Question-and-Answer Session
David D. Poplar
Yeah, we’ve got a mic coming over.
Unidentified Analyst
I essentially wanted to ask on the operating wage line, you mentioned that you had some benefit from lower healthcare costs. Can you quantify what kind of benefit that was and what that represented?
Donald J. Radkoski
We had in the fourth quarter about $1.8 million in benefit, reduced revenue fourth quarter this year compared to fourth quarter last year in healthcare, and about $3.3 million for the full year. So we had some -- you know, we are self-insured and certainly we had some good experiences there, especially in the fourth quarter.
Unidentified Analyst
And is that related to just higher costs last year, more claims, or is it --
Donald J. Radkoski
We had a very difficult last year. I mean, many of the claims, if you’ll remember there was a quarter or two last year where we had significant increases in healthcare costs, second quarter in particular and really for the full year. So I think it’s mostly a function of somewhat of last year and I think this year’s claims may be slightly lower. We’ve done maybe a little better job but we are self-insured so the claims are the claims.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay, and then just quickly on other operating, what caused the significant deleverage there? Were there fuel surcharges or --
Donald J. Radkoski
Well, we had taxes. There were some -- you know, a couple -- a few different items in there that made it. There wasn’t anything that could -- that I could point to or that would jump out at it right now.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
Donald J. Radkoski
Any other questions? If not, I’m going to turn it over to Roger Williams to really get into the business side of things.
Presentation on 2009 Outlook
Donald J. Radkoski
One point on FY08 I want to mention is just I had mentioned our current price increase on [inaudible] restaurants is 2.4%. It is actually 2.8%, so I just want to clarify that. That was in the release that went out for -- or our price increase, our current one is -- ’09 yeah, for May. That’s where we’re at currently.
And then I guess just FY08 is behind us, so I’ll take a few minutes and talk about the outlook and kind of where see things heading. First of all, looking at earnings per share, we are targeting earnings per share of $2 to $2.10 a share, diluted share. You see that compares with $1.95 and I think as a reminder that we are in the $1.95, that includes about $5.1 million in net pretax gains, if you’ll remember, from the slide that we have, which was a gift certificate breakage, as well as the other items that made up $5.1 million.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »








