Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator instructions) And we’ll go first to Chris Mammone with Deutsche Bank.
Chris Mammone – Deutsche Bank
Hi, thanks. Can you guys hear me?
Chris Brewster
Yes, we can.
Chris Mammone – Deutsche Bank
Great. Well, let’s see. I guess I’ll start with the 2010 guidance. Thank you for the early read on 2010. Maybe could you just dove a little deeper there and give us some of your underlying assumptions, transaction growth or ATM counts, anything more that you could provide there that’d be helpful.
Chris Brewster
I can give you a little bit, Chris. I’d say the underlying assumptions largely – so before I do that, let me mention one thing. We have just seen the lights go out here in our building in Houston, although the phones apparently are still working. It’s a possibility I guess that we might get cut off, but I think the conference operator would assist in getting us connected back together. So if that does happen, I would encourage people to stay on and we’ll continue on.
But to pick back up on your question, Chris, I mean the – our – I guess our primary underlying assumption is we continue to see similar trends in transaction counts, which would imply a level of transaction count growth. We would expect some gross margin growth next year, although not nearly of the magnitude that we had this year on a year-over-year basis. In terms of machine count, a few percentage points, nothing out of the ordinary really planned in that regard.
I guess those would be the high points, Chris.
Chris Mammone – Deutsche Bank
Okay, great. And I guess, on your recent – on the withdrawal trends and – I mean, it sounded like they’ve been pretty strong, again just at least still in the U.S. Any sense for delineation month-to-month? I mean, how does it look through the end of the quarter and into early fourth quarter on your sort of withdrawal trends?
Chris Brewster
Well, let’s see. The – there were some strengthening – and so if you look across the months of the third quarter, there was some strengthening in September. The – it’s not – wouldn't quite be accurate to say it was completely consistent month to month. September was somewhat stronger than July and August.
From what we’ve seen on October at this point, it would appear to be another good month, which would be consistent with the overall trend that we saw on the – in the third quarter. I'm not sure I know enough at this point to tell you in terms of year-over-year trend whether October is likely to be as good as September or maybe slightly better or slightly worse.
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