Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from the line of Alexander Brand – Stephens Inc.
Alexander Brand
Good evening. Congratulations on a nice quarter.
Paul Stebbins
Thanks, Alex.
Alexander Brand – Stephens Inc.
Paul, I’d first like to just get your comments on the environment. It sounds like you had some working capital that was drained but I assume that’s just rising fuel; looks like your terms were stable. Are you getting any kind of push to pay sooner; is it affecting credit terms? And if not for you, what are you seeing with other suppliers in the market?
Paul Stebbins
Certainly a good question. I would say that, no, we haven’t seen so much of that on our front, but again, we enjoy the benefit of a huge competitive differentiator, which is our balance sheet and our liquidity. I think if anything I would say that from a supply perspective we represent sort of Safe Haven and Safe Harbor.
That balance sheet’s very important to our suppliers. They look at it and it becomes the competitive differentiator for us and it gives us some significant competitive advantage. Certainly, for smaller, privately held companies that are less well capitalized, this is not an easy market to be doing business in. There’s lot of volatility, prices have been high. And we’ve seen some evidence that it’s certainly put some pressure on some of the competitive landscape.
So from our point of view, I think that we’ve said all along that we knew that prices could remain high, and if nothing else, they would be certainly up and down. And we wanted to keep our powder dry and able to play in the space, and I think we’ve done that very well.
As Ira said, the uses of cash sequentially were the acquisition of AVCARD, so it’s nice to be able to pony up the cash and buy an acquisition and not have to worry about our balance sheet or our ability to protect our core, and we also put $51 million into the business, and that was an over 20% jump in prices.
From that perspective, prices could jump again and we would be in a position to play. Now that’s not something that everybody else in the market can say. So I think we’re in a good position, and we’re going to stay focused on that mission.
Alexander Brand – Stephens Inc.
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