Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Jim Janesky – Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Jim Janesky – Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
A couple of questions, when you look at historic patterns of activity with respect to vacations, so for example between the fourth and the fifth week of the quarter which includes the 4th of July revenues dropped on an order of magnitude of about 12%. What percent continues throughout the rest of the quarter due to vacations by your experience?
Thomas D. Christopoul
Jim I would probably say on average and this goes back a period of years, that can range anywhere from 5% to 8%. Obviously, during the 4th of July week you actually have a holiday so that makes that number a little greater. But, that percentage can vary kind of week-to-week and also change kind of country-by-country but I think that’s a reasonable range.
Jim Janesky – Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Tony, on the international arenas, as you pointed out the international declines or eventual increases somewhat lag the US, do you think that we should expect that the international markets will continue to be weaker than the US markets at least for the next three to six months?
Anthony Cherbak
For the next quarter I would say that you’re going to continue to see some weakness. I think that in talking to our folks in Europe they believe that they will start to see some pick up in the fall but clearly during their prime holiday season which Nate mentioned was July and August, we will continue to see some weakness. But again, we expect better results as we get in to the fall months.
Jim Janesky – Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Last question is you and other companies have talked over the last three months or so about having more conversations with clients but that’s not really not translating in to revenues yet. In fact, revenues continue to decline on an almost accelerating basis in a lot of different places, especially companies with international exposure. Do you think that the engagements with the clients and the conversations are to keep you for when the business does pick back up or are these conversations that you would expect to turn in to revenues in the near term in any meaningful way?
Thomas D. Christopoul
That’s very hard to predict but I would say the answer to that is both. We were talking this morning about reminding ourselves that we’re still half way through or just a little bit more than halfway through a calendar year in which none of our clients really had a lot of visibility at all in to their budgeting or planning process. So, the conversations that we had today with our clients are about everything ranging from project backlog that has been put on hold that they expect to be able to do at potentially some point in the future to as summer turns to fall some more I think substantive discussion with those clients about what they expect to be pursuing in project work for their fiscal and calendar 2010 which is as we remarked kind of the first calendar year in a little while here that our clients have had some visibility in to what a reasonably stable market might be.
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