July 2008

Huttig Building Products, Inc., St. Louis, MO, a domestic distributor of millwork, building materials and wood products, reported a net loss of $2.5 million for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008. Huttig reported a profit of $1.1 million for the same quarter 2007. Sales were $195.4 million in the second quarter, a decline of 18% from the same period a year ago.
 
Sales continued to be impacted by the persistent weakness in the new housing starts.
 
In this challenging environment, we continue to focus on controlling expenses, improving operating efficiencies, reducing inventories, generating cash, and gaining market share,” said Jon Vrabely, president and CEO. “Our 2008 second quarter sales decline of 18%, year-over-year, is well below the 30% decline in housing …

BlueLinx Holdings Inc., Atlanta, GA, a distributor of building products in North America, reported sales for the second quarter ended June 28, 2008, were $835 million, a decline of 22.9% from the same period a year ago. Profit totaled $6.6 million, an increase of 22.2% over second quarter 2007.
 
The decline in revenue reflects a 26% drop in structural product sales and a 20% sales decline in specialty product sales from the year ago period.
 
For the six months ended June 28, 2008, BlueLinx reported a net loss of $4 million on revenues of $1.55 billion, compared with profit of $5.2 million on revenues of $2.04 billion a year ago.
 
While we are pleased with our results, we expect the current housing market downturn to continue through 2009,” said Howard …

San Francisco, CA-based Building Materials Holding Corp. announced it is out of compliance with financial covenants under its current credit facility, based on preliminary evaluation of its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008.
 
The company has been in discussions with lenders to address the default and prevent disruption to business operations. BMHC expects it will reach an agreement on a temporary waiver of covenants to preserve liquidity and an amendment to the credit facility that will better reflect current market conditions.
 
Continuing weakness in the residential housing market has troubled the provider of building materials and construction services for the past year, leading to facility closures in California and Arizona. Employee …

A. M. Castle &Co., Franklin Park, IL, a distributor of specialty metals and plastic products, reported sales for second quarter ended June 30, 2008, were $397.1 million, an increase of 6.6% from second quarter 2007. Profit was $11.3 million, down 30.7% from the prior year.
 
Overall demand in our key strategic end-markets remained solid during the second quarter of 2008,”said Michael Goldberg, president and CEO of A. M. Castle. “In particular, we saw continued healthy demand from our heavy equipment and oil and gas end-markets, and when combined with increasing tons sold per day and higher prices for certain products, we experienced solid revenue growth compared to the prior year. However, significant material cost increases for carbon products pressured our margins resulting …