Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Edward Aaron – RBC Capital Markets.
Edward Aaron – RBC Capital Markets
I wanted to start by asking about the lack of sales guidance. It's a bit out of character for you and I understand there's some uncertainty out there, but the trends actually haven't really been that volatile month to month or certainly quarter to quarter at least over the last two or three quarters. I'm wondering why there's so much uncertainty right now to the point where you wouldn't be able to give some preliminary guidance. And secondly, you gave earnings guidance. You obviously have a range of sales expectations that you need to get to those numbers. Can you give us a sense of roughly minimum sales levels that you would need to have in order to hit your guidance?
Steven Spinner
We thought long and hard about whether to provide revenue guidance for the year or not, so it's certainly not something that we took lightly. Basically, the rational is this. We have a ton of new business proposals out there. These things take a long time and we're not sure when they're going to hit. We feel pretty confident that some of them are.
We see a lot of fluctuation week to week in year over year sales growth. So we may go plus seven, negative two, plus four, negative three, and as I said in my prepared remarks, we're starting to see some stability as you look out over the period of a month or six weeks or eight weeks, but still a lot of volatility week to week.
What I would tell you is that I think it's relatively safe to say that we'll probably provide some update regarding revenue guidance quarter to quarter and I think it's a safe assumption to use a 1% to 3% in Q1. But we didn't want to lock ourselves into giving specific guidance for the entire year at this time.
Edward Aaron – RBC Capital Markets
As far as a minimum sales level for the full year to get to the $1.48, is that something you feel comfortable providing?
Steven Spinner
I think depending on the different variables as to where the tax rate comes in, what happens from an interest rate standpoint, what happens with fuel, the 1% to 3% if you model it as you model out, if you play with some of the variables, I think if you take where we are in Q4, depending on where the items I just mentioned come out, I think that at 1% to 3%, there's an opportunity to make the bottom end of the range, but it really is, okay does fuel go in our favor, where does the tax rate come out, where do interest rates go.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »





