Ann: Trading Update and Revised FY2019 Guidance, page-7

Certainly the housing market in the US is meant to be as good as it gets ATM, and the market will have been aware of the weather impacts already, I would think. The infrastructure boom in Australia is probably as good as it gets as well. The Aussie housing market is obviously ending a period of great conditions.

RE the infrastructure projects: I suspect that while there is plenty of manpower available for the Aussie infrastructure projects, there is a shortage of talent available. I've dealt with low quality tradies before (personally in my own home), and can attest that the "bottom end" is terrible. You can see impacts of a talent shortage on the SP of some of the resources industry contractors in some areas as well, even Ausdrill which should be strong if correlated to gold.

So these projects will take longer to complete IMO. I know somebody who works on these projects, and he says the productivity is declining, things aren't getting signed off as expected, and he says it is because of unforced errors and lack of professionalism in a lot of the tradies and workers that are now getting work. He says there is even resistance to taking everything needed to complete the days work at the start of they day, some of the (qualified) guys can't seem to read or understand the plans, and divert his and others attention to basic issues. He told me over a year ago that this was already a huge problem, and recently that it is still just the same. In past projects everybody on his team would be reasonably capable apparently.

I think if that is a reasonably accurate appraisal of the local situation, then BLD will not get the pricing they hope for, as capacity will not be stretched, and supply will meet demand. Especially with housing coming off. So I don't think the lack of pessimism locally is necessarily warranted, as per their conference call today.

I'm not saying that the SP should go in any particular direction. I'd probably focus more on what is written down in writing than what was said in today's conf call. We'll eventually find out what the market truly thinks after reflection.