Likewise, we had too many small, far away, uncoordinated locations in the developing world. And we have coordinated and consolidated the oversight of those with a leadership team out of South Africa, and they’ve done an exceptional job. And so now in the Middle East, and Africa, and India, and Southeast Asia, we are approaching the market as RPM, not by products, certainly, it’s all of our products, but in terms of oversight of asset allocation, accounting and finance, IT systems, we’re consolidating more of that under one Group, and we’re having real good benefits. We’re getting the right people in the right places. We’re eliminating redundant costs by — as you’ll recall, at one point, we closed the books in 104 places every month, so we’re addressing that.
And so of all these have had a really positive impact. The last thing I’ll say is, in Europe, we had a pretty strong performance in the quarter. The UK was the first of the major markets that we’re involved in that really went into a recession. And so it feels like there is some spending activity there. I would say continental Europe is not economically doing particularly well. So, most of what you’re seeing there is self-help and the good execution on what I would call a European MAP to Growth initiative with senior leadership on the ground overseeing it.
Michael Harrison: All right. Thanks for that. And then, you guys have done a really nice job managing working capital and obviously, that’s showing up in the cash flow. But as you look across your segments, are your internal inventory levels where they need to be at this point? I’m just kind of trying to think about how we should look at production rates and fixed-cost absorption, particularly in that Specialty business and maybe Consumer, as we’re kind of moving through the seasonally slower period in Q3 and they get into the spring pickup in Q4?
Frank Sullivan: Sure. Thank you. There is more room for us to improve in working capital. It will be incrementally smaller in the coming quarters, because again, as you recall, this time last year, we talked about tackling inventories in particular and the underlying operating efficiencies. And we’ve been doing that very effectively. And there, as I mentioned earlier on the call, we picked up almost 30 days over the last 12 months in our cash conversion cycle, we’ve got another 30 days to pick up. But there is incremental improvement that we will be generating in the coming quarters and the coming years.
Michael Harrison: All right. Thanks very much.
Operator: The next question is from Mike Sison with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Frank Sullivan: Good morning, Michael.
Michael Sison: Hey, guys. Happy New Year. Great. Frank, you mentioned that the Consumer Group could or maybe can see an inflection point in the spring. What do you think — what are you looking forward to see — any indicators, anything you’re looking for to maybe give you confidence that, that could happen?
Frank Sullivan: Sure. I think we need to get into the spring months which is our typical strongest selling season. We introduced the Rust-Oleum five in one and Stop Rust this time last year. We’ve introduced a highly-anticipated new DAP spray product, it’s a — essentially a single component that replaces a prior two component product. So, we’ve got a number of new product areas. We’re also picking up a little bit of lost market share from the prior year. And so, some of it’s going to be some new product placements and others of it is going to be a sense that if the economy picks up a little bit, particularly as it relates to housing turnover, you’ll see improvement in our Consumer and Specialty Products Group. As a reminder, and I think all of you on the call know this, housing turnover, particularly for us, is more an indicator of economic activity than new home construction.
We’re not directly involved in new home construction except in our Specialty Products Group and to a lesser extent at DAP. But when you have housing turnover, a lot of repair and maintenance and a lot of fix-up for people that are selling and then a lot of repair and maintenance and redecorating for the buyers, and that activity has been at multi-decade lows over the last 12 months.
Michael Sison: Got it. And then just a quick follow-up, I apologize if I missed this, what did you think pricing would be in the third and the fourth quarter? And then, there are some sort of news on the home improvement guys, they want to get a lot of the inflation back from their suppliers. So, it sounds like they are pushing for price decreases. How do you sort of handle that in the Consumer Group and are there other ways to really keep some of the pricing that you achieved over the last several years?
Frank Sullivan: Yes. I don’t think about it so much as pricing as I do margin. Some of that goes along with new product introductions, some of it goes along with category management activities that we have at big customers. And quite candidly, some of it is finally recapturing the lost margin during the commodity cycle activity. I don’t — and to your earlier part of the question, I don’t anticipate much in the way of price in Q3 or Q4. The exception might be in a few rare areas like Consumer, I think people are paying attention to what’s happening with this tariff negotiation around tin plate. There is some consolidation there in the industry. It’s a frustrating item. So, there are a couple of areas that we’re paying attention to. Now, whether that drives additional price increases or not, time will tell. But broadly speaking, across RPM, we don’t anticipate much in the way of price in Q3 or Q4.
