Helen of Troy F3Q08 (Qtr End 11/30/07) Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-01-09 13:25:59.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Earnings, Gain, Taxes, Free Trade, Financial Planning, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Kathleen Reed with Stanford Financial.

Kathleen M. Reed - Stanford Group Company

Good morning. First, can you just clarify your revised earnings guidance? The $1.70 to $1.80, does that include or exclude the $0.24 gain from the Hong Kong tax settlement that you booked in you 2Q?

Thomas J. Benson

The $1.70 to $1.80, it excludes the Hong Kong tax settlement, it excludes the gain on the sale of the land, and it excludes the impairment.

Kathleen M. Reed - Stanford Group Company

So that’s a clean number -- that excludes everything?

Thomas J. Benson

Yes.

Kathleen M. Reed - Stanford Group Company

Your previous $1.90 to $2.10 guidance though, I did not think that included -- I thought that included the $0.24 gain.

Thomas J. Benson

The $1.90 to $2.10 did include the $0.24 gain. That was the gain on the taxes.

Kathleen M. Reed - Stanford Group Company

So the $1.85 to $1.95 number that you put in your press release, that reflects the charges, that reflects all charges -- is that correct?

Thomas J. Benson

The $1.85 to $1.95 that’s in our press release includes the tax gain and the impairment and the gain on the sale of the land. If you want to take those three items out, it’s approximately $0.16.

Kathleen M. Reed - Stanford Group Company

Okay, so then we get to the clean $1.70 to $1.80.

Thomas J. Benson

Right, so $1.85 to $1.95 minus the $0.16 is approximately $1.70 to $1.80.

Kathleen M. Reed - Stanford Group Company

Okay, great, thanks. And then also, can you comment on the retail environment and what you are seeing overall? It’s a challenging environment for the personal care space but it doesn’t seem for your OXO business, and I just wondered if you could talk about what’s really changed or worsened since your October call and what -- I know you commented in your prepared remarks and your press release that you think it’s going to be tough for the first half of the year and is that both businesses or particularly personal care? If you can just give us some more information there.

Gerald J. Rubin

Well, in the OXO division, they had increases geographically because of us taking over the sales in the U.K. and in Japan. In the personal care area, we have dropped a lot of SKUs that we thought were not profitable. As Tom told you in his comments, without the Belson division, we actually increased our gross profit which has been decreasing for many, many quarters by a half a percent, and that’s because we are cleaning up and getting rid of a lot of SKUs that just are not profitable for us and that was partially had to do with some of the sales decrease.

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