Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And our first question comes from Shannon Cross with Cross Research. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Shannon Cross – Cross Research
Thank you. Good afternoon. My question – I’ve got a few, but the first one I’d start with is just can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in terms equipment sales? I mean, they were relatively solid versus others on a constant currency basis. Obviously, some pressure, but what are people buying? Are you seeing a mix shift down in terms of the ticket items? Can you talk about your sale cycles, just maybe on a geographic basis, and anything you can give us to give us some idea of where the sales are happening on the equipment side?
Murray Martin
Thanks, Shannon. I think this is something we’ve talked about for the last couple of quarters particularly in the US, where we talked about the change in availability of trade-up leases in our cycle and the cycle that we went through over the last two years. We did see in the fourth quarter equipment sales grow by 6% in the US and that was really primarily focused around that change in the lease space, which we had predicted a year ago would begin in the third quarter and then accelerate in the fourth quarter, and then continue through 2009. So, overall, we’re seeing our equipment sales in the metering mail business to be strong.
In Europe, we saw very strong sales in our production mail equipment sales with a more of a negative impact in the US in that regard, as there was a slowdown in the financial services on large ticket items. So, I think that is generally the mix overall. We saw pretty good results on equipment sales.
Shannon Cross – Cross Research
Okay. And then, can you talk a little bit about supplies? It was a bit weaker. What I’m curious about is how much of this do you think is end use? We’ve seen from channel contraction out there in terms of supplies. Just any color you can give us in terms of what you think is happening in that revenue line item.
Murray Martin
Sure. When we look at supplies, I think there are really two things that we see. Number one, people are delaying the procurement of their supplies as long as possible. They are storing less supplies, so their order size is smaller to begin with, so we have a little more frequency on smaller size; and then, there is a slight decline in the actual consumption of supplies. But we think that the biggest effect is people buying less and having less on their shelf, which should create some leveling as we go forward.
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