Pitney Bowes Inc. Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-11-03 18:58:11.0

Tags: Pitney Bowes Inc., Cash Flow, Barclays Plc., Call Transcript, Earnings, Transition Initiative, Operational Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha, Pitney Bowes Inc., Cash Flow, Barclays Plc., Call Transcript, Earnings, Transition Initiative, Operational Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Caroline Sabbagha – Barclays Capital.

Caroline Sabbagha – Barclays Capital

In light of the current credit environment how are your conversations with the rating agencies going and what sort of things are they focusing on and what are you talking about with them?

Murray Martin

Obviously we have an ongoing dialogue with the rating agencies as we've had in the past and during the height of the credit crisis, obviously they were very interested in our access to the commercial paper market and I'm very happy to say we've had really uninterrupted access to that commercial paper market, and that's clearly something they were monitoring.

The other is obviously total debt and that as we noted has come down slightly in the quarter due to our very strong free cash flow. Beyond that, no unique issues.

Caroline Sabbagha – Barclays Capital

On the higher free cash flow guidance, in magnitude, what are the drivers of that higher free cash flow guidance? What are the biggest drivers? Is it equipment sales or something else there?

Murray Martin

There's clearly a couple of things. Working capital has been a positive for us. We've made lower actual capital expenditures across the business and as we talked about in the past, when there is the lower equipment sales we do free up cash from finance receivables.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jay Vleeschhouwer – Merrill Lynch.

Jay Vleeschhouwer – Merrill Lynch

It appears that your restructuring charges are going to be at the high end of the previous guided range for the year. Would you expect to be able to exceed your previously forecast cost savings from the restructuring and the release talked about your looking into some additional steps you could take. Do you have anything you can elaborate on with respect to that?

For Murray, can you comment on what you're beginning to see in terms of the equipment upgrade and lease renewal process that you talked about at the analyst meeting? It sounded as though we should be just in the early stages of that.

Michael Monahan

Year to date we're at about $375 million, $376 million of total charges against transition initiatives of which a little over $200 million is against the asset side of it. In terms of original guidance, we said $300 million to $400 million. As we look at the current environment out there, we felt it important that as we enter the final phase of the transition initiatives that we continue to look for an additional number of opportunities to take cost out, to turn more of our infrastructure from fixed cost to variable cost, and that's been a real focus of our transition initiatives to date.

 

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