Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Nicole Jacoby from Liberation Investment.
Nicole Jacoby – Liberation Investment
Dale, I wanted to know if you could give a little bit more of an update on what’s going on with Sears, the expected timeframe, or any information you can give us about the nature of the discussions you’re having.
Dale Heins
We get this question all the time, and it’s our practice really not to comment on that. The only thing I would tell you is that obviously Sears and CPI have had a longstanding relationship. It’s been beneficial to both parties. Negotiations are ongoing, and that’s where we’re at.
Nicole Jacoby – Liberation Investment
So, other than before the expiration of the current contract, you don’t yet have an idea about timing as to when this negotiation might be concluded?
Dale Heins
No, we don’t.
Operator
Your next question comes from Will Hamilton from SMH Capital.
Will Hamilton – SMH Capital
I was wondering, Dale, if you could give us a sense as to how the Sears EBITDA margins compared year over year, whether there was any material change in that, just given the operating environment and some of the declines you’re seeing in sales.
Dale Heins
That’s one we’re really not prepared to comment on. As we merge these two enterprises, it gets a little more challenging to separate the two businesses. There are a lot of activities now that are shared services between the two brands, and it’s really difficult to distinguish those margins.
Will Hamilton – SMH Capital
Could you talk a little bit more detail about what kind of initiatives you’re implementing on the customer acquisition and marketing side to turn around the sits and the sales declines?
Dale Heins
Sure. One major thing going on is we’ve launched a new loyalty program that we hope to get some traction on. We’ll start getting probably some sits hopefully related to that later in the year. We’ve got a lot of tools that we’re putting out there to improve our grassroots outreach programs at the location levels. There’s a lot of training going on in terms of improving our outreach efforts, accountability programs to help those people that aren’t quite performing the way we need them to on that respect and help them do that a lot better.
Will Hamilton – SMH Capital
With the Wal-Mart conversions, are you seeing a similar response in improvement that you saw with Sears in regards to just the customer feedback, the margin returns from that? Is that playing out similarly, even obviously in this environment that we are in?
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