Vulcan Materials Company Earnings Call Nuggets: Pricing and Construction Cycles

Vulcan Materials Company (NYSE:VMC) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Pricing

Kathryn Thompson – Thompson Research Group: Nice job with pricing in the quarter and I wanted to get a better sense of what was mix versus price increases and also given overall improvement in volumes and we see more consistency could you maybe discuss where pricing potentially could go over the next couple of years based on your past experience?

Donald M. James – Chairman and CEO: Kathryn we got some favorable mix but also a lot of just absolute price increases on same products. So a blend of the two to get to 4% we had in the quarter.

Danny R. Shepherd – EVP and COO: Probably three-quarters of the improvement or more was pure price.

Donald M. James – Chairman and CEO: If you look at the history of this industry clearly when there is volume recovery and visibility of future volume recovery there are more opportunities for price improvement and we certainly see that in our guidance for 2013 and certainly as we look beyond 2013, we continue to see opportunities for improved pricing and margin particularly as we continue to get the benefit of our cost initiatives.

Kathryn Thompson – Thompson Research Group: Could you give what are your highest per unit price states for Aggregate product?

Donald M. James – Chairman and CEO: It tends to be Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, California, the lowest price markets tend to be the Midwest.

Kathryn Thompson – Thompson Research Group: So all areas or at least a portion of the areas where you have seen some good strength?

Donald M. James – Chairman and CEO: Yes.