Earnings Call Excerpt
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Inc. (GAP)
F2Q08 Earnings Call
October 14, 2008 1:00 pm ET
Executives
William J. Moss – Vice President and Treasurer
Christian W.E. Haub - Executive Chairman of the Board
Brenda M. Galgano - Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President
Eric Claus – President and Chief Executive Officer
Analysts
Karen Howland – Barclays Capital
Karen Short – Friedman, Billings, Ramsay & Co.
John Heinbockel – Goldman Sachs
Robert Summers – Pali Capital
Presentation
Operator
Welcome to The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company’s conference call. (Operator Instructions) Chairing today’s call will be Christian Haub, Executive Chairman. Also participating on today’s call will be Eric Claus, President and Chief Executive Officer and Brenda Galgano, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
I would now like to introduce Bill Moss, Vice President and Treasurer, who will read A&P’s Safe Harbor disclosure.
William Moss
This morning’s presentation may contain forward-looking statements about the future performance of the company and is based on management’s assumptions and beliefs in light of information currently available. The company assumes no obligation to update this information.
These forward-looking statements are subject to uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements including, but not limited to, competitive practices and pricing in the food industry generally and particularly in the company’s principal markets, the company’s relationships with its employees, the terms of future collective bargaining agreements, the cost and other effects of lawsuits and administrative proceedings, the nature and extent of continued consolidation in the food industry, changes in the financial markets which may affect the company’s cost of capital or the ability to access capital, supplier quality control problems with the company’s vendors and changes in economic conditions which may affect the buying patterns of the company’s customers.
I will now turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Christian Haub.
Christian Haub
The key themes coming out of our second quarter are the following: The integration of Pathmark and synergy realizations are on track. Our core AP business is making solid top and bottom line progress. We are experiencing some transition related issues with our Pathmark business which we are in the process of addressing. The economic and competitive environments remain challenging and our stock price suffered an unprecedented decline which we believe is not all based on the fundamentals of the business but is driven by exogenous circumstances in the financial markets.
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