But when you kind of step outside of the end market expectations, we’ll continue to focus on operational excellence and cost control. And we’ll continue to benefit from a price mix benefit being a bigger offset than the cost increase, similar to kind of what we’ve seen in the second quarter and the third quarter. So hopefully, that gives you a little bit of color.
Corinne Blanchard: All right. Thank you, that’s helpful. And then maybe the follow-up question on Muscle Shoals. You’re still having some operational challenges. When do you expect that to turn around?
Jean-Marc Germain: Yes, Corinne. So we talked about – we’ve been talking about it for a year, and we said it would take a good year and that’s where we are. So we are pleased with some progress we’ve made. We still have more to do, but we think we’re going to see improved performance and improved financials going into 2024.
Corinne Blanchard: All right. Thank you.
Jean-Marc Germain: And specifically, one of the big issues we have was labor and the labor situation has greatly improved in terms of our ability to attract and retain talent and be able to train them so that their – the performance of our workforce overall, this experience gets better. So I look at 2024 with quite a bit of optimism.
Corinne Blanchard: Great. Thank you. That’s it for me.
Jean-Marc Germain: Thank you, Corinne.
Operator: And the next question goes to Josh Sullivan of The Benchmark Company. Josh, please go ahead, your line is open.
Josh Sullivan: Hi, good morning.
Jean-Marc Germain: Good morning, Josh.
Josh Sullivan: Just on the aerospace side, I know you talked – on the aerospace side, you talked about 9 months to 2-year lead times. Any sense of building aluminum inventories ahead of rate increases. Historically, we’d see aerospace OEMs build the supply chain and look to the build rate. You did mention some comments there about the supply chain in ’24. But any inventory dynamics around aerospace, we should think about heading into ’24?
Jean-Marc Germain: I don’t think so, Josh. If you look at what happened in the downturn of COVID, I mean, the build rates went down maybe 30%, and our shipments were down – went down 50% on a quite sustainable basis. So I think we’re just seeing the inventories being replenished in line with what is needed for the supply chain to operate. So I wouldn’t call it is restocking, but it is still restocking to levels that are not comfortable enough for the supply chain overall, if that makes sense.
Josh Sullivan: Yes, that does. And then one on the automotive side, just the BlueOval facility, the new EV F-150 product, any reason to think that steel could make some inroads versus aluminum? Or what do you see at BlueOval as it comes together that encourages more aluminum dominance going forward?
Jean-Marc Germain: I don’t want to comment on specific programs, but we see that overall, there is still a need for lightweighting and the bigger the vehicle is the more critical it is to lightweight that vehicle. That’s where you get the benefits and where you can afford the benefits of it because the price of the vehicle is such that you want to get good overall performance for that vehicle.
Josh Sullivan: Got it. And then just one last one, on the European industrial outlook. Any particular markets which are weaker or stronger than others?
Jean-Marc Germain: So they’re quite weak, all of them, except for the defense market. And we’re seeing building and construction is slowing down greatly. I mean you have seen some of our competitors or peers reporting very significant declines in European activity. Germany is not doing very well. France is doing a bit better, but the overall sentiment is reasonably gloomy. It’s all factored in our guidance. We were expecting this anyway. So it’s not that it’s getting worse than what we thought early in the year, we’ve been quite prudent about it, but it – and we are not forecasting an improvement in 2024 or 2025, right? So our renewed guidance doesn’t rest on hope that the European markets improve.
