Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Brian Hunt - Wachovia
Brian Hunt - Wachovia
Can you define what a tuck-in acquisition is and do you believe its improbable that you’ll use all your excess cash for acquisitions this year?
Peter Sodini
The tuck-in acquisition to us is an incremental, I think I mentioned it, the high percentage of single store operators, we like picking up single stores in a market where we already have significant base stores and volume. It comes in almost as a freebie in terms of overhead ride and obviously we’re in a market terrain where we’re familiar with competition and market tenants. So those work out particularly well for us and we continue to look for them. Over the years it’s been a significant item to us as we’ve accumulated stores.
Frank Paci
On the cash, obviously given the uncertainty that’s out there in the economy we feel that it’s appropriate for us to make sure that we’ve got a good liquidity position. As we look at these things obviously its hard to predict at this point in time what’s going to be available in this marketplace.
Our position is is that we’re focused on maintaining our liquidity and doing those kind of things and if there is opportunities that avail themselves we’re in a position we think we can take advantage of that.
Peter Sodini
If you go back to last spring, we announced we were going to be getting out of the acquisition market through end of calendar year. We in fact did that. We did not however cut ourselves off from the world and say we won’t look at anything because if nothing else you’ve gleaned what’s available, what kind of expectations sellers have, so we’ve stayed in contact with the marketplace and not surprisingly with the thresholds of getting bank financing for a lot of the smaller people, it has become a more difficult market and product hasn’t been moving robustly even though there were some buyers out there with all the economic uncertainty that exists.
By saying that we are now interested in looking at things we don’t want to convey an impression that we’re out there looking for a 700, 800 store acquisition but more staying in tune with the marketplaces and looking at individual stores or small pockets of stores that fit into an existing market that we’re already present in and have a critical mass.
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