Question-and-Answer Session
Thank you sir. At this time, we would like to begin the question-and-the answer session of the conference. [Operator Instructions]. The first question for today comes from Mr. Michael Meltz with Bear Stearns. Sir, you may ask your question.
Michael Meltz - Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
Great. I think I have three questions. Can you talk a little about, you gave guidance in early December, here we are later end of February and the downward adjustment is pretty substantial. Can you just talk about... the economy was pretty weak in December and the outlook was such, what has changed really in your thinking? Dave I know you gave details, but perhaps what's changed in your forecasting as well? May be you can give us a little bit more detail there.
Secondly, implicit in that, how bad are you expecting Q1 to be given Vegas and other markets there that perhaps might have... we all knew, would probably be weak to start the year?
And lastly, with Jake leaving is there an adjustment perhaps for the Business.com purchase price? I was under the assumption, he had a longer-term employment contract and I just want to get more detail on his departure?
David C. Swanson - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Okay. Michael, I will try, just if I forget part of the... end of those, just remind me. Let me try to just go walk you through those. Let me just start with the, why the guidance changed so dramatically in a short period of time? I think the best way I can describe this is, the buying attitude got worse very fast in our... from our perspective, that is from SMEs. When I look back to Q4, we were still getting very good increases from advertisers in Q4 and that has been the biggest change that we've seen, is the willingness of advertisers to increase their programs. We also have a lot more visibility today into Q2 and we had very, very little back then and I think as you recall, we were expecting Q2 to start to show some improvement here and we are not seeing it. And so the guidance really reflects what we are seeing in the first half of 08 today, which is slightly lower renewal rates, slightly lower new business rates and significantly lower increases from our existing advertisers.
As it pertains to your Q1 question, I think the guidance that we gave reflects what we are seeing in Q1 and Q2, the first half of the year. That's kind of the best I can give on that for right now.
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