And if we do a great job all day, put five of those together, we got a good week and four of those make a good month. And that’s really what this business is. It’s still going to be very competitive, one order at a time and it’s going to be a penny’s business as far as making sure you run your operations as tight as you can.
Chris Moore: All right. I appreciate it. I’ll leave it there. Thanks, guys.
Bret Eckert: Thanks, Chris.
Daniel Jones: Thank you, Chris.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman of D.A Davidson. Please go ahead.
Brent Thielman: Hey, thanks. Obviously outstanding volume this quarter. You’ve had a lot of initiatives the last few years that have enhanced the capacity. I guess, Daniel, is there a way for us to think about capacity utilization as the fourth quarter goes? Is that as good as it can get from a volume perspective or is there still a lot of excess capacity in place right now that you could deliver over and above if the conditions were obviously there?
Daniel Jones: Yeah, the team has done a fantastic — good — I appreciate the question too, Brent, and the call. The team has done a fantastic job of evaluating bottlenecks as the market demand kind of ebbs and flows a little bit from one product category to the other. But also without getting too deep within those product categories, there’s also ups and downs on the demand side. Some of the customization at these data center jobs with the additional AI demand that tacked on quite a bit of an increase in the volume piece at those specific job sites. The team sorted those things out. We built in flexibility and that’s a long answer to your question of we have quite a bit of space left. We are using quite a bit of the equipment super efficiently.
We designed it to stop and start and to react and kind of have a build to ship model because again a lot of this demand is one off custom type specific products with the core being aluminum and copper balls, more copper than aluminum. And as Bret mentioned, it moves constantly, but we’ve built this place on speed and agility over the years and grown with it. I’m never comfortable taking an order that we can’t ship, but that’s a comma, not a period, why can’t we ship it? So we’re constantly addressing the capacity question. I’d rather have the equipment come in and sit and use it when we need it, rather than coming up short and missing that service mark. As you know, you heard the story enough, but we’ve got plenty of space on the capacity side to continue to grow in those categories that we mentioned earlier in the prepared remarks.
Brent Thielman: Okay. If I could just sneak one more in, sorry. Daniel, how would you evaluate sort of spreads and pricing through the course of the quarter just from the standpoint that you did ultimately see some volatility in copper prices through the quarter? Any — even qualitative comments you can offer in terms of how yourselves and the industry have reacted to that?
Daniel Jones: Yeah, very fortunate in the quarter for the most part. The low for copper in the quarter on COMEX was pretty early on in October, around 350 something — 354-ish, I think it was. And then it grew in November and it increased a little bit more in December, which is a good rhythm to have going into the end of the year. There was about a $0.40 per pound increase from the low in the quarter to the high. With that type of volatility, which is significant, I’m glad that you brought it up. As long as the timing meets the end of the month and the start of the next month and it flows from low to high through the quarter, we’re able to have success with price increases in the market. And again the timing of being able to turn the inventory every month, if you will, maybe every 3.5 weeks today, allows us that flexibility and then when we have that agility to take in those ebbs and flows and the ups and the downs and the special orders that come in and still be able to ship the way that we ship through the quarter, we’re able to sustain, if you will, that spread rather than reacting to maybe a competitor’s idea of attracting attention by cutting the price.
I know I’m not supposed to go too deep into price and I can see on the list, on the screen, we’ve got most of our competitors on here, so I should probably just leave it at that.
Brent Thielman: Fair enough. Thank you, guys. I’ll get back in queue.
Bret Eckert: Thanks, Brent.
Daniel Jones: Thank you, Brent. Appreciate the help.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alfred Funai of Barga LLC. Please go ahead.
Alfred Funai: Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for this call this morning. You’ve noted that the cross-link polyethylene compounding facility was substantially completed in the Q3. And then now it’s moved into a startup and optimization phase. Can you share your expectations for 2024 in terms of potential cost savings or other benefits that will be coming from this new facility?
Bret Eckert: Yeah, Alfred, that’s smart. I appreciate the question. This is Bret. It did — we completed the facility at the end of the third quarter. You then move right into, like you said, kind of commissioning and startup. And that’s the process, right? It’s a process and you’re still utilizing some of your purchased cross-link polymer as you get the facility up and running. And then once you get it fully up and running, the optimization phase comes in. And I’ve talked a little bit about that, right. Not — right now, it’s a one size fits all, but not every one of our XLPE insulated products are going to require like a fire retardant, for instance. And so as you start to optimize, you can create different grades of XLPE to make sure you’re not putting in something within that that’s not necessary or called for and that’s not inexpensive and that’s the optimization piece.
