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UPDATE 2-Weak wood markets push Canfor to loss
(Updates with interim CEO named)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 4 (Reuters) - Canfor Corp. (CFP.TO) reported a loss for the first quarter on Friday as a sharp decline in lumber and oriented strandboard markets hurt the forest-products company's sales.
Canfor said it had a net loss of C$42.7 million ($38.5 million), or 30 Canadian cents a share, in the quarter. That compared with net income of C$18.9 million, or 13 Canadian cents a share, in the same period a year earlier.
Sales were C$850.6 million, down from C$962.7 million.
Reduced U.S. demand for solid wood products continued in the quarter due to a weak U.S. housing market, the company said. Canfor sells 70 percent of its production in the United States.
"This past year has introduced challenges for North American lumber producers. We all knew that the ever-increasing volume of new housing starts in the U.S. couldn't last and indeed it didn't," Chief Executive Jim Shepherd told Canfor's annual meeting in Vancouver on Friday.
It was Shepherd's last day at the helm of North America's third-largest softwood lumber producer. He announced he would leave last month after a group of major shareholders said they were opposing a poison pill plan and would unite behind a new slate of board members.
The poison pill was defeated 75.2 percent to 24.8 percent in a shareholders' vote.
The company's first-quarter results included C$3 million in costs associated with Shepherd's resignation. He took over as CEO in 2004 after Canfor's merger with Slocan Forest Products.
The company said after the meeting they had named James Shepard as interim CEO and launched a search for a permanent replacement. Shepard, who was elected to Canfor's board on Friday, is a former CEO at heavy equipment retailer Finning International.
Canfor said its first-quarter operating loss of C$57.8 million was well below the operating income of C$38.5 million posted a year earlier because a decline in lumber and OSB markets was only partly offset by higher pulp prices.
($1=$1.11 Canadian)
