Titan Machinery Inc (TITN) 2007 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Titan Machinery, Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2007 Financial Results Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation the conference will be open for questions.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS)

This conference is being recorded today, April the 28th, 2008. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Mills. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Titan Machinery's conference call. On the call today from the Company are David Meyer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Peter Christianson, President and Chief Financial Officer.

By now everyone should have access to the fourth quarter and full-year earnings release for the period ended January 31, 2008, which went out this afternoon at approximately 4 p.m. Eastern Time. If you have not received the release, it is available on the Investor Relations portion of Titan's website at titanmachinery.com. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on the Company's website as well.

Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that the prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions.

These statements do not guarantee future performance and therefore undue reliance should not be placed on them. These statements are based on current expectations of management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the Risk Factors section of Titan's 10-K, which was filed this afternoon. These Risk Factors contain a more detailed discussion of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Titan assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking projections that may be made in today's release or call.

And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to the Company's Chairman and CEO, Mr. David Meyer.

Thank you, John. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our fourth quarter call. On today's call I will provide some highlights of our fourth quarter results, a general update on our business, and review our growth strategy and opportunities. Then, Peter will review the financial results of the quarter and full-year in more detail and provide a full-year guidance for fiscal 2009. I will then provide some closing remarks and we'll open up the call to take your questions.

I'm very pleased to report strong fourth quarter and full-year results for Titan Machinery. Revenue for the fourth quarter came in at the upper end of our guidance range and increased 61% to $135 million compared to the same period last year, reflecting solid organic growth and growth through acquisitions. And our fourth quarter operating income increased 65% to $6 million.

For the full-year, our revenue increased 48% to $433 million and our operating income for the year increased 68% to $19 million. Each of our main revenue sources, equipment, parts and services, had double-digit gains contributing to the strong revenue and profit increase for both the quarter and full-year.

As most of you are aware, we are benefiting from a strong egg economy. Commodity prices are substantially higher than a year ago. USDA on stock reports, 2008 planning retention reports, and 2008-2009 total use estimates indicate the potential for 2008 new crop carryover at very tight levels. These tight commodity supplies, combined with the increased crop demand from renewable fuels in developing countries, bode well for not only a 2008 crop-pricing year, but prices well into the foreseeable future.

It is interesting to note that pricing levels of crops marketed by our growers and customers at last year's 2007 growing season reflected forward contracts put in place at significantly lower full-year 2006 and spring of 2007 pricing levels.

Very strong future contract prices in fourth quarter 2007 through current levels indicate much higher pricing potential for the 2008 crop. In other words, growers did not receive the entire favorable impact of fourth quarter 2007 crop pricing for their 2007 crop due to early selling in the 2000 year and forward contracting of the 2007 crop at lower 2006 and prior year prices. Pricing opportunities look much more favorable for 2008 crops than any time in history. Barring a weather disaster, our customers are positioned for another record year in 2008.

Strong commodity fundamentals, income from sales of 2000 crop sales deferred into 2008, and the positive tax impact for 2008 equipment purchases from the recently enacted Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 creates a very attractive climate for selling new and used farm equipment in this current year of 2008.

To say the least, the farm economy is extremely robust. To give you an eye level perspective, we are in the early stages of a paradigm shift in agriculture. While we are seeing unprecedented revenue for our grower customers, income costs have also risen dramatically. These high input costs reinforce the importance of purchasing the latest technology and productivities to maximize yields and cost efficiencies.

A long-term future for sustainable farm equipment demand has never been brighter. In addition to eggs, the economy in our construction markets is much improved over national trends due to the impact of agriculture and the energy commodities in our region. Both North Dakota and South Dakota are hot spots for energy. There is significant oil, natural gas, coal, and wind energy in our states.

Due to the more favorable economic conditions in our construction equipment markets, we are witnessing continued growth in both the commercial and residential sectors in the cities of Fargo, Bismarck, Sioux Falls, and Rapid City. Even though we have a very positive economic climate surrounding our four state egg and seed business, I don't want this to overshadow the strength of our operating model. By leveraging best practices across our stores, we continue to increase our pre-tax profit as a percentage of revenues.

We continue to improve our market percentage at the same time we are experiencing tremendous top line growth. Our strong store model continues to populate our markets with new and used farm equipment and construction equipment. As used equipment revenue component and recurring high margin parts and service revenue differentiates us from the equipment manufacturers and gives us the ability and predictability in all economic cycles.

I would now like to spend some time discussing our acquisitions strategy. Over the past 27 years we have built a network of 41 agricultural and construction equipment dealerships, including two wallet stores in the four upper midwestern states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Since 2003, we have made 17 acquisitions consisting of 34 stores in all four states in which we operate. We have a well-established track record of successfully integrating acquired stores, retaining acquired stores employees, and maintaining acquired store customer relationships. This integration process has led to a very strong organic growth as well as one acquired stores of incorporated into the Titan business model.

For full fiscal year of 2008 we made six acquisitions consisting of 10 stores. Looking forward, we perceive many additional opportunities for acquisitions. Our industry consists of a largely fragmented and aging dealer base. Nearly every week we are contacted by a dealership-owner asking us to look into acquiring any of their businesses. The reasons an owner may want to sell his dealership could be as simple as he wants to retire but has not succession plan for his business, or it could be lack of capital or support through recent investments and farming equipment.

With the advancements in farming technology over the past several years, the farm equipment business has become much more sophisticated. When some of these dealer principles first started out, tractors were $30,000 and combines were $40,000. Now, new tractors and combines are in the $200,000 to $300,000 range.

The demand on dealers for capital, well-trained employees, and business sophistication has increased significantly. This, combined with the much-increased visibility as a public company, is driving an increased level of in volume acquisition inquiries.

To summarize, many dealers are interested in selling their business to manufacturers, C&H in our case, are promoting this consolidation. And the customers are looking for a dealership with a top tier selection of equipment and parts as well as a higher level of technology and sophistication as required to support their equipment in the field. The bottom line is this industry is aligned right for consolidation and we are one of the few players that have the scale, resources, and experience to capitalize on this opportunity.

As we see it, we've only begun to realize our potential. We have a full pipeline of acquisition candidates. The secondary offering will solidify our balance sheet, putting our Company in a position to capitalize on both the one store and large multi-store acquisition opportunities.

We are exploring international growth, with a large number of domestic deals on the table. We have an unprecedented opportunity to expand our footprint. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Peter to review our financial results and provide guidance for next year. Peter?

Thanks, David. I'm very excited to share with you our fourth quarter and full-year operating results. We delivered very strong results in both revenue growth and bottom line profitability. Now I'm going to review our results in more detail and then I'll discuss our outlook for the full-year ending January 31, 2009.

Our total revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 31, 2008 increased 61% to $135 million. Fourth quarter revenue from equipment sales increased 66% to $113 million. Fourth quarter revenue from parts increased 56% to $13 million in the quarter. Fourth quarter revenue generated from our service business increased to $6.4 million. This gives us a fourth quarter sales mix of 83% for equipment and 15% for our after sales product support, which as you recall, is our recurring revenue portion of our business.

Fourth quarter same-store sales increased by 17.3% for the quarter. When we look at same-store sales, we know that's important but we're very sensitive to remember that our sales mix has an effect on our margin. So that as we see same-store sales, we need to keep in mind that sales mix can affect our operating margins.

During a strong agricultural environment, as we're seeing now, farmers tend to buy more equipment. And although our gross margins are lower on equipment, our revenue is higher, providing leverage and resulting in a higher gross profit contribution. If the agricultural economy is not as strong, we'll see less equipment sales, but we'll generate more revenue as a percentage of overall sales in parts and service, which is a higher margin business. In short, our diversified revenue streams enable us to be profitable on both weak and strong environments.

Our operating expenses as a percent of net sales were 12.8% in the fourth quarter versus 11.8% in the fourth quarter of the prior year. This increase in operating expenses as a percentage of sales was primarily due to an increase in our variable sales and incentive compensation related to the strong results for the year being recognized in the fourth quarter and additional costs associated with operating as a public company.

Our fourth quarter operating income improved to $6.2 million with an operating margin of 4.5% versus $3.7 million and an operating margin of 4.4% in the fourth quarter of last year. GAAP net income for the fiscal fourth quarter was $270,000 or $0.02 per diluted share, which is within our previously issued guidance range of $0.01 to $0.03 per share versus net income of $1.4 million or $0.21 per diluted share for the fourth quarter last year.

Fourth quarter net income and earnings per share include one-time IPO related debt conversion and retirement costs of $2.7 million after tax or $0.25 per diluted share. Excluding these costs, we exceeded our previously issued pro forma guidance and achieved net income of $3 million or $0.27 per diluted share for the fourth quarter compared to our guidance of $0.21 to $0.23 per share.

For the full fiscal year ended January 31, 2008 revenue increased 48% to $433 million from revenue of $292.6 million in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2007. Operating margins increased 60 basis points to 4.4%, and operating income increased 68% to $18.9 million. Same-store sales for the year increased 16.8% over the prior year.

GAAP net income was $5.2 million or $0.67 per diluted share for the full fiscal year, which exceeded our previously issued guidance range of $0.61 to $0.63 per share compared to net income of $3.6 million or $0.57 per diluted share for the prior year. Our net income and earnings per share include one-time IPO-related items that I mentioned earlier equating to $0.33 per diluted share. Excluding these costs, we exceeded our previously issued pro forma guidance of $0.89 to $0.91 per share and achieve net income of $7.9 million or $1.00 per diluted share for the full year.

As a reminder, our fourth quarter weighted average fully diluted shares outstanding was 10.9 million shares. And our full-year weighted average fully diluted shares outstanding for fiscal year 2008 was 8,246,000 shares.

Now I'd like to turn to a few key components on our balance sheet. Our total inventories amounted to $146 million at the end of the fourth quarter up from $106 million at the end of the fourth quarter of last year. The increase in our inventory is attributable to having more stores in our network compared to last year and also our positioning for the robust agricultural market. We believe our inventory and access to inventory positions us well to achieve our revenue outlook.

On January 31, 2008, our subordinated debt was $1.3 million. We used proceeds from our IPO in December to pay off $9.4 million of debt and converted $6.4 million of debt into 2.3 million common shares.

Now I'd like to spend a moment discussing our upcoming secondary offering. This afternoon we filed a registration statement with the SEC for a follow-on offering of 3.5 million shares of our common stock. Craig-Hallum and Robert Baird will be joint book runners for the offering.

As David mentioned earlier, we're seeing an increased number of acquisitions and including larger multi-store opportunities. We've always executed well on our acquisition strategy and want to make certain that our capital structure will support our ability to grow though selective acquisitions. As we foresee many additional acquisition opportunities, we want to ensure that we have a strong balance sheet to properly fund these potential acquisitions.

Now turning to our outlook. Our policy on guidance is that we will give annual revenue and earning per share guidance on our fourth quarter call and update the annual guidance, if necessary, in subsequent quarters.

We'll not be giving quarterly guidance, as we evaluate our business on an annual basis given the numerous external factors such as weather patterns and timing of planting and harvesting seasons that impact our quarterly results.

With that said, we're raising our revenue outlook for the full year ending January 31, 2009 to a range of $550 million to $600 million, compared to the previously issued guidance of $530 million to $590 million.

In addition, we're also raising our earning per diluted share guidance by $0.10 for the full year to a range of $0.87 to $0.92 per share compared to previously issued guidance range of $0.77 to $0.82 per diluted share. Fully diluted shares outstanding for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2009 are estimated to be approximately 13.8 million shares.

This outlook discussion does not include the impact of the proposed follow-on offering separately announced by us today. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to David for closing comments.

Thanks, Peter. We are pleased with our results for the fourth quarter and full-year and are confident we can capitalize on growth opportunities.

We will continue to remain keenly focused on huge opportunities ahead in executing our long-term growth strategy.

Before we take your questions, I'd like to conclude by thanking our employees for our achievements to date and thanking our valued customers for their continued support. We appreciate the support of C&H and are excited about our future. And look forward to delivering long-term value to our stockholders. Operator, we are now ready for questions and answer portion of the call.

Thank you. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Our first question comes from the line of Bob Evans, Craig-Hallum Capital. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon everyone and congratulations on a great quarter and year.

Thanks, Bob.

First can you comment a little bit more as it relates to the acquisition pipeline in terms of kind of quantity of opportunities and quality of opportunities? And if you were going to try to put a ballpark number in terms of how big that pipeline was from a revenue standpoint, could you perhaps give us a ballpark range?

Well, first of all I would say right now we have a solid three years of acquisition pipeline out in front of us, taking these nice, methodical method. When we were on the roadshow we told everybody we wanted to do acquisitions at that 15% to 20% of our annual revenues. So based on our guidance, Bob, you can kind figure out that average in all that $90 million to $100 million or so here in acquisitions.

And they're definitely out there. I think if we talk about this in a very aging view, the other group right now. I think a lot of them are understanding how can I align my business, still be part of the business?

We're getting great testimonials from views that we've acquired. Some of these guys, they thought they were get out of the business. We kept them around during the transition and they're having the time of their life. So, we're just seeing a lot of strength right here, excellent atmosphere for doing this here. So everything's in place with this pipeline.

And since we're a public company right now, too. All of a sudden we've got more visibility and we've got some real big bite stores, groups out there right now that are coming to us and are very, very serious about wanting to be a part of Titan. So I'm really optimistic about our acquisitions out there right now.

Okay, and to follow that on, I've in my report I put that I believe you can be a $1 billion revenue company. And I believe that's been talked about in the past. Is that something where, are you seeing the opportunities that you're seeing to become that large company in the upper Midwest, or can you elaborate in terms of kind of geographically where do those acquisitions opportunities, where your priorities are?

We can hit the $1 billion number with just what we have in our current footprint in the states we're in. The potential's out there to do that. And this is a great market here that we're in. And we can do that. But just so you know though, there are opportunities outside our market, too. But we're really interested in this, what this stuff right now what we call is our contiguous footprint.

Okay. And then also on your margins, your equipment gross margins were much better than I had modeled as well as your operating margin. Can you elaborate a little bit more in terms of kind of the margin out performance? And is this something that can be sustained?

Yes. Commenting on our margins and our equipment. We had a stronger fourth quarter equipment margin. And basically what that was is that was due to our stronger market that we've been in.

And we also had a manufacturer market share incentive bonus plan. And that was recognized in the fourth quarter. But it was measured by our entire year's results. And that had to be recorded during our fourth quarter.

Okay. And in terms of operating margin, you're ahead of pace in terms of where I thought you would get to, to a 4.5% type margin. Is that, I mean do you continue to feel good in terms of tracking to that type of operating margin? I know it'll vary from quarter to quarter, but on an annual basis can you give us some sense in terms of your outlook on margins?

We look like, our historically we've been continually improving on that. And we are currently in a solid environment. And so when we look at our Titan operating margins, I think you were talking 4.5%. It's 3.5%.

I'm sorry, yes.

Yes. And we feel real confident in that. And we just keep on executing on this business model that we have. And a big part of this, Bob, has been integrating in these acquisitions stores into our operating, Titan operating model. And of course as we grow and we get a bigger and bigger base of stores that are part of the existing base. Then the percentage of stores that we're bringing on integration is a little less. So we feel confident on continuing on what we've been doing historically.

Okay. And finally, I'll let others ask questions. But can you give us a little bit of commentary in terms of the overall equipment availability out there in terms of if a customer were to come and want a tractor or combine. What's the typical lead-time right now? And do you feel you've; are you happy with kind of where your inventory is relative to the market?

Well we anticipated this back in 2007. And we did an excellent job of pre-selling our equipment in the fourth quarter of 2007. We're taking those deliveries now, Bob. And what we also did is we went to the order board in the order slot. And we put it; we were really aggressive on orders. And you can see that. Our inventory's increased $40 million. So a lot of that is anticipation of this upcoming year in 2008. So right now we're in great shape on inventory. We're getting it. The lead times are going to be longer as we look out here. But we position ourselves real good for this fiscal year.

Okay, thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Robert McCarthy, Robert W. Baird. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, guys.

Good afternoon, Robert.

Hi. I want to make sure that everybody's on the same page definitionally. The 17.3% same-store growth in the fourth quarter, is that a measure of growth of everything except what you acquired in the last 12 months? Or this a different, is this the statistic calculated excluding any acquisition in the last 24 months?

When we talk about our same-store sales, the definition is that anything that we talk about in our fourth quarter, those stores that we include for same-store sales had to have been within our Titan complex for the full 12 months in the prior year's quarter and of course in this quarter of this year. But they had to be there for the full 12 months. Three months in the quarter but full 12 months prior to that quarter.

Prior to last year's quarter.

Right. All stores included in same-store sales last year they would have had to have been with us for 12 months sometime during that quarter last year.

Okay. In the third quarter, in the October quarter, you all reported about a $16 million top line benefit from Case programs associated with the Magnum, specifically. And indicated that you thought you'd see some carrier and that we would see some carry over into the January quarter. Was that impact in the January quarter greater or less than the third quarter?

It was much less.

It was much less. And are they, do you have anything at all comparable to that that's in the marketplace right now?

No, we don't. If we would have, we would have called that out.

Okay.

Because we'd like to keep it so that all of you folks, when you're gauging our same-store sales growth, we take out anything that we see as a one-time. That's why we did what we did on our last earnings call.

Okay. I'd like to, if I may, I'd like to ask about product availability a little bit differently. In terms of your guidance for the coming year, $550 million to $600 million of revenue, if the demand was there for another, pick a number, $50 million of equipment. Would you even be able to get it out at Case and New Holland?

Right now I would feel confident we could right now.

Okay.

It's tight. But when you get on the phone and start calling around, we have a lot of relationships, a lot of contacts within other dealers throughout North America. And it never fails that there's some parts of the country that have weather issues and things that come throughout the year. And if you're standing close to the pipeline and you're listening to whom you're talking and you're making the phone calls, that's it.

And a lot of this machinery too from the C&H standpoint is going to be distributed and a priority towards the retail customer. So we get the resale sales, the resale customers, I believe strongly we're going get the iron.

Very good. And if I could ask about SG&A expenses, operating expenses in the fourth quarter, Peter.

You mentioned specifically the impact of variable comp impacting the quarter and incremental public company expenses. Could you put some kind of an order of magnitude around those effects so that we might see what the sort of underlying steady state rate was? And then secondarily, shouldn't we assume that a lot of this expense really is an ongoing expense?

We don't break that out, Rob. But I would say is that we do have a totally variable selling expense. And we also have variable incentive comp, which is driven by us having a record year.

Right.

And there is an uptick, if you will, in our SG&A for now operating in a public environment. And we have our SOX compliance that we're working with. But I don't see that as being a main driver here.

Okay.

A little bit of color; I don't see that as being the main driver. What we have done is we have basically engineered our compensation system where we pay for performance. Last year we had a strong performance year.

So we have the variable sales and incentive compensation that played a heavy role in that. And of course any of those measurements, which are annual measurements, fall into the fourth quarter.

Yes, I understand. And then I've got one more and then I'll let somebody else go. In terms of what's included in your outlook. Number one, what are you assuming for a tax rate? Did it stay the same as this most recent completed year?

Yes, we're assuming basically, if you look at it. Our historical tax rate has been around that 40%.

Okay.

And we're real comfortable with our historical tax rate. We did have a, you will notice that we had a difference in our effective tax rate in our fourth quarter, which had a small effect on our annual results for fiscal year '08. And but we're real confident going forward in our outlook that we can go back looking more closely at our historical rate, and that was around that 40%.

Very good. Thanks, Peter.

Thank you.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Our next question is a follow-up question from the line of Bob Evans. Please go ahead.

Hello, again. Can you give us some color on the new used equipment mix for both the fourth quarter and the full-year, ballpark?

I don't know that we call that out on our reporting, but we don't really see a -- based on looking at our historical operating results, we're not really seeing anything that would give you any material differences from what our historical trends have been.

And what were those? Again, just for clarification.

Essentially what ends up happening is in this business for every new sale we make, we have to take in what we call a trade-in and it's a residual value to that owner. And there is what we call a washout that we work the deal through so that we end up getting our used sales based on that.

We haven't called that out in any of our SEC reporting. But to look at it from a color standpoint, it's not really changing any from what it has been historically. And the margins that we built into our model, our gross margins really have reflected what our historical mix has been. And we don't see that as being a material difference.

I can say that with this increase in our demand that we look for our turns, our inventory turns, to be up, which is a good thing for our balance sheet.

Okay. And can you comment a little further in terms of, you had talked about the futures pricing, the commodities market at the beginning of your prepared remarks. Can you give us a little bit for those who maybe not be as up to date on where things are at, can you give us some sense of futures pricing today versus how things looked a year ago or give us some sense of trend here so we've got a sense of the pricing of the market.

To give you an example of that, last fall I was out visiting some customers and they were all combining corn. And at that time the cash corn market was probably up around that $5.00 mark. And I said you ought to be pretty happy. And he says, yes, I'm combining $3.00 corn right now. Cause he had contracted the year before.

So there's a lot of that happening. I talked to the other guy; I said even though wheat's approached $19 last year in the fourth quarter, they sold their whole-wheat crop out at $4.00. And this came from selling early or contracting it back in 2006.

So what we're seeing right now is if you look back in the fourth quarter and the first part of 2008, where a lot of people forward contract their next crop, we're seeing a lot of corn contracts out there close to that $5.00. So everything that's getting planted this year is a lot of it is if they did do pretty recent forward contract it's going to be a substantially higher price than what happened last year. And then we also talked about a lot of this; some of the sale of this grain was deferred into this year. So they're going to be getting the income from that this year, plus this big crop.

So this Economic Stimulus Act here where they get some big first-time depreciation. I think that's really going to bode well for our business this year.

And can you elaborate for everyone in terms of what that is as a tax impact to your business? Cause I, if you could just do that, it would be helpful.

Well, we've got this Section 179 deduction. That limit is increased to $250,000. Then they let the maximum investment go to, now this was signed into law February 13th of this year.

Then the maximum investment limitation increased from $510,000 up to $800,000. But a real big part of this law is there's the accelerated depreciation, which there's a new 50% first year deprecation on all equipment purchases. So this is just a huge for our business or anything to do with large ticket equipment items. And like I say, this was just passed into law on February 13. George W. Bush signed that. So the timing of that is just perfect because a lot of incomes are going to be pushed into this 2008 for our customers.

Okay, all right. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Dan Chase, Stevens Investment Group. Please go ahead.

Quick question, your guidance, is that predicated on, I noticed you said it was on the current shares outstanding. But does that include acquisitions from the financing or raising in the secondary offering? And then secondly, how quickly can you put the money to work that you were going to raise in the secondary offering and how much revenue would that translate to?

Could you repeat the first part of that question again?

Sure. The guidance that you put out in the press release, you said that there was on the current share count at 13.8 million. But does that guidance of revenue and earnings I guess include future revenues that are going to be used from the secondary offering?

Meaning, are you going to have to, the money you're raising in the secondary, are you going to put that work to create revenues that are in that guidance? I'm just trying to match the shares outstanding with the revenue?

Yes, good question. First of all, when I talked about our guidance, at the end of the discussion on our guidance, I did make it very clear that the outlook discussion does not include the impact of the proposed follow-on offering that we announced today.

Okay, so that includes on the revenue side.

Our guidance does not include any difference of the, like I say nothing that we're talking about on our guidance has the impact of the proposed follow-on offering, as well as any of the revenue outlook either.

Great, okay. And then how quickly can you put that money to work from the standpoint post secondary wise when you raise that money. How quickly can that money be put to work? And if you raise roughly $60 million or whatever the number would be, what would that translate to approximately from a revenue standpoint?

Like I said earlier we've got this big full pipeline of acquisitions out there. And a lot of you, we went on the roadshow and we talked about where, what are we going to do with acquisitions. I think our track record proves I think we're way ahead of the curve right now. We've done quite a few more acquisitions since we even started our roadshow back in December where we ended up.

So we've got acquisitions just right there. We just announced Blairstown, Iowa here today, which is going to, great market, great acquisition. We're really getting close on another multi-store acquisition that hopefully we can make an announcement in the next few weeks on. And our plan is to put this to work as quickly as possible. And I think you can look by our past performance that we've proven that we're good at doing acquisitions.

And lastly, the multiple I guess if we took Blairstown as an example, the multiple you guys are paying, at least the most recent ones. I'm guessing with the new environment the bigger environment for the ag companies, are they asking for more multiple or is it still sort of paying for inventory, et cetera, that you were doing in the past?

We've got to be a little bit careful talking about this because we do have a lot of acquisitions in motion right now. But basically we haven't seen a lot of difference in the way we've been buying these dealerships right now in what we were last year or the year before.

Okay, perfect. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Good quarter.

Our next question is a follow-up question from the line of Robert McCarthy. Please go ahead.

Just two related to your comments about growing the platform, one in these larger multi-store unit deals that you have in the pipeline, are these in your four-state contiguous served area?

We have some that are in our four-state area. In fact, yes, we've got to be really be careful because we've signed some non-disclosure confidentiality things. So there's only so many dealers out there. So I can't say too much. But we've got some that I think that you would all be very excited about. And for the last three or four years we do get inquiries from the rest of the United States and we continue to get those. We do have some that I think you'd be really excited about.

Fair enough. And I think it was Peter made a reference to pursuing incremental, international growth opportunities. I'm wondering if you could put a little color to that.

Well I mention that we are exploring that. And as you're well aware, even though we've got a real robust farm economy in North America, there are other parts of the world that are probably even better than that. And there's a large farm equipment dealership like we are, we wouldn't be doing our stockholders or ourselves justice if we weren't exploring those. And there are opportunities out there. And we'll keep you abreast of those, as we get farther into those.

You're talking about things growing out of your historical market development work in Central Asia, or are we talking something beyond that?

No. I really can't talk about that right now. Like I say, we have done some business. But I mean in the past there are some things on the horizon right now that we're exploring.

I see. Okay, well thank you very much.

At this time we do not have any additional questions. I will turn the conference back to management for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you everybody for your participation today. And we look forward to sharing our progress with you next quarter. I also want you to know that we'll be attending a number of investor conferences during the next few months. And we hope to see you there. So again, thank you and we'll talk to you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Titan Machinery, Inc. fourth quarter and full-year 2007 financial results conference call.

If you'd like to listen to a replay of today's conference, please dial 303-590-3030 or 1-800-406-7325. The passcode for this conference is 3868041 and the conference will be available for replay through May 12, 2008. We would like to thank you for your participation. Have a pleasant day. You may now disconnect.