Stewart Enterprises, Inc. F4Q08 (Qtr End 10/31/08) Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-12-19 13:28:14.0

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Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Jamie Clement – Sidoti & Company

Jamie Clement – Sidoti & Company

As you think about continuous improvements and that sort of thing can you kind of give us a little bit more information what you feel you accomplished successfully looking back over the last 12 months and where your priorities are for the next 12 months.

Thomas Crawford

What happened over the last 12 months we put an incredible amount of time working with consultants to identify opportunities within the company. From that the first phase was pursued where we looked at the handling of our documents in the field. We’ve got a very complex business in relation to paper flow and how we handle our paper and what we do to check the quality throughout the organization.

As we look at all the steps and all the rework in the organization we have identified patterns that can be pursued and actions to take place. As a matter of fact during the latter part of this year we actually established a continuous improvement function within the company and so we’ve highlighted that to focus on exploring the opportunities we had to eliminate waste in efficiency.

And also we have really standardized our contracts and our packages as a way of eliminating mistakes that take place from one document to the other. It is our intent to try and streamline that process. It is our intent to eliminate the number of times a contract is touched and the number of times that we go through a quality review.

Jamie Clement – Sidoti & Company

It seems like you all may have gotten some positive news over the last couple of weeks on the litigation front and I know that there is some disclosure in your 10-K about that, what is your sense of what you’re legal spending might look like this coming year in relation to fiscal 2008.

Thomas Kitchen

There really were two components of that, the antitrust litigation, actually for the last year has been fairly modest in relation to the first couple of years that we had that and that was because we were waiting for the Magistrate’s decision with regard to the class action certification.

So at this point in time, I’m not expecting large increase but there is going to be some continuing ongoing expenditures with regard to litigation costs for the antitrust. Its hard at this point in time to forecast what’s going to happen there.

 

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