Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And your first question comes from Meggan Friedman. Please proceed.
Meggan Friedman – William Blair & Company
Hi, Frank. Hi, Dawn.
Frank Gerace
Good morning, Meggan.
Meggan Friedman – William Blair & Company
Could you maybe comment a little bit on the monthly flow of orders from the customer in question? Did it improve at all during the quarter?
Frank Gerace
Yes, let me – let's go right to that, and we have all done a fair amount of analysis of this first quarter, specifically that customer and also looking at what we're comparing it to the first quarter of the previous year. We're very disappointed in our results. And most of my disappointment actually, though, is around the startup of Batavia and some of the issues that we have experienced there. But sticking to the sales side of it, we are comparing first quarter of '09 with the first quarter of fiscal '08. And in the first quarter of fiscal '08, I would like to remind the participants that we experienced a 13% organic growth rate a year ago, which was phenomenal. We were absolutely delighted with it. But I think as we may have discussed back then, it is unrealistic to believe that we would ever be able to maintain that type of an organic growth rate. So for starters, we're comparing the first quarter of '09 with a very, very – a very strong, an unusually strong quarter a year ago. Specific to our largest customer, as the first quarter went on, we did begin to see orders trickle in in the last month. But they were still very low as compared to our historic levels, and quite frankly, up until now in July, they are continuing to trickle in, and we still aren’t seeing the type of activity that we had normally seen from that customer in the past. In addition to that, I personally, along with a couple of our management team, met with several people in the purchasing department at our largest customer about a month ago. And this specific issue, amongst other strategic issues that we discussed, came up. And what I was told directly was that, in fact, they continue to work off of inventories. And they and their marketing group still feel very confident and comfortable with their forecasts and that over time things will get back to normal. So, that’s specifically what’s going on there with the sales and the customer. In addition to that, when I look at the remainder of our top 10 through top 25 customers, we had very healthy activity and healthy growth from most of those other customers. Excluding our largest customer, we saw growth from the remainder anywhere from 3 to some incredible growth rates in excess of 50%. So this, from my perspective, is a very isolated, very specific sales issue. The sky is not falling in. And we believe that it is a timing issue, and as the year goes on, hopefully that this very important customer gets back to their normal ordering patterns.
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