A8 The BulleTin • Friday, July 30, 2021
Lumber companies post record profits
cluding West Fraser Timber
Co. Ltd., Canfor Corp. and
Weyerhaeuser Co. have been
swimming in cash during
the last year due to an unex-
pected boom in homebuilding
and renovations that caused
wood prices to quadruple
in 12 months and hit record
highs in May. That will result
in “the mother of all quarterly
returns with record profitabil-
ity” and revenues that exceed
first-quarter results, said Greg
Kuta of Westline Capital Strat-
egies Inc.
Lumber prices have since
cooled along with a decline in
DIY renovations, prompting
analysts to anticipate lower
quarterly earnings ahead for
the producers. The impact of
lower lumber prices and re-
duced renovations won’t be
felt until the third quarter, said
Kuta, whose Ohio-based firm
specializes in lumber-trading
strategies.
West Fraser, the world’s big-
gest lumber producer, kicked
off the second-quarter earn-
ings season for the industry on
Wednesday, reporting earn-
ings that beat analyst estimates.
Montreal-based Resolute For-
est Products Inc. on Thursday
also posted better-than-ex-
pected net profit and sales.
“With benchmark prices
reaching record highs in May
and our best-ever quarterly
shipments, we used the excep-
tional cash generation from
our wood products segment
to make lasting changes to
our business,” Resolute’s Chief
Executive Officer Remi G.
Lalonde said in a statement.
Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser
will report on Friday.
acquiring other vacation man-
agement businesses — some of
them large, and others tiny out-
fits run by families in commu-
nities popular among tourists.
In Central Oregon, Vacasa
bought vacation rental manage-
ment company Discover Sun-
river in 2016 and Carefree Va-
cation Rentals, which handled
vacation rentals around Eagle
Crest, in 2015.
Vacasa has sometimes faced
accusations of strong-arming
smaller competitors, including
a lawsuit last spring alleging it
waged a “smear campaign” to
win renters away from a rival
management firm.
The company’s technology
tracks rental bookings in its
markets and dynamically ad-
justs prices to reflect demand.
Vacasa claims that boosts rev-
enue for the property owners
who list with it, though it may
also have the effect of driving
up the cost of getaways for those
who rent vacation homes.
Breon, 42, ran Vacasa for a
decade but stepped down last
year. He still lives in the Port-
land area. Vacasa made Roberts
— previously CEO of online
restaurant reservation company
OpenTable — its new chief.
Vacasa employs 6,500, most
of whom work in vacation com-
munities to maintain rental
properties between guests, and
400 in Portland. Its Pearl Dis-
trict headquarters reopened this
week for employees who choose
to return voluntarily.
Both Roberts and Vacasa’s
chief financial officer, Jamie Co-
hen, live in California. Roberts
said Thursday that Vacasa is a
distinctly Oregon company, but
he said its workforce will re-
main distributed after the pan-
demic.
“Things are more remote
than they’ve ever been,” he said.
“We’re not unusual in that. That
trend is well established now
across a ton of different com-
panies.”
Vacasa disclosed its finan-
cial results for the first time on
Thursday in conjunction with
its pending public offering, re-
porting $492 million in revenue
last year and a $92 million loss.
It’s typical for young,
fast-growing companies to lose
money while they’re investing
in their growth, but investors
will be watching carefully to en-
sure Vacasa has a path to prof-
itability.
Vacasa had $290 million in
cash at the end of March, ac-
cording to the financial filings,
and $458 million in long-term
debt.
On Thursday, Roberts said
Vacasa is spending aggressively
to bring new properties into its
management portfolio. That
spending will continue indef-
initely, he said, but Vacasa an-
ticipates the contribution from
each new property will soon
overtake the money going out
the door. Roberts said the com-
pany expects to be profitable by
one measure of its cash flow in
2023.
Vacasa will list its stock
through a mechanism called
a special purpose acquisition
company, or SPAC. Vacasa will
absorb the stock listing of the
TPG investment fund, which is
already trading on Wall Street.
It’s become a fashionable way to
facilitate stock listings as an al-
ternative to a traditional IPO.
Vacasa said Breon and other
major shareholders, which in-
clude six large investment firms,
will retain their shares in the
Thursday’s deal. They will col-
lectively own 88% of the com-
pany after the transaction.
The Portland company said
it hasn’t determined which ex-
change will list the stock. It
plans to complete the transac-
tion sometime this fall.
cinated included:
• “The jab is a psychotic
global attempt to fulfill a de-
population agenda,” wrote one
Crook County resident.
• “This is not a vaccine,”
wrote a Deschutes County resi-
dent. “It is an experimental gene
therapy drug. I chose not to be a
guinea pig.”
• Another Crook County
resident said he had survived
severe acute respiratory syn-
drome in 2003.
As of Thursday, the Oregon
Health Authority reported that
130,981 people have been fully
vaccinated or are in progress in
Crook, Deschutes and Jeffer-
son counties. That translates to
about 59% of the population
who are 18 and older in the
three Central Oregon counties,
according to the OHA data.
“Oregonians who remain
unvaccinated share the same
reasons as being the most in-
fluential in their decision not to
get vaccinated: Long- and short-
term side effects and the con-
cerns that the vaccine was de-
veloped too quickly,” Vogel said.
The survey conducted July
9-14 of 1,464 residents has a
margin of error for the full sam-
ple ranging from plus or minus
1.5% to plus or minus 2.6%, de-
pending on the response cate-
gory for any given question.
The Oregon Values and
Voices project, a nonpartisan
charitable organization, has
partnered with Pamplin Media
Group, EO Media Group and
the Oregon Values and Beliefs
Center. EO Media Group owns
newspapers in Oregon and
Washington state, including
The Bulletin.
BY MARCY NICHOLSON
Bloomberg
North American lumber
producers are expected to post
another quarter of record prof-
its this week, but most atten-
tion will be on the outlook,
with prices for wood products
stumbling and do-it-yourself
renovations slowing.
Producers are building and
expanding sawmills in the
southern U.S., where costs
are low and timber is plenti-
ful, while boosting output on
expectations that the surge in
homebuilding will continue.
Some analysts warn that an
oversupply may be building up,
even with bottlenecks and sup-
ply constraints in British Co-
lumbia, Canada’s biggest lum-
ber exporter to the U.S.
“We need to see some more
supply cuts to re-balance in-
ventories and turn prices
around,” said Mark Wilde, a
timber and wood products an-
alyst at BMO Capital Markets.
Lumber companies in-
Vacasa
Continued from A7
At $4.5 billion, Vacasa would
be Oregon’s fifth most-valuable
business, ahead of Portland
General Electric, Umpqua Bank
and NW Natural.
Vacasa manages vacation
rentals, listing owners’ prop-
erties online and performing
cleaning and maintenance. It
has more than 30,000 listings
in 400 communities around
the country, from Manzanita to
Myrtle Beach.
The company, which had
already raised about $630 mil-
lion through prior investments,
will receive $485 million in new
funding through its public of-
fering.
“It’s all about pace of play,”
CEO Matt Roberts said in an
interview Thursday. He said
the new funding will enable the
company to substantially boost
its spending on technology
and on adding properties to its
management service.
“We’re going to be able to
move against a long list of ideas
we have to improve the business
at a faster pace,” Roberts said.
Founded in 2009 by Portland
business analyst Eric Breon,
Vacasa has grown rapidly by
Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg
Logs stacked at the Groupe Crete Inc. sawmill in Chertsey, Quebec, in 2018.
Ted S. Warren/AP file
A worker stands near a lift June 29 as he works on a future Sound Tran-
sit light rail station near Federal Way, Washington, south of Seattle.
Heat
Continued from A7
The emergency rules re-
quire employers to provide
sufficient water and shade
to workers, grant workers
10-minute breaks every two
hours once temperatures
reach 90 degrees, monitor em-
ployees for signs of heat-re-
lated illnesses and conduct
adequate training by Aug. 1 to
provide employees and man-
agers with information about
heat-related illnesses.
Oregon OSHA will reas-
sign inspectors and approve
overtime to ensure that more
enforcement officers are in
the field on hot days, with a
particular emphasis on en-
forcing safety in agriculture
and construction, said Aaron
Corvin, a spokesperson for
the agency.
Oregon OSHA is also of-
fering employers free con-
sultations and educational
resources to help them com-
ply with the rules, Corvin
said. The agency sent out an
announcement Wednesday
reminding employers of the
regulations.
Ira Cuello-Martinez, the
climate policy associate for
PCUN, Oregon’s largest
farmworkers union, said he
is hopeful the new rules will
help to better protect workers
during hot days this summer,
but said workers need the
freedom to take even more
frequent breaks than the state
is mandating once tempera-
tures reach 100 degrees.
Oregon OSHA said it does
not have the legal right to
mandate that employers shut
down operations. Liz Merah,
a spokesperson for Gov. Kate
Brown, said state lawmakers
would need to grant Oregon
OSHA that authority.
At the same time, workers
have little recourse if they feel
unsafe working in extreme
heat. In many cases, employ-
ees can legally be fired for not
showing up to work in ex-
treme heat, unless they qual-
ify for protected leave under
Oregon’s sick leave law or rea-
sonable accommodation un-
der Oregon’s disability laws,
said Cristin Casey, chief pros-
ecutor for the Oregon Bureau
of Labor and Industries.
Oregon OSHA received
109 complaints about unsafe
working conditions due to
heat from June 24 to June 30,
before the emergency rules
were in place, according to
an analysis of Oregon OSHA
data. The agency received ad-
ditional complaints in July.
It has conducted 63 in-
spections in response to the
heat-related complaints. Cor-
vin said the agency has opted
to resolve other complaints
by contacting employers by
letter or phone, but could
conduct additional inspec-
tions if it isn’t satisfied with
an employer’s response or it
learns that an employer has
not addressed concerns.
OBITUARY
Michael Lawrence Lovely
April 23, 1938 - July 2, 2021
Survey
Continued from A7
“In Oregon, as in most other
states, vaccination has become a
politically polarized issue,” said
Amaury Vogel, Oregon Values
and Beliefs Center associate
executive director. “Political
ideology when it comes to so-
cial issues, is a strong predictor
of whether or not a person has
received at least one dose of a
COVID-19 vaccine.”
Some of the responses to the
survey of why Central Oregon
people would not become vac-
e
Reporter: 541-633-2117,
sroig@bendbulletin.com
It is on a sad and somber occasion that I announce that
my partner in life, Michael Lawrence Lovely, has passed
away.
I come before you today to pay homage to an incredible
man that was a gentleman and a scholar. A man that
took community involvement to the highest degree.
The numbers of groups that he acti vely was a part of, I
can only guess were none less than a dozen. Mike was a
man that rarely ever missed a Sunday church service and
loved God dearly.
Mike was my wish come true. God bless you, Mike. You
are home now, with all of your family in heaven, working
in God’s garden.
In that, I know what a bounti ful harvest there will be.
“Bringing in the sheath, bringing in the sheath, we will
come rejoicing, bringing in the sheath.”
Masks
Continued from A7
For many stores looking to
generate sales in an overall re-
tail sales slump last year, masks
were a bright spot. Most nota-
bly, Gap, along with its port-
folio of brands including Old
Navy and Athleta, as well as
Etsy made millions of dollars
on masks.
Etsy, a global online market-
place for handmade goods, has
seen its masks go from 14% of
gross merchandise sales in the
second quarter of 2020 to less
than 3% in the first quarter of
2021. The company declined to
comment on mask sales trends
on Wednesday, noting it’s in its
quiet period ahead of its earn-
ings release next week.
Since the onset of the pan-
demic, 3M Co. increased its
annual production of N95
masks fourfold to 2.5 billion by
building extra capacity. It said
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that global demand reached its
peak in the first quarter of this
year, which included stock-
piling from governments and
hospitals. It’s now seeing a de-
celeration in overall health care
demand and is adjusting pro-
duction, increasing supply to
industrial and consumer out-
lets while continuing to prior-
itize health care workers in the
geographies seeing increased
COVID-19 cases and elevated
hospitalization rates.
But 3M CEO Mike Roman
told analysts on Tuesday that,
just like in the past, it is “pre-
pared to increase production
in response to COVID-19-re-
lated needs or future emergen-
cies when needed.”
Honeywell International
Inc., another big manufacturer
of N95 masks, said it “contin-
ues to produce N95 masks in
the U.S. to meet the needs of
front-line and essential work-
ers.”
Located in Downtown Bend
is Central Oregon’s foremost wine
bar/shop. It features:
Wine by the glass,
Premium selection of wine,
Champagne, Ports and sake,
Bottles to go,
On-line ordering & shipping,
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Tues-Thurs 11-6:30
Fri/Sat 12-8
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The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the
name of the Lord. Amen.
Michael Lawrence Lovely, born the 23rd of April 1938,
made his fi nal journey on the 2nd of July 2021.
I have been incredibly blessed that Mike and I have
shared in a loving relati onship that spanned just two-
and one-half months shy, of thirty years of togetherness.
I was the one that was blessed in the presence of Mike.
The Lord has called Mike’s name and Mike has returned
to heaven.
“To be absent in the body, is to be present in the
Lord”......and you, my precious Mike, have returned to
your mother, father, and your two brothers, Patrick, and
litt le Moe.
Mike, I see you dawning a white robe, a golden halo, and
a melodic harp.
You left an indelible mark on all of us. We love you. You
my sweeti e, are not only loved by this community, but
you are also loved by your Kelly.
Mike could never wait for me to come through our front
door and be able to give love and receive love in return.
You are my beloved and for almost thirty years we shared
in a warm, loving, kind, relati onship and ALL that is noble
in the human heart.
“Jesus, our wonderful counselor and Holy one.”
Gathering of friends for Mike will be held Friday July 30,
2021, from 9:00am-10:00pm. Shevlin Park in Aspen Hall
18920 NW Shevlin Park Rd, Bend, OR 97701. Memorial
Service with Military Honors 2:00pm