西斯柯 (SYY) 2010 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone. Welcome to the SYSCO first quarter fiscal 2010 earnings. As a reminder today's call is being recorded. At this time for opening remarks and introductions I'd like to turn the call over to Mr Neil Russell, Vice President Investor Relations.

Thank you, Robert and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for SYSCO's first quarter 2010 conference call. On today's call you will hear from Bill DeLaney, our Chief Executive Officer, Ken Spitler, our Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer, and Chris Kreidler, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin please note that statements made on the course of this presentation that State the Company's or Managements intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ in a material manner. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ in a material manner from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the Company's SEC filings, including but not limited to risk factors contained in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year-ended June 27, 2009 and in the Company's press release issued earlier this morning. Please understand that all comparisons given during the call refer to changes between the first quarter of fiscal 2010 and the first quarter of fiscal 2009 unless otherwise noted. Also all comments about earnings per share refer to diluted earnings per share unless otherwise noted. Lastly, we have distributed invitations for our Investor Day which will be held on December 14th in New York. If you did not receive an invitation and would like to attend please call my office for more information. With that out of the way I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Bill DeLaney.

Thank you, Neil, and good morning, everyone. Earlier this morning SYSCO reported net earnings of $326 million for the first fiscal quarter of the year. Sales continued to be under pressure declining by 8% due to both lower volumes and the impact of food cost deflation. Despite these challenging conditions, we were able to improve our operating margins to 5.5% as a result of excellent cost control, as well as a benefit from COLI, both of which we will discuss in more detail in a few minutes. At SYSCO, we constantly strive for continuous improvement, by focusing on strengthening our customer relationships and improving productivity in all aspects of our business, we've been able to compete effectively throughout this economic downturn. Most important, we believe we are well positioned for profitable growth when industry conditions begin to improve. Regarding the economy, we are hopeful that some of the promising signs and sentiments that are beginning to materialize will soon result in increased consumer spending. That, together with the moderation of deflation, would be favorable developments for SYSCO. In the interim we are encouraged by the fact that the rate of decline in our case volumes has stabilized in recent weeks. We will continue to closely monitor the macroeconomic outlook and will remain vigilant in our efforts to manage the business responsibly during this period of economic uncertainty. Specifically, we remain committed to exceeding expectations of our customers through our relentless committment to product and service quality, investing in our business to improve productivity, enhance profitability, and grow market share, and maintaining balance sheet strength through strong operating cash flow generation and sound asset management.

Before I turn the call over to Ken, I would like to recognize all of our associates and our management team for their outstanding contributions over the past year. I also want to welcome Chris Kreidler, our new CFO. Chris is an important addition to the team and brings with him extensive food industry and finance experience. You'll hear from Chris later in the call and you'll have an opportunity to get to know him better in the coming weeks and in particular at our Investor Day in December. With that Ken will discuss our operating results for the quarter.

Thanks, Bill. Once again I'm pleased with the operational results we achieved during the quarter. Our operating companies did a great job managing the business during the quarter. Operating expenses were down $132 million or 9.5% compared to the prior year, mainly due to the lower payroll expenses. Our headcount is down 5% year-over-year and 9% over two years as we improve productivity throughout the Company. Expense levels also reflect our paid for performance culture as incentive based compensation continues to be down from the prior year. As a result, our operating margin improved 0.4 points to 5.5%. These results achieved in a tough environment reflect the broad range of capabilities and committment of our operating Companies.

Our sales during the quarter were impacted by deflation of 3.4% which is measured as an estimated change in the cost of products we buy. We weathered similar levels of deflation in the early 2000s and we believe we will manage through these challenges again by continuing to find ways to operate more efficiently. We continue to lead the industry in operational efficiency and I'm pleased with how our Companies continue to perform. For example, in our US broadline Companies, year-over-year, during the first quarter, our diesel gallon usage decreased 2.3%. Cases per trip increased 1% and warehouse cases per man hour improved 5%. However, these numbers only tell part of the story as they each represent improvements on top of improved results from the prior year. For example, over the past two years, comparing the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2008, we improved our error frequency per cases shipped to an error rate of one out of 1700 from an error rate of one out of 1200 cases. Cases per trip increased 3.4% and total sales per employee increased 6%.

Capital Expenditures for the quarter totaled $109 million. Looking ahead we still expect capital spending for the full year to be in the range of $600 million to $650 million as we continue to invest in our business. This spending includes maintenance items such as ongoing fleet replacement and facility repairs and growth items such as expansions of our current facilities and potential foldouts. Our capital spending also includes expenditures related to our ongoing ERP project. As we discussed last quarter, the ERP project is about a lot more than technology. We are taking the opportunity to review many of our processes to find ways to further streamline our operations and grow our business. In the end, the technology is an enabler for what we are designing, which is a business transformation. We have largely completed the design work and we'll provide an update on the project mid December. In closing, I'd like to thank all of our associates for their continued hard work to support our customers and improve our operations. Now, I'll turn it over to Chris for a discussion of our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Ken. Before I summarize the first quarter results, I'd like to say what a privilege it is to join SYSCO. I recognize the long history SYSCO has of delivering impressive financial results to all stakeholders. The balance sheet strength, responsible management of the business, continued innovation, focus on customer service and the quality of the associates at this Company are unmatched and I look forward to being a part of this team.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2010 sales were down 8.1% due primarily to lower volumes, estimated deflation of 3.4% and the impact of foreign exchange rates which reduced sales by 0.5%. These items were partially offset by the impact of acquisitions which increased sales by 0.6%. Net earnings for the quarter increased 17.8% to $326 million. Similarly, EPS for the quarter increased 19.6% to $0.55 per share. The $0.55 per share includes a $0.05 after-tax income benefit related to the IRS settlement and a $0.04 favorable impact related to the increase during the quarter and the cash surrender value of corporate owned life insurance which we refer to as COLI. The $132 million reduction in operating costs that Ken discussed earlier was primarily due to lower payroll expense. The reduction also included a $44 million benefit from the year-over-year change in value related to the performance of COLI.

Income tax expense declined $65 million year-over-year including a $25 million benefit from the reversal of an accrual related to the IRS settlement which the Company announced on August 25th and a $17 million reduction in expense as a result of the change in value related to the performance of COLI. With regards to the tax settlement, we paid $316 million to the IRS during the quarter. The Company will continue to make quarterly payments of $53 million through the fourth quarter of 2012. In spite of the $316 million payment to the IRS, cash flow from operations for the quarter was $46.5 million, a decrease of only $16.9 million from the prior year. The decline was primarily driven by the tax settlement payment partially offset by working capital improvements and lower incentive compensation payments in the current year versus prior year. In closing I'd like to thank everyone at SYSCO for welcoming me to the team and I certainly look forward to interacting with the investment community as we move forward. With that, Operator, we will now take some questions.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) We'll take our first question from Ajay Jain from Hapoalim Securities.

Hi, good morning. Just first on the tax rate if I add back $29 million as the after-tax amount for the IRS adjustment the implied tax rate is around 36% which still seems lower than what I would have expected for a normalized tax rate. Is there anything else driving a lower tax rate apart from the IRS settlement that you can speak to?

Yes, Ajay, we're still in transition so I'm going to fumble through some of this finance stuff for one more quarter. Essentially, it's what you just said plus what Chris was alluding to was the COLI was favorable. It's not taxable, so those are the two key things and if you adjust for those it brings you into that 38% to 39% range.

Okay, and then I also just want to confirm how much bad debt expense was actually recognized on the P&L last quarter. It looks like losses on sale of receivables were down year-over-year. Is that correct?

Yes. It's about $8.5 million I think. It's on the funds flow statement in the earnings release. It's a little bit less than last year. We've had some recoveries and so far we continue to do a nice job managing credit, still cautious in terms of the environment but it's a little bit less than last year.

So the cash flow statement figure is consistent with what you accrued on the P&L?

It's exactly what we put on the P&L.

So do you think you're at an inflection point where credit quality is improving or do you think it's still premature to make that assessment?

I think that one is a little early to call. We pretty consistently said over the last couple years that credit is more of a lagging indicator and again we're pleased with how we're managing it but I don't think we're out of the woods yet on credit.

And just one final question on payroll expense. I think Ken confirmed the figure on the year-over-year decline in headcount, but can you just provide the figure for payroll expense, was all the $130 million in lower operating expense from payroll?

We're going to file the Q tomorrow and there's a number in there. I think it's--

$68 million to $70 million which related to payroll I believe.

It's around 70 and that's a combination of both wages as well as incentive payments.

Do you have any feedback for just over the balance of the year, how much room is there to go on the payroll side without the risk of hurting your street account relationships?

Yes, actually, Ajay, there's still -- again we're shipping cases so a lot of our transportation to warehouse is a 1:1 ratio, however we are beginning to build our salesforce again, so last quarter we added marketing associates.

Okay, thank you.

We'll take our next question from Jason Whitmer from Cleveland Research Company.

Hi, good morning.

Hi, Jay.

Could you provide a little more color or clarity on the case improvement? Is that a sequential volume improvement where you actually see an increase in cases or you mentioned the rate of decline as changing a comparison figure versus last year when maybe the business started to soften up a little bit and maybe the outlook in general where you think some of the better drivers to drive cases going forward might be.

I'll start, Jay, and Ken will jump in here. We've struggled with the exact precision of the language and really all we're trying to say is the rate of the year-over-year decline has flattened out and we're hopeful that it will begin to start moving the other way as the quarter goes along. We're somewhat encouraged. It's still in a very fragile stage of this recovery if that's what we are in the middle of here and the beginning of, so all we're trying to say is our rate of decline has stabilized and we're hopeful it's going to start to move forward, but it's still down year-over-year.

We are seeing some positive movement sequentially and I'd say good enough to start adding MAs again.

And as far as drivers going forward, I guess adding MAs might be helpful, but Bill you said a number of types in the last six months or so you're trying to get back to more sales and core marketing initiatives. Could you talk about further progress on that and whether that's inclusive of finding a business review or business development processor, if anything else you mentioned last quarter about a stimulus program? Where are we at within your ability to drive volume going forward proactively?

Well it's all of the above. You just hit on it, Jay. We're obviously it would help as we said in the I guess as I said in my words it would help to get the consumer back on their feet where our customers were seeing a little bit more growth but in the interim we're staying very close to our customers and we continue not just to do business reviews but we think we're getting better at targeting the right customers and the quality of the reviews are better. The stimulus package was more of an attempt we talked about last quarter to create some enthusiasm out there with our salesforce and with our customers and adding the salespeople, we are beginning to bring salespeople back on over where we were a quarter or two ago is important as well. So those are all of the basics that we do all the time, we're just hopeful that this is a better time to be employing those tactics.

Last question on your own brand, the SYSCO brand. Is there any return of focus on that to drive that business again or to kind of continue to refine that platform and anything that could change the mix shift or margin components of branded versus your own brand versus the national brands?

Jay, this is Ken. Yes, we've just begun a reemphasis of brand, the brand sales and reemphasis in our salesforce and in our sales meetings start driving those numbers back up.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Meredith Adler from Barclays Capital.

Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to just go back to the last question about the stimulus package. There was some discussion on the last call about sort of general environment for discounting which seems to be a little hotter, more aggressive than you've seen in a while. Could you maybe just comment on what you're seeing there and how you feel your response is positioned? Are you doing the right things? Are your customers pleased with that?

Meredith we certainly hope our customers are pleased with it. The stimulus package certainly was an answer to a lot of discounting that has gone on in our competitive landscape. It was well received by our marketing associates and well received by our customers. It was in an effort to just stimulate, so to speak, our customers and help our customers in a lot of areas where there was commodity type items that drive a lot of their food costs, so it was well received. Yes, we think we're doing the right things. Our playbook hasn't changed. We've just got them all in play.

Okay, great, and then I'd like to go back to the question or the answer you just gave about private label and I wasn't sure you said a reemphasis of brand and brand sales. Did you mean your own brand or do you mean national brands?

No, I meant our brand, we're reemphasizing it with our salesforce and our customer base.

And then maybe just a little bit more discussion of the ability to cut expenses, you've done absolutely an extraordinary job and I'll say again congratulations, but you're not yet seeing volumes stabilize. Is there a point here where you just really can't reasonably cut anymore and actually, maybe I should ask the question differently. You've started adding marketing reps. You clearly have confidence that you are going to see a stabilization of volume. How much data do you have to tell you that this is the right timing to start adding the reps?

Well that's a very good question and we are seeing some stabilization. There's a lot of conflicting industry reporting out there whether certain segments of restaurant business is up or down and what we judge of this is by is what's happening to our customer base. We feel like it is stable. We feel that we have an opportunity to start being a little more aggressive in terms of taking more product, more customer share. We manage that salesforce now with the rest of our headcount and that's a big part of our headcount numbers. We feel good about the second half of the year and we are getting ready to, we think that it's our, as industry leader, we think it's our turn to start exerting some pressure on our competitors, being more aggressive.

Great. And my final question would be about deflation. We're certainly going to be cycling the big drops in perishables like dairy and produce. What are you seeing in other parts of the products you sell, meat, maybe any kind of deli or bakery items and what about the packaged stuff, the manufactured stuff you sell? What's happening with pricing in those areas?

Well the meat is down currently and it has been for a while. Poultry is up a little bit, seafood is down. The grocery items are kind of up and down I guess you might say Meredith, so our numbers right now are being driven by the dairy primarily a little bit by produce and meat, so to your point we'll wrap some produce and meat, so to your point we'll wrap some of those numbers on a year-over-year basis. We have Larry Pulliam here today and I'll let him speak to what he's seeing in the commodities.

Let me speak about it in two different ways. One is as we look at the cost that we've paid for goods, it's a lagging indicator. As we look at the commodity reports that we analyze on a weekly and monthly basis, we have seen some firming up on prices, especially in the month of October, we saw our commodity prices firming and we saw last year at this time prices begin to fall fairly rapidly, so our comparisons are better in the month of October. It remains to be seen. We've got to watch our cost of goods as it relates to those commodity prices, but I think the sentiment around here is we feel pretty good about moderation of that inflation number over the next month or two.

Great. Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from John Heinbockel from Goldman Sachs.

A couple of things. Bill, a year ago, when did you see a business begin to fall off a cliff? Was that about now or was that earlier?

It was about a week after (Leman) went down I think it was last September and it fell off and I'd say it hit the log November or December, Ken?

That's about right.

Do you think as we cycle some of those worst months, do you think that naturally gives way to case improvement or not necessarily that we may just stabilize at a lower level for a while.

Well, clearly the comparisons get a little bit easier as we get deeper into the second quarter and the second half of the year, so that should get us back toward that breakeven level. The only hesitance you'll hear in my voice is just like I alluded to a few minutes ago, John, it's still a fairly fragile environment so some weeks are better than others, but the pattern we have seen in recent weeks and the reason you hear a little more optimism in our words here, is this raised decline has stabilized and we're hopeful that we're moving in the right direction. What's not clear is to what extent we'll see growth in the second half of the year, how much.

We think about mid December, of course we benefit from these good comparisons from the bad numbers, but we actually feel like that we can with the work we've done with on expenses, that we can do very well with flat cases and we feel like that we can do enough to start moving the cases in a positive direction in the second half of the year.

Do you have any good way of telling how much share you're picking up? Or are you accelerating faster than, or are you seeing cases stabilize faster than everybody else?

Hard to say.

That's a hard one to call, John. We think we're competing very well as I've said, but we work off the technomics numbers and we'll see where they come in for the year and they tend to revise their numbers, but we certainly think we're holding our own there.

And what's happening with drop size now?

Drop size remains about where it's always been.

So on the one hand restaurants would be ordering less, but you're probably cutting them back and some of them are dropping out, some of the low volume ones are dropping out, so is there stability -- there seems to be stability in that metric.

Yes, I think that's a good way to say it.

Okay, headcount, was that -- how did that compare to last quarter? Was it still down or are we seeing some increase or what?

It's about the same. Or is it down a little bit?

You talking about the delta?

Yes, I know it's down 5% year-over-year but versus the end of the fourth quarter?

I think we were down five or six maybe in the fourth quarter.

No, no, but I meant the end of the fourth quarter versus the end of the first quarter.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It's small, it's still down.

Still down, okay. And then finally, what are we seeing now on the acquisition front and you've talked about expectations are too high. Is that finally fixed itself?

I can't say that. All I can tell you John is we're still talking to some people. The pipeline is not as deep as we would like to see. The expectations is case-by-case, so we had a situation over the last few days where it looks like one of our competitors may have gone out of business in one of our markets and we'll pick up some business, so one way or another we're going after the business. We would like to acquire them and hopefully they will find us, but, like I said, I think we've been saying this to you, we're becoming more proactive, but in the end it takes two people to make a deal work.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Wiltamuth from Morgan Stanley.

Hi, I wanted to focus in a little more on the expense line. You started to see some significant year-over-year cost savings on operating expenses in the third quarter. I'm wondering what you're going to do when you start lapping out of those expense savings, and I guess specifically, is the ERP program something that could help extend the cost cutting?

Well we're going to talk more about the ERP program in December in terms of what the impact of that is short-term and longer term. As far as the comparison second half of the year, they do become more challenging in the third and fourth quarters. I'll let Ken speak to the headcount that type of thing, but there's still room for improvement. I guess there's a lot of dimension returns here at some point, but we still think we can make improvement on the expense side. Ken?

Yes, it gets a little harder when we wrap around the next couple of quarters, but again, we're feeling positive about being able to exert some pressure on our competitors and move the cases forward and at the expense level that we're at right now, we feel like we can do very well there.

So it sounds like, I guess on a basis point situation you could still do better on SG&A if the cases are moving, is that fair?

Yes.

Really to come at your question from both sides, we really need to see some case growth here, second half of the year to improve the expenses.

Okay, thank you very much. I guess we'll hear more on the ERP in December.

Yes, sir.

Our next question comes from Andrew Wolf of BB&T Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning. Follow-up on the last question. You've done a great job getting variable and fixed costs down pretty much at the same rate as volume. So I guess what you're talking about is the leverage, at same volume, it's going to turn up at some point in the future and let's say that's somewhat sooner than later or whatever. Is the operating leverage you're talking about going to come from bringing down -- basically a lower fixed cost structure, because I just can't imagine how you can't in a sense have to add back variable costs almost at the same rate that the volume went up, so would it be normal economics of leveraging a lower fixed cost that you've been able to bring down the cost structure?

Well, you know, we get into these discussions on what's fixed and what's variable, so we would love to have the problem where it comes back so radically that we're up 8% to 10% and all of a sudden you're talking about hiring people, but I think what we're hoping for is a modest level of growth and again Ken can speak to this more than me, but the reality is if you get a little bit of a case pick up we can handle that for the most part with the drivers that we have, with the warehouse people we have and certainly with the other sales support. We would like to see the sales, the MA numbers start to pick up, but we can handle a moderate level of case growth with the folks we have out there today.

That's about the size of it. Actually just a little pick up in case is really greases our system, our system works better with a little pressure on it.

Got it, that clarifies exactly what I wanted to hear about. Gross margin, I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet at least versus my expectations in last quarter was really quite improved, so could you talk a little about that in light of I think you continued the stimulus program in the quarter, SYSCO brand penetrations down, the MA was down not as much as in prior quarters, but what's driving that because it's hard to see what is driving it based on those criteria.

I don't think there's any one thing driving it. Hopefully what comes through in our conferences and these types of calls is we're managing the business very aggressively and at the account level and certainly cost control is a big part of it but we need to be competitive. The environment is extremely competitive out there right now, but our people know they need to make a profit on the sale as well, so it's more of a account by account management opportunity.

I think with our salesforces is pretty good at managing and we'll have, unfortunately, more experience we want managing the deflationary times and inflationary times and the stimulus was not big enough to knock a hole in our margins but just big enough to kind of stimulate some sales activity and again, we're just managing, we spend a lot of time and have spent a lot of time for fear out of that when we started stimulating sales that we did not want margins to go over the waterfall so to speak, so we spent an awful lot of time with our salesforce, managing how to manage those individual margins at the individual customers and I think that's been very successful for us.

The challenge with deflation is not so much the percentages. It's obviously the dollars and so far we've been doing a nice job of continuing to create enough dollar growth to offset the expenses.

Just lastly on the same topic and I appreciate that and it is quite a tribute to you at internal management, what does it say about the external environment? You mentioned competitor, I don't know if it's large one or medium that went bust, does it say anything about the competitive environment that as things are getting tougher and tougher that maybe some folks were competing on price and that's just not practical any longer. Is there anything you can read in that or anecdotally have heard in that regard or is that a too optimistic view on things?

I don't think it's too optimistic. I think some of our smaller competitors have been in this difficult time for some time now and it was a relatively small competitor that went out of business and you'll see that occasionally and we participate in the right way in these orderly shut downs, so where we try to help them salvage something out of their business and so we like to be on the front end of these, that as we categorize them, orderly shut downs, so kind of everybody survives in it, but we anticipate seeing really more of that and I think it's just a difficult time for some of these smaller guys.

Thank you.

Next question comes from John Ivankoe of JPMorgan.

Yes, hi, thanks. Just philosophically, have you considered reinvesting some of your cost savings and maybe even on the gross margin question that was asked previously back into your customer to try to gain market share that might be sticky coming out of this cycle? Is that a lever that you may push going through 2010 especially as you have the income statement and the balance sheet that could handle such an investment?

Well, again, one of the points we try to make is the answer is yes, but we do it on an account by account basis, so we've got 8,000 give or take commission salespeople out there today selling groceries, so where it makes sense, that's what we're doing and where it's in the right thing for the customer and the right thing for SYSCO is what we're doing. What we don't necessarily subscribe to, the stimulus thing was a good thing to create excitement, commodity items like Ken talked about, it really wasn't so large it was going to move the needle on gross profit one way or another, but the point is what we don't do is get into these wholesale promotion type activities which frankly, our experience and I think even other peoples experiences are, that it's a very slippery slope to go down so we certainly reinvest in our business and our customers on an account by account basis.

Basically we do that through the business review process where we know these customers. The real question is what's sticky and we like to invest in the money, invest some of these savings as you say where we know it's going to have a long term sticky effect it's just been our experience over the years that we need to do it wholesale, it doesn't stick.

Okay, fair enough. Unit development in restaurants has proven over time to be a very lagging indicator. Are you seeing any change in the trends in restaurant closures? Is that beginning to stabilize as we head into November?

We don't know if it's stabilized or not. The numbers that we're hearing is around 15,000 to 18,000 closures so far.

I think the one trend we're seeing is we're now seeing a lot of openings, so it's still pretty tough out there.

Thank you guys.

Our next question comes from Greg Badishkanian from Citigroup.

Hi, this is Jeff Hans on for Greg. Just a quick question on the promotional environment in October. Have you seen things intensify there versus kind of what you saw in the first quarter and the fourth quarter, or is it stabilized to a degree?

I think it's very intense. I don't know if it's any worse in October than what it was in the summer and into September, but it's still very competitive.

But it hasn't intensified in any way.

Okay. I think last quarter you mentioned you'd make a decision on the RDC this September or a few months ago. Any update there? Are you going to go forward?

We're in the process of making that decision now and what I can tell you is we're fairly positive about it.

Great. That's all I had.

Thank you.

Next question comes from Robert Cummins of Shields & Company.

Good morning, everybody. I feel as though all my questions have been answered already, but I did have one sort of that ties in with the comments you made before. With your sales down 8%, is it possible to quantify how much of that 8% is simply customers closing up shop and going out of business, that will never be seen again and how much of it is reduced same-store volume for your customers?

Most of it is reduced same-store volume, Bob. There's certainly some of what you mentioned there and there's more in lost business and people going out of business than what we've seen in years gone by, but in terms of what we look at, when you look at penetration that's really where most of the lost business which is at our customer level.

Which is positive because at some point people are going to go back to restaurants again.

Exactly. We track that very closely and certainly the closures aren't off the charts for us.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Bob.

(Operator Instructions) We'll take our next question from Ajay Jain of Hapoalim Securities.

Thanks. Just one final question. I was wondering if you can talk briefly about margin trends by segments because I don't think that's disclosed in the earnings release specifically for the specialty businesses that are grouped together under the all other category. Last year I think margins were down pretty significantly for the all other bucket. Can you comment on what was driving that last year and whether or not there was any improvement in profitability for the specialty businesses in Q1?

Are you talking about operating margins, Ajay?

Yes.

Again, we'll file a Q, so it's not in this quarter earnings release that we're looking at today. What I can say is that I think you'll see good operating leverage in the operating segments but you're going to see sales declines.

Okay, and any color on what was driving the decrease in EBIT margins last year? I think they were down 70 basis points for other.

I can tell you it was COLI. The way that falls out in the segments a lot of the corporate expenses get dropped into that other area I think and I'm going to ask you to follow-up with Neil later because I'm shooting from the hip, but I think it had to have been a corporate type of item that would have impacted it in that way.

Okay, I'll follow-up off line with Neil.

Okay, great.

At this time, there are no further questions and this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day.

Thank you.

Thank you.