solution for society to meet its climate change objectives. On the topic of sustainability, I am pleased to share that this summer, West Fraser will plant its two billionth tree as part of our reforestation program. This is a proud and long-standing commitment to the sustainability and environment in the communities in which we operate. We've been sustainably managing forests in BC, British Columbia and Alberta for more than 65 years. For every tree we harvest in the woodlands that we manage, we plant two trees, two seedlings in its place. This is a significant milestone for the company and we couldn't have achieved it without the support of our employees, contractors, community stakeholders, and many others. It's all part of our renewable resource management that contributes to the goals of supporting global climate change and carbon sequestration. Now onto our Q2 results overview. I'm pleased to report that another strong quarter for West Fraser as we remained agile and continued to work diligently. diligently at minimizing COVID-related business disruptions, thanks to our focus on the health and safety of our employees and communities. We remain proud of what we've accomplished so far. In North America, we experience continued strength and recovery in U.S. home construction activity, spurring demand for wood building products. In fact, homes construction is measured by new home starts recently reached levels not since not seen since 2006. Despite what appears to be a short-term pullback in repair and remodeling activity, we expect this segment to remain relatively strong in the longer term, supported by new home sales activity and an aging housing stock. The slowing of the repair and remodeling market was more evident for lumber and plywood, which has a greater exposure than our balance of engineered wood products to repair and remodeling. On the lumber side, the new manufacturing complex in Dudley, Georgia became fully operational in the second quarter and the mill continues to make progress ramping up. On the OSB side, supply continued to struggle to keep up with the stronger than expected recovery in OSB demand experienced in recent quarters. As you are aware, in response to this increased customer demand and in the midst of a pandemic, we announced the safe restart of our Chambord Quebec mill, which began to produce and ship panels in late March. Chambord remains on track to ramp up towards its annual rated capacity of 550 million square feet on a three-eighths-inch basis, and we're very pleased with the progress to date. With that introduction, I'll now pass the call over to Chris Verostek.
spk06: Thanks, Ray, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As a reminder, our consolidated second quarter results include now a full three months of financial results from Norbord, and as of January 1 of this year, and for all comparative periods, we no longer exclude export duties in our calculation of adjusted EBITDA. When we last reported earnings in early May, the recovery in lumber and OSB demand was strong, and that demand strength continued through most of the second quarter. Demand for new housing construction in particular was elevated versus historic norms. In terms of financial performance, West Fraser generated consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $2.16 billion in the second quarter, up from $1 billion last quarter, largely due to the addition of Norbord's financial results for a full three months, as well as higher lumber and panel prices. Recall that in the prior quarter results, there was a $93 million EBITDA reduction, which was an acquisition-related non-cash purchase price accounting impact for the one-time inventory adjustment that raised our cost of goods sold to their fair value upon closing of the Norboard acquisition. Moving on to segmented results, our lumber segment reported adjusted EBITDA of $994 million versus $646 million in the first quarter of 2021, driven by higher pricing and higher shipments, partially offset by higher fiber costs. In our North American EWP segment, Adjusted EBITDA increased to $1.106 billion from $353 million in the prior quarter, with gains primarily due to the addition of Norboard results for a full three months, as well as higher OSB and plywood pricing, which more than offset fiber and raw material cost inflation. Adjusted EBITDA in the pulp and paper segment increased to $25 million in the second quarter from $11 million in the first quarter, owing to higher pulp pricing. And finally, adjusted EBITDA in the European EWP segment was $39 million in the second quarter, up from $11 million in the prior quarter. We continue to see recent market strength in Europe as demand for OSB continues to grow. Shifting to capital allocation in the balance sheet, capital expenditures were $66 million in the second quarter, slightly higher than capital spending in the prior quarter. Note that due to some lengthening lead times on projects currently underway, We are now expecting our 2021 capital expenditures target to be in the range of approximately $400 to $450 million versus our prior guidance of approximately $450 million. We continue to view share buybacks as an appropriate use of excess cash when we believe our shares are trading below intrinsic value. In the second quarter, we bought back $233 million worth of West Fraser shares under our normal course issuer bid at an average price of Canadian $90.85. We also amended our NCIB in the second quarter, allowing us to acquire an additional 3.54 million shares for an aggregate authorization of 9.58 million shares. We also remain pleased with the level of U.S. trading liquidity we've seen for West Fraser shares with the addition of the New York Stock Exchange listing. Our U.S. trading volume, which accounted for less than 10% of our total trading volume on U.S. and Canadian exchanges in February, now regularly reaches 35% of our daily total trading volume. Given the strong Q2 results, our financial liquidity increased materially, exiting the quarter with $3.39 billion of available liquidity, up from $2.55 billion last quarter. Leverage was modest, exiting the quarter with total debt of $500 million and net cash of $1.7 billion. In combination with the early redemption of the Norbord 2023 and 2027 notes, we have now retired an aggregate $665 million of high yield Norbord debt, which will ultimately reduce annual interest costs by approximately $40 million and help rationalize our capital structure. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Ray for an update on our outlook on 2021 recent developments in capital allocation, and on the northward integration.
spk04: Thanks, Chris. In terms of our end markets, low mortgage rates and the ongoing trend toward greater work from home continues to create strong incentives for people to purchase new single-family homes and undertake renovations and do-it-yourself projects. The underlying housing formation deficit has continued to drive demand for single-family homes, which consumes more of our wood building products than multifamily. While we recognize there are many factors outside of our control that can temporarily influence markets, including uncertainty around the long-term economic implications of the effects of COVID-19, we remain constructive and optimistic about market fundamentals. That is underpinned by the environmental benefits of building with wood, which have never been more clear and more accepted. However, at the same time, it's important to recognize that wildfires and wildfire risks we're seeing in Western Canada as a result of extreme heat and dry conditions. The province of British Columbia has recently declared a provincial state of emergency and the wildfires are affecting access to logging areas in some of our operating areas and are impacting transportation networks that we rely on to move our products. This has resulted in temporary suspensions of production due to raw material shortages, evacuation orders, and difficulties, as I discussed, about moving our finished products by truck and rail. In order to address the wildfire situation in Western Canada, its transportation challenges, log cost and availability, variable and short-term demand, and overall inventory levels, we may, from time to time, adjust our activity levels at our operations as we have previously done. As a result, our production and shipments in the second half of 2021 may be impacted. More importantly, keeping our employees and community safe during these challenging times and focusing on servicing our customers' needs remain our key priorities. On last quarter's earnings call, we noted that the considerable cash accumulation we were seeing was a relatively new trend and that you could expect us to be thoughtful, patient and balanced in our capital allocation strategy. As you are also aware, we have taken a key step toward that commitment, commencing early this month with a substantial issuer bid which we have offered to repurchase up to $1 billion Canadian of our common shares. This SIB is by way of a modified Dutch auction with a tender price range of $85 to $98 Canadian per share. and is set to expire on August 17th, 2021. We look forward to sharing with you the results of this SIV tender process when those results become available. In terms of the Norboard integration, and as noted previously, our team continues to rapidly work through synergies and how to make our company even better. The level of engagement and the building of momentum remains impressive and high. Now only five to six months into it, I remain confident that we are on track to achieve our targeted annual synergies of $61 million over the next 12 to 18 months. Safety remains a key priority for the company. We know we can eliminate serious incidents and injuries. Despite driving overall injury rates and severity to continued new lows throughout the company, we continue to see incidents that tell us we have much more work to do. Our employees continue to do the heavy lifting in delivering strong safety and operational results, all while dealing with the obstacles and challenges of a still ongoing pandemic, as well as the evolving risks of Western Canadian wildfires. The strength and resiliency of our employees is impressive. It's this dedication and perseverance of the many people across the company that I'm most thankful for and proud of. Finally, I'd like to recognize Brian Balkwell, our Vice President of Canadian Wood Products, who is retiring from West Fraser after a long and distinguished career. I want to acknowledge Brian for his significant contributions he has made to the company while helping to advance West Fraser and being a key driver and leader of the West Fraser company culture. over the last 35 years. We have one thing that we tell our people in the company is that our job is to leave it better than you found it and to move the ball. Brian has done that. Brian, you'll be missed. Thank you and congratulations as you move on to your next adventure.
spk02: With that, we'll turn the call back to the operator for questions.
spk01: Thank you.
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. Your first question comes from Mark Wild of BMO. Please go ahead.
spk01: Morning, Ray. Morning, Chris.
spk02: Morning, Mark.
spk08: Ray, first of all, I want to just start by congratulating you on a good quarter. And I also want to, you know, again, kind of acknowledge that we're getting a much more detailed slide deck from you each quarter and I think better disclosure in the MD&A, and I appreciate that. To start out, I'd just be curious on your thoughts about sort of the speed and magnitude of the lumber price correction that we've seen and maybe sort of any color on how that's flowing over into the export side of your business.
spk04: Well, anyway, good morning again, Mark, and look, thanks for that. Look, when it comes to the slide deck and the detail, I'd love to take, you know, but that's really, that's Chris and Robert that are, you know, improving that, and we appreciate the feedback. I'm going to kind of ask Chris McKeever to kind of maybe talk a little bit about the question really around export markets, I think.
spk09: Morning, Mark. Hi, Chris. You're speaking more on the lumber side than the OSB side, or are you speaking generally about both?
spk08: Actually, about both, if you could.
spk09: Okay, sure, sure. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think I'd be a bit remiss to say, if I didn't say that we, you know, we are a bit surprised at how quickly the prices have come off, but that's, you know, that really is a reflection of how quickly they went up. So... um we we did expect a correction uh we thought it might be a bit more muted and take a little bit more time we're not surprised to the level we've come to at this time in the short term because we actually fundamentally believe we went too high and we we think we're probably gone a little bit too low as well in in the correction but so so you know i i think we're seeing a little more stability on the lumber side um right now where you know where you know sales are picking up a bit OSB is a little bit behind. That market hung in a bit better. And quite frankly, we think the demand for panels is probably a little stronger at this time than it is for lumber. So we think it's got a bit more to go, and we're not seeing a lot of demand until we find some sort of bottom there. But we believe we will. And with regards to export, it was very difficult to participate in export markets during this run-up over the last year. They just couldn't keep up. But saying that, Japan actually got to levels very similar to North America, and the prices there are still holding up. We expect to see a bit of weakness there over the next while, so that market looks pretty good. China, we've re-entered, not in a significant way, but we're putting some more product over there, quite frankly, because some of the pricing is quite favorable. We never exited any of the export markets. We did reduce our volumes, and we're picking those up a little bit now.
spk08: Okay, that's helpful. And then I wondered, Ray, if you can give us just some sense of how you would expect BC fiber costs to move as we go through the second half of the year and into the first half of next year. I know you've got some of this in your MDNA, but if you could just kind of walk us through. For those of us who don't live this every day, it's a fairly complicated set of adjustments that get made over time.
spk04: I'll try to do that. I think it's pretty straightforward for the second half of this year. I think it's publicly available that stumpage will rise on October 1st. Stumpage impacts can be different depending on the region that you're operating in. Everyone may see it somewhere differently, but it's going to be a significant increase and somewhere in the $30 range, but it could be more or less than that. It's going to have an impact. You've got two things that happen. We obviously purchase quota logs, which are directly tied with stumpage, but we purchase a lot of logs on the open market, and the pricing of those two can be different. It really comes down to how much purchase wood do we go after, how much quota wood that we bring in, and that's where it becomes a little bit more complicated. Those conditions change, Mark, so it's very difficult to predict. The other aspect is policy, and those things that, despite whatever the economic part is, what's our ability to access the land base in certain areas in order to get the volumes that we require? And so, you know, I think those are things that are pretty well known in the industry, Mark, but, you know, I would say, you know, our view is that, you know, it probably will be a difficult, it was a difficult first half, it'll probably be a difficult second half.
spk08: Okay. And finally, do you have any sense right now about sort of where the cost position of the overall BC lumber industry is relative to kind of current market prices?
spk04: Probably the same as yours, Mark. You know, I think the cost of log sawn are pretty high for everyone. And, you know, so, I mean, I think, again, I think everybody's different, but I think we're all in the same area code and, you know, We're probably in that area code is what I'd say, but I can't give you any more direction than that.
spk08: Okay. All right. And then I guess actually one other question, just any sense from you or maybe from Chris McKeever about just where we stand in terms of lumber inventories at both the mill level and the customer level and whether there's maybe some variation with maybe producers or who have been doing a lot of R&R or big box business versus people who are more tied to new res?
spk04: Just before I kind of get Chris to kind of maybe weigh in there, I'll just say two things. One, it's important to remember that we run an integrated business in British Columbia. So we run plywood, MDF, and, of course, lumber. in BC. And of course, we have other integrated models in the company. So it's important to recognize that. Many of our other businesses are holding up quite well. When I look at the MD&A, I think it's important to note when you look at the first half production and shipments, pretty balanced. I think people knew where we entered the year, and I think it probably gives a pretty good description of where we are currently. But I'm going to I'll let Chris kind of talk, answer that.
spk09: Yeah, hi, Mark. So, yeah, I think you're asking the right question. It is a story of two different markets right now. DIY or R&R has dropped off a lot, and there's a few reasons for that. I mean, I think people are doing different things and fixing their decks and houses right now. So we've seen box store programs blow tremendously, and their inventories were relatively high. That business started slowing a couple months ago, and we think that inventories are getting in better shape, and we expect by the fall they'll be back doing some buying. Resume housing is very busy. They don't have enough. They can't quite keep up, and inventories for those who are supplying that business we think are relatively low. So overall, not in a bad position, but we need the R&R folks to come back, which we think they will in the fall.
spk02: Okay, sounds good. I'll turn it over. Thank you. Thanks, Mark.
spk00: Your next question comes from Hamir Patel of CIBC. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hi, good morning. Ray, the non-fiber cost inflation that the press release pointed to in the South, is that labor turnover inflation? Or does that reflect maybe some more permanent wage cost inflation that you've got to absorb this year?
spk04: Well, good morning, Hamir. Good question. And I would say the bulk of it would be non-wage inflation. Well, sorry, actually, wage inflation is obviously a part of that. However, when we invest in wages, we we typically see that we'll be rewarded on that side. Turnover actually remains very similar to previous years, so that's really not it. But listen, we are seeing cost pressure outside of wages and really everything from transportation through the supply chain, there's an impact.
spk03: Thanks, Ray. And the press release pointed to some elements of uh market downtime in the back half of june um you know could you quantify how much that was and um at least backward looking in july so far uh how much have you taken no we haven't put a number on that him here and what i would say is it's not inconsistent with how we've uh operated in the past which is you know we're going to adjust our operations
spk04: based on a number of factors. Logs are one aspect of it, weather, inventory levels, and market conditions. So I think it's kind of just, honestly, it's really a status quo. We're going to run our business to meet those challenges. But no, I wouldn't put a number on it.
spk03: Great. Thanks, Ray. And just a last question for me. It seems like the weakness on the R&R side largely is on the DIY component and the contractor side, at least for other building products, appears strong. I was curious if you guys have any work about what percent of R&R, I think the slide deck showed 41% is R&R, but what portion of that is DIY versus contractors?
spk04: No, I'm sure there's somebody out there that does a pretty good job of breaking that down, but we really haven't dissected that. I think I think the important part is that whether it's sticker shock or people heading to the beach, temporary pullback certainly, but the driver really around single-family houses, everything else looks good. The fundamentals remain strong, DIY, decks, fences, all those other things, we're pretty confident that You know, listen, growth had to slow a little bit from the spike that we saw in 2020, but everything that we see would indicate that, you know, continued growth in R&R. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, maybe not, but over the next year or two, absolutely.
spk02: Fair enough. Thanks, Ray. That's all I have. Thanks, Amir.
spk01: Your next question comes from Paul Quinn, RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk07: Yeah, thanks very much, Morty, Ray, and the two Chrises. Morning, Paul. Hey, great results, guys. But just wondering why CapEx this year is so back-end weighted. I mean, if I take a look at sort of the five-year average, you know, it's slightly back-end weighted, sort of 55%. percent in the back half, 45 in the front, but this year looks, you know, if I take the midpoint of your guide, it's kind of 30% in the front, 70% in the back. Why is that?
spk04: Well, I'll probably get myself in trouble, but here's what I would say is that, look, we may have been pretty focused on completing a pretty major acquisition and completing a couple of, we had quite a bit of capital going on last year, as you're aware. Um, and probably, uh, Ray probably said, let's just take a, you know, so, you know, really we're, we're, we've been going gangbusters. So it's only, uh, it's only back end weighted just because that's the flow, uh, of what's happened. And so, uh, but, uh, you know, we, you know, it's just a timing issue and maybe a bit of a unintended, uh, you know, um, I don't want to say lack of focus because that would put, you know, say that I'm the problem. But, you know, two startups in the first half, a major acquisition. Our foot is intended to be on the gas pedal. It's not unusual to see our capital program be a bit lumpy. It's not an even flow type of business.
spk07: Okay, fair enough. And then your MD&A reference, U.S. Southern Alpine Logs, increased costs. I'm just wondering if that's a regional thing, or are you seeing that broadly distributed across the USF?
spk04: Well, the answer is both. So I would say generally most of our issues have been regional, and whether it's weather, other environmental factors, or just increased competition, but I'd say it's mostly regional in those areas. We've seen this from time to time to see those log costs come down as the weather impacts subside, but there has been some cost inflation across some of the regions.
spk02: All right. That's all I have. Best of luck. Thank you, Paul. Thanks, Paul.
spk00: Your next question comes from Sean Stewart of TD Securities. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thanks. Good morning, guys.
spk06: Good morning, Sean.
spk05: A couple of questions. Chris Ferostik. markets moderate here and we get a sense of where things will start to normalize for the company from an earnings and cashflow perspective. Do you have any updated thoughts on what an optimal capital structure looks like for the company? I guess the general sense is you want to keep ongoing strong liquidity on the balance sheet, but are there any metrics you guys are focusing on over the long run is something you're targeting?
spk06: Yeah, thanks, Sean. I appreciate the question. You know, and I think as the businesses are coming together and we sort of, you know, maybe get a bit of this volatility in the rearview mirror, we're looking at all those things. You know, I think rightly as you indicate, the investment grade rating we think is important to us. I think it enables us to weather tough times like we had in early 2020 and 2019, you know, with a measure of confidence. And you know, to do things like we did in 2019 to continue on with our capital program and, you know, maintain our dividend in early 2020 when things were tough. So, you know, I think what we're looking at, you know, among those things is, well, you know, we got two new startups, we got an ambitious capital program, we want to be able to return capital to shareholders, you know, but we've got to be able to manage volatility when it occurs, which can be unpredictable at times. So, You know, I guess what I would say is, you know, more to come on that here over the next probably several quarters as we kind of work through that and get, you know, a bit more in the rearview mirror post acquisition and see things. But, you know, I think the guidance would be we're going to remain conservative and balanced. We're in a volatile industry where cash flows can change, you know, materially in the short term. And we don't want that to, you know, to put the company at risk in any way.
spk05: Thanks for that detail. And then further to that question, as Norboard's integrated and your thoughts can turn back to potential M&A, the bias in the investment community is assumptions that you'll look at U.S. sawmills and maybe growth in Europe as well. Would stuff like cross-laminated timber be of interest to you guys potentially? There's obviously one significant bankruptcy that's just happened there, but more niche-focused engineered wood products. Is that something that would potentially be of interest?
spk04: Well, anyway, Sean, I'll try and field that one. Look, one thing I want to say is I think, as we said as we went into the OSB and the integration, I mean, our you know, I really believe and I think we're seeing that, you know, we feel we've built more capacity in the company to take on projects and opportunities, you know, and I think our digestion is going very well. So, you know, it's just fundamentally in our DNA, it really comes down to, you know, what makes the company stronger and better and then the And so, you know, it's hard to say no to anything. I think we're going to look at anything and everything that we think enhances value for our shareholders. I think, you know, the primary targets are the ones that you mentioned. You know, our – you know, the OSB team, I think, you know, we have a – our engineered wood portfolio is quite strong now. I think that gives us the opportunity to – learn and think about growing in other areas. So I wouldn't take anything off the list. It's interesting to us. Our primary focus today would be, we've been a big supporter of the soft and lumber board and the support of CLT and the growing of that market. We continue to do that and support the direction of CLT. I'd say today our primary focus is to make sure that we the CLT guys continue to grow and hopefully we can sell lumber and other products to them. But other engineered wood products like CLT are things of interest that we'll explore over time.
spk02: Thanks for that detail, Ray. That's all I have. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Sean.
spk00: Your next question comes from Mark Wild, BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hi, Ray. I'd like to just come back on some capacity issues. First of all, you mentioned in the MD&A that the ramp up at Dudley is likely a multi-year process. And that's a site where you've already got like a trained labor force. Can you just help us in thinking about how long you would expect a ramp up of a new facility to typically take and what that curve might look like?
spk04: Well, no, great question, Mark. And, you know, we've got a fair amount of experience of major capital and startups. So, you know, they're not all the same. You know, we think it's an inherent advantage to start with a base of long-term loyal employees. It certainly can be done in Greenfield as well. But, you know, typically we're thinking that, you know, to get close to capacity, it's a two-year project. And, you know, I would say our recent startups have been better than our, you know, I think we believe we're getting better at this, but it takes a tremendous amount of energy, people, and focus. But it's just, I would say, two years, and it's really... You know, there are always engineering issues to work through or misses. And retraining and a lot of new technology that does take people time to kind of get up to speed and to work the kinks out of. But two years.
spk08: Two years, okay. And then the other thing on the sawmill side, I noticed this announcement just a week or two ago of a 400 million board foot sawmill in North Carolina, which It's much larger than any of the other projects I've seen announced over the last few years. Do you have any perspective on this? Is this a sign that maybe sort of the whole step up in scale for a southern sawmill is likely to take a big leg up here? Or would there be something that could be particular to that situation? Because typically there may be 250 to 350 million board feet seems to be what people are building. This one is probably half again as large.
spk04: No, I don't think I can speculate on that. I think if you look across North America, there's small mills that can be extremely profitable and large mills that can be extremely profitable. I think it's specific to that location or drain or opportunity, perhaps around timber supplies. And so I think each situation is unique. I'd let the average sawmill size speak for itself. But I think, look, we've got small mills that have great margins, and we've got larger mills that have great margins and everything in between. So I think it's what my personal opinion would be. You build the mill that you think is appropriate for that location. That's what we do. I can't speculate how they came to their decision, but I'll leave that to them.
spk08: Okay, the last thing I had on supply is just in the slide deck this morning, you've got something kind of showing the ability of the OSB industry kind of tapping out at about a million and a half starts on the existing supply base. From a West Fraser standpoint, if you were, as you get deeper and deeper into OSB, if you were thinking about adding further capacity beyond the restart of SHIM board, any thoughts about how you would do that? I mean, would you... Could you de-bottleneck or add second lines in an existing mill? Or would you want to think about sort of an entirely new mill in a new location?
spk04: So, you know, hard to say no to either of those, Mark. So, you know, I think if you look at what we've done, including what was announced in December and what we announced, I think, back in June about de-bottlenecking capacity and and value around, we've invested, continue to invest in OSB. We think we have more projects to bring forward like that. I think our capital allocation history is pretty straightforward. We like to reinvest in what we have and make it better and then look for those opportunities to expand in those areas. So I really can't say that both of those would be on the table, but first it's going to be how do we make what we have better And again, if you look at what we've kind of committed to since December, it's not insignificant.
spk02: Okay. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Greg. Good luck in the third quarter. Thanks, Mark.
spk00: There are no further questions at this time, so I will turn the conference back over to Mr. Ferris. Please go ahead.
spk04: Look, thanks, everyone, for joining the call this morning. Thank you, Michelle. As always, Chris Vrosk and I are available to respond to further questions, as is Robert Winslow, our Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Stay safe, and we'll look forward to reporting out on our progress in the next quarter. Thanks, everyone.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today.
spk00: We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.
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