Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of John Glass with Morgan Stanley.
John Glass - Morgan Stanley
Troy, you highlighted the free cash in the business this year and what you expect to do next year, but you stopped short of talking about what's your plan to do with that. So if you could talk about either what you plan to do about it or what's the timeframe in which you might make that decision. And then just a clarification, you stopped short of saying comps are actually positive now. But I assume, just given the trend, that they would have to be currently positive. Is that true?
Troy Alstead
No, we don't report separate months. So I'm going to let you work on the arithmetic. All I'll let you know is that we had negative 1% comps for the quarter, and I'll repeat what we said. We had improving trends and we ended the quarter stronger than how we began the quarter. And just to be consistent with our history, we don't talk about specific months.
Now, back to your first question, our top priority for cash of course is investing back in our existing business, making sure we're maintaining the excellence of the assets that we have in place. And next priority is just fund the growth opportunities that we have, VIA?, new store growth around the world and so on. And we see abundant opportunities there.
With that said, I think fiscal 2009 demonstrates the cash-generating power that we have in this business. And I do expect that as we move, again, into 2010, we will have excess cash above and beyond those critical business needs that I've described in the business.
Now, with that said, I also remained a bit cautious about this economic environment that we're in. We are on the front end here of the first holiday quarter, which is our strongest cash producing quarter of the year. So we're not going to make any conclusions on how best to deploy that excess cash until it comes through this quarter.
What I will say is that we are evaluating how to distribute excess cash and what is the appropriate distribution strategy. We're having those discussions with our Board. And I would expect as we get somewhere to the latter half of our second quarter, then we will conclude that work and be ready to talk about what the next step is for us. So, more to come.
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