Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Jim Janesky with Stifel Nicolaus.
James Janesky - Stifel Nicolaus
Hi. Good afternoon. A couple of questions. Don or -
Don B. Murray
Hello. We can't hear you.
James Janesky - Stifel Nicolaus
Can you hear me now?
Don B. Murray
Now we can, yeah.
James Janesky - Stifel Nicolaus
Okay. Sorry about that. I'm on a cell phone. Based on the recent trends that you have in revenues, do you think that you're taking market share or that on the margin the economy's getting a bit better?
Don B. Murray
I don't see the economy getting better. We are getting some larger projects as some of our larger clients are trying to control costs on projects that have to get done, so we are taking some of those projects away from the Big Four-type of providers. And that's been one of the drivers of our growth.
James Janesky - Stifel Nicolaus
Okay. And on the gross margin comment that you made, do you expect an improvement from the third fiscal quarter or how does that compare to the fourth quarter of 2007?
Nate W. Franke
Well, bear in mind that in the past our fourth quarter has generally been around 150 basis points behind our second quarter due to the holidays. We would definitely expect improvement over that in the fourth quarter. So we feel that's making good progress, we're making some good progress on the gross margin, so we would expect them to come back to something more akin to the gross margin that we achieved in the second quarter and maybe do slightly better than that.
James Janesky - Stifel Nicolaus
Okay.
Operator
Anything further, Mr. Janesky?
James Janesky - Stifel Nicolaus
No, that'll be fine. Thanks.
Operator
And next we'll hear from Andrew Steinerman with Bear Stearns.
Andrew Steinerman – Bear Stearns & Co.
Can I ask about the bill rate achievements that you've been able to make? Do you feel like when you've had that conversation with clients to get to the bill rates - you discussed $134 an hour up from $129 - do you think that had any revenue trade-off, meaning if you stayed at the previous bill rate, do you feel like you would have had more volume?
Nate W. Franke
Andrew, we are not hearing that from the field necessarily. I mean, I think there is still an amount of rate sensitivity out there, but I don't think we're hearing that we're giving hours up.
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