Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from John Healey with FTN Midwest Securities Corp.
John Healey - FTN Midwest Securities Corp.
I wanted to get a little bit of color from you just about the quarter. Obviously your organic growth continues to be pretty amazing. I was hoping you could give us a little color on what drove the organic growth in the quarter. Maybe what key metrics were the most surprising to you, how strong they were?
It sounds like you are showing weakness and I am just trying to understand what is driving the growth right now.
Ronald Croatti
This is Ron. I will try to give you a rough answer to it. In September, if you will recall, energy prices were pretty high, gasoline and so forth and we were able to sustain a fairly decent price increase that was part of it. Our new sales have held up the entire quarter comparable to 2008. We have really seen a drop off in the new sales the last five weeks, I mean right up until today.
The shrinkage within our customer base was fairly typical for September. It accelerated a little bit in October and was greater in November and greater in December to the point where every week we had during the quarter we were positive growth and the last five weeks we are seeing the line cross the other way between the shrinkage in our base, our customer losses and our new business, the line is crossed.
So, that is our concern, but it really was a combination of good sales and we were able to get a little price along the way.
John Healey - FTN Midwest Securities Corp.
That is helpful. I also want to make sure I understand what you have mentioned there. Over the last five weeks have we seen organic growth rates and any of those weeks begin to be negative on the year-over-year [interposing].
Ronald Croatti
That is correct.
John Healey - FTN Midwest Securities Corp.
Or is that just kind of on the new sales?
Ronald Croatti
No, they are negative year-over-year.
John Bartlett
Well they are negative week-over-week now.
Ronald Croatti
To try to explain it to you, you know if the wearer base is negative and the customer is shrinking and the customer losses are negative, new business is appositive, but the negative is outweighing the positive.
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