Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question will come from the line of Larry Marsh with Barclays Capital.
Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital
Good morning. Thanks for the update. Just a couple of things maybe wanted to drill down on, Steve, so you basically communicated today a $0.15 reduction in kind of your expectations for 2009 with, I guess, $0.05 of that coming from FX. Just curious on the point, it sounds like you are now assuming what we are going to see further – a fair amount of dollar strengthening versus Euro and other currencies for ’09, is that right?
Steven Paladino
Well, let me first clarify what you first said. The $0.05 decline versus our last guidance compared to today's guidance was looking at the US dollar where it was and what the expectations were for ’09 versus where it is today and what those expectations for ’09. So we are really not assuming a significant additional strengthening of the US dollar, but there is some strengthening that’s built into that. And again, it's really that the dollar did strengthen further since the last time we give guidance.
Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital
Right. Because you had alluded to that back in November that could be a further headwind, so it seems to be consistent. So there's really, I guess another $0.10 of change and I just want to, to extent you can elaborate. It seems like directionally we would have assumed some slighter, lower margin on – lower impact from flu in ’09 versus ’08. Is there any change specifically to that expectation versus November?
Stanley Bergman
Flu vaccine really is – our expectations are the same as the last conference call which is that we expect to distribute 12 million to 13 million doses of flu vaccines during 2009. I think really, the other main reason for the change in our guidance is clearly if you look back since end of October, the first week of November compared to now, it’s clear that the economy is in worse position. It's clear that our markets – we think our markets were basically flat, maybe flat to slightly down in Q4. So, it really reflects our outlook that – again we are trying to be a bit conservative given the macroeconomic conditions. We are assuming that the economy is not going to improve at all during 2009 and we are assuming that the markets that we serve are also not going to improve at all in 2009. And hopefully, that will turn out to be untrue and hopefully the markets will get a little bit better, especially maybe in the second half of the year. But we felt right now given all of the uncertainty that it was best really not to assume any improvements today.
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