Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Alberto Garciatunen - Imperial Capital.
Alberto Garciatunen - Imperial Capital
The Russian expansion, how is that going? Who are you thinking of partnering with? Are you thinking of expanding in there more aggressively? And I also wanted to get more granularity specifically on the free cash flow number, because I saw last year, it was only negative $2.5 million. And this year it was negative $55. And your days sales were pretty comparable; it was 56 in 1Q, ?07 and 54 in 1Q, ?08. So, I just wanted to see if I could get a little more understanding why it was negative $55 million this year?
Fred Bentley
In Russia, we are in discussions right now about next steps. One of the things that we made clear when we talked about Russia over the past couple of years is we wanted to get some comfort level around operating in [inaudible]. I think we’ve done that. We are aggressively pursuing a couple of different options, one of which is greenfield, one of which is a joint venture.
We should have more clarity on that in the next quarter. It is a market that’s attractive to us. It fits the profile of the other markets that we’ve invested in. And it is a very interesting place to go forward. Alberto, we want to make sure that we make the right move there and we understand the business environment a little bit more clearly. We think we do have that understanding now, and in the next three months, six months at the top; we will have clear definition around what the specific plans are in Russia.
Marc Brebberman
Yes, I think we explained most of the negative free cash flow is related to working capital, and it really is attributed to the expiration of some special things at year-end as we talked about in our call. I think virtually all of the negative year-over-year comparison is related to the reversal of those one-time items. It’s a non-recurring, we may go through a little bit of cash in quarter two. But we don’t see anything at the level of what we did in quarter one.
Operator
Your next question comes from Mark Kaufman - MLK Investment.
Mark Kaufman - MLK Investment
About the tax rate, could you give me a little more clarity on that? And also, related to the last question about the special items at the end of the fourth quarter, accounts payable or whatever, receivables, I am not sure, which again. Do those come back again toward the end of the year?
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