Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc (SCHN) Q1 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman from D.A. Davidson.

Tamara Lundgren, President, CEO
Good morning.

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson
Richard, do you have an approximate dollar impact related to the outage on the quarter at Cascade?

Richard Peach, CFO, SVP
It was about $1 million.

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson
It was about the same last year as well?

Richard Peach, CFO, SVP
Yes.

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson
Okay, great. Then on auto parts, how would you characterize car purchase volumes without the help of these ramping new stores that you talked about?

Richard Peach, CFO, SVP
While car purchase volumes have held up very well in the auto parts business as a consequence of our business model there, our position, and our buying practices. So you can see that year-over-year, we have got this improvement, despite the lower price environment. You are correct to point out that part of it is the ramping up of new stores and the volumes for them, but there’s also, to a lesser extent, some organic improvements in there.

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson
Okay. Then as far as the cost-reduction program, I mean are you considering potential store closures included within that or would that be completely separate from what you announced today?

Tamara Lundgren, President, CEO
That would be separate from what we have announced. We obviously looked at the efficiency and efficacy of all of our operations on a regular basis. But if that were to happen, that would be separate from what we announced.

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson
Okay. Then just lastly, just given where the stock is today, how does share repurchases kind of fit within the capital allocation strategy right now?

Tamara Lundgren, President, CEO
Well, share repurchases and our quarterly dividend are the two main ways in which we deliver consistent returns to our shareholders. So we review that on a regular basis, and we have repurchase authority from the Board.

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson
Okay. Thank you.

Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Lipschitz from CLSA.

David Lipschitz, CLSA
Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon here

Tamara Lundgren, President, CEO
Good morning.

David Lipschitz, CLSA
Question following on from Timna’s question about the selling back into the domestic market. Historically speaking, obviously taking out the anomalies, do you take more on the export business in terms of your margins? So if you had to sell more here going forward as a business, that was the new lay of the land because of what’s going on in Asia and China especially? Would that mean the normalized margins would be lower than they had been in the last, say, 10 years, so to speak?