Bruce W. Wilkinson: There is about $4 million of that which relates to traditional environmental products. There is $3.5 million to $4 million that relates to advancing the state-of-the-art on ultra supercritical, the higher temperature pulverized coal technologies, and then about equal amounts of oxy-fuel type of that work and other and then CO2 scrubbing technologies, that are not a free combustion technology like oxy but post combustion.
Michael S. Taff: That excludes the amount we are investing from a capital standpoint, and we have invested a significant amount in our new R&D center there in 2007, and we have got about $10 million of additional capitalized amounts approved for 2008. We are investing a lot of money in this endeavor over the next several years.
Brad Handler (Wachovia Capital): Can you give an update on CO2 and your evaluations and discussions with AEP?
Bruce W. Wilkinson: On the oxy-fuel, we have this 30 megawatt test unit up in Northeastern Ohio, so, we have run significant amount of bituminous coal through that testing and absolutely proved our satisfaction at the oxy concept work. The next step is working with Air Lockheed to jointly optimize a designed to bring down the cost of air separation, air handling units. In other words work hand gloved optimized design and then here when the spring fall comes, we are going to go back into testing both Powder River Basin and lignite fuels in the same unit. We believe we will be successful there, and then further out what we would then want to do is find a host of futility and we think we have a number of them who would like to do this and go to a 100 megawatt to 300 megawatt range demonstration unit at a utility site, so that is ongoing. We have committed another nearly $10 million of capital to a so-called re-generable solvent absorption technology, pilot plant, that is going to be built and co-located at the R&D facility there in Barberton, wherein we will evaluate lots of these aiming scrubbing technologies.
Brad Handler (Wachovia Capital): Can you calibrate the expense reduction, thanks to fund the additional pension funding that happened in 2007 versus 2006?
Michael S. Taff: The biggest piece related to the expense versus 2006 and 2007 was return on our assets. We had favorable returns on the assets for the year. There are a number of different factors that factors into that. The largest piece of our expense is amortizing of prior year losses, just as required by the accounting standards. That number continues to go down. In 2008, we are estimating another 10% to 15% reduction in that amount and we have got other plans to that we are looking at to address this situation on a go forward basis.
Brad Handler (Wachovia Capital): What was construction vessel utilization in the fourth quarter, non-including Sikhanda?
Michael S. Taff: 117% of our standard.
Bruce W. Wilkinson: I think of 2008 as being more booked and more utilized than 2007.
Jamie Cook (Credit Suisse): On the J. Ray order outlook, you mentioned over a $1 billion of awards in the next 90 days. I have not seen an award of over $1 billion in a while from J. Ray. Do you look at that as taking away from other quarter?
Bruce W. Wilkinson: I do not recall that we have ever gotten or announced a $1 billion single award. We may have incrementally gotten there, for instance we have talked about the Saudi long-term agreement and I think you have seen increments of 500 million kind of range. If you look back fourth to quarter there was only about $600 million. There was kind of a low; it would appear that the first two quarters of 2008 are going to be the opposite of that low. They are significant, we are talking projects that all are north of $500 million in and of each, so as well as several that are call it $250 million to $400 million. The other thing is that what seems to happen is they start out at one size and then they tend to creep and grow and have changed orders. Looking back at some of these, they get to be much larger than initially thought.
Jamie Cook (Credit Suisse): Are you starting to see the benefits from the Sikhanda acquisition and that you can bid on more jobs and begin to utilize those assets?
Bruce W. Wilkinson: With regard to Sikhanda, I am pleased. We are tickled with that acquisition because right now we have four of the vessels work in Asia. All the capital and dry-dock has been behind us. We have the Agile already in the Mid East, I believe the Ryan Lite is also in the Mid East. The four major vessels that the DP2 the bigger ones are ahead of schedule as far as being integrated into the J. Ray fleet and operating in the J. Ray value added service mode with the others still being on the charter business. There is no question there, implementers of projects, I think will have as many as four of them permanently in either Asia or the Mid East by the end of this coming year. Whenever this deepwater operation in the Gulf of Mexico starts, we would expect to keep probably two of them here in the Gulf to facilitate and implement part of our sub sea strategy here in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jamie Cook (Credit Suisse): Could you give a scenario over the next three years why you would not see your bottom line earnings grow at least in the 20% range?
Bruce W. Wilkinson: We have recently completed a five-year strategic planning effort and outlook for the company. Some things remain a constant, a belief that the offshore upstream sector will stay strong, I believe that we are going to have to survive on natural gas for power generation in this country and meaning more LNG activity which is good for J. Ray. The hardest coal building market in history has been going on in China, we think it will also begin in India.
Joe Gibney (CapitalOne Southcoast): How Altamira is working out, is it executing to your content right now and what is the outlook overall and the tendering activity with PEMEX?
Bruce W. Wilkinson: We are beginning that first project. We begin as we call it cutting steel soon. We have put together a top-notch team of veteran J. Ray people plus Mexican nationals who have proved themselves in comparable facilities in Mexico. The first one, that project and the other ones that we are bidding at first would be modest projects by J. Ray scale there, it is all about getting on the playing field and performing, not just being ready and hoping that the first one is too big. I am optimistic about Mexico, when we talk about the Gulf of Mexico, and the deep water I think both the Mexican sector and the U.S. sector. The difference is that for the U.S. market it is mainly about the deepwater. In Mexico, since they are so far behind us, there are still several years of more traditional work. The probabilities of Altamira winning more projects is good and doing that traditional work because there is some of that going on for PEMEX, where as the so called traditional work on the topsides work that would done at Morgan City does have a larger scale and still waiting on the bigger project. In many ways they have a year and a half or so of performing and seeing how we are doing and hitting our stride on smaller projects in Altamira.
Joe Gibney (CapitalOne Southcoast): Could you give an update on potential timing on some upcoming site management awards, what is the visibility there and some expectations there on the U.K. side?
Bruce W. Wilkinson: We have a strong competition, Sellafield and we believe 2009 midsummer is a good projection. We have a list of every DOE and NNSA site, and we are chasing a number of them.
Stephen Gengaro (Jefferies & Company): As you get busier, do you think the overhead absorption which works in your favor trumps the potential and efficiencies of being so busy? |