Earnings Call Excerpt
Universal Corp. (UVV)
F2Q07 (Qtr End 09/30/07) Earnings Call
November 7, 2007, 5:00 p.m. ET
Executives
Hart Roper - Chief Financial Officer and VP
Karen Whelan - VP and Treasurer
Analysts
Ann Gurkin - Davenport & Co. Of Virginia, Inc.
Dex Vlassis – Gates Capital
Steve Marascia - Anderson & Strudwick
Peter Kim - ISI Capital
Kevin Zietz – Goldman Sachs
Presentation
Operator
Good day and welcome to this Universal Corporation Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2008 Results Conference Call. This call is being recorded. At this time for opening comments, I would like to turn the call over to Vice President and Treasurer, Ms. Karen Whelan. Karen, please go ahead.
Karen Whelan
Thank you all for joining us. Hart Roper, our Chief Financial Officer is here with me today and he will join me in answering questions after this brief remarks. This call is being webcast live and will be available on our website and on telephone taped replay. It will remain on our website until February 7. If you are listening to this call after that date or if you are reading a transcription, we have not authorized such recording or transcription, it has been made available to you without permission, review or approval and we take no responsibility for such presentation.
Any transcription inaccuracies or omissions or failure to present available updates are the responsibility of the party who is providing it to you.
Before I begin to discuss our results, I caution you that we will be making forward-looking statements that are based on our current knowledge and some assumptions about the future, so I urge you to read our 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2007 for information on some of the factors that can affect our estimates. Those factors can include such things as costumer mandated timing of shipments, weather conditions, political and economic environment, changes in currency and changes in market structure or sources. Finally, some of the information I have for you today is based on unaudited allocations and is subject to reclassification. We will only discuss continuing operations with you today.
We had a good quarter with income from continuing operations up 9% to $40.5 million, or $1.25 per diluted share. For the six months, we earned $58.7 million from continuing operations or $1.81 per diluted share of almost 200% from the $0.63 we earned last year. Most regions showed solid improvement in the quarter and the six months. The key factors were lower provisions for farmer receivables and lower inventory valuation adjustments which in aggregate decline by $27 million in Africa for the quarter. We also had lower restructuring and impairment costs for the six months.
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