Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Edward Aaron - RBC Capital Markets
Edward Aaron - RBC Capital Markets
Maybe you could share a little of your background in terms of your ability to perhaps help move the international and military businesses forward even more then what’s been done today?
Scott Wine
I’ll give a quick background, after spending seven years in the Navy following my graduation from the Naval Academy; I went to work for Honeywell in the aerospace and defense business. My last assignment with them was running their European business in aerospace repair and overhaul based out of Rounheim, Germany just outside of Frankfurt.
I did that for approximately two years and then decided I didn’t want to be an aerospace and defense executive so transitioned over to Danaher Corporation which actually might have given me better international experience as I helped several of their businesses expand into the Asian markets and did a lot of work in South America as well.
Good international experience, obviously my time in the military as a supply officer has already proven to be beneficial in this role as we look at military as an exciting growth opportunity and while not in my favorite past experience the fact that I joined that European business eight days before 9-11, I’m also familiar with taking over a new business and dealing with a crisis, again here with a very strong management team.
Edward Aaron - RBC Capital Markets
On the gross margin impact, on the positive side for mix, can you give us a rough sense, the basis point contribution from that so we can have a better understanding of how big of a drag the commodities and the discounting was on the margin?
Michael Malone
I’m not going to share specifics on the margin impacts on the attributes and gross margin, I would tell you the trends in the third quarter were similar to the trends we experienced earlier in the year. There is significant margin benefit from the increased side-by-side and PG&A business and as we talked about, our international business is higher profitability then the core US business.
The commodity pressures were real in the third quarter. As you know the commodity pressures have eased which is really good news going forward but we didn’t realize much or any of that benefit in the third quarter.
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