Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, Mr. Powell. (Operator Instructions). And it does look like our first question comes from the office of Stifel Nicolaus and Troy Lahr.
Troy Lahr - Stifel Nicolaus & Company
Amin, I am wondering if you could talk a little bit about your guidance, your sales... your revised sales guidance for 2009. I think back on October, you said you felt pretty good about that, and you didn't want to have the changes for more that once. So can you maybe walk us through how you feel confident about this? And does... the change in oil prices, does that impact how your... see airline fairing over the next couple of months?
Amin Khoury
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the combination of the amount of capacities that the domestic carriers took out in 2008 together with their higher ticker prices, higher fees, in fact their yields roughly 10% over the past 24 months, and lower oil prices bodes well for the profitability of the U.S. airline.
The reason that it is different this time, sort to speak, as compared to 2001 is that our company is so different at this time. I don't believe that investors understand the magnitude of transformation in our business over the last several years. I mean the dramatic growth in nondiscretionary portion of our aftermarket business. I am talking about our fastener and consumables business, which is $1 billion-plus business, plus our reduced dependence on retrofit activity during the downturn have really changed our business, that together of course with this new SFE component.
So, we expect our consumables business, which basically was only negatively impacted by a couple of quarters during the... after 9/11/2001, the very strong business this year, and it is actually turning out that way. Even though revenues were slightly depressed in the fourth quarter, we expect that business to rebound beginning probably sometimes here in the second quarter, and certainly in the second half of the year. So we are comfortable with our guidance, because our consumables business and our spares business, which is a much, much larger business than it was in the past as a result of the very much larger installed base that we have now. Those two businesses are most profitable businesses and are doing okay in spite of the downturn.
Troy Lahr - Stifel Nicolaus & Company
Okay, thanks. And then my second question: as you shift to more OE direct, I mean could that pressure margins to little lower? Are you concerned that the OEMs might come back to you every couple years as confidently trying to take costs out, and almost you kind of get into this auto supplier type mentality. Is there a risk of that...
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