Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from John Inch - Merrill Lynch.
John Inch - Merrill Lynch
Just to the fourth quarter guidance, remind us historically the profitability in the fourth quarter. It sounds like all else equal you are suggesting profit margins hold, but don’t fourth quarter margins typically expand? Or is there some other dynamic that’s occurring?
Ed Breen
John I think typically if you look back at our last few years you typically do see and expansion of margins in the fourth quarter, but I think in the economic environment that we’re in, the economy has removed a lot of that lift.
So, as we indicated in our remarks, we see a fourth quarter that from a numbers point of view from revenue and a margin point of view, looks an awful lot like the third quarter. In other words, the lift that we typically get, I think given the economic environment is just nowhere near as meaningful as we’ve seen historically.
Chris Coughlin
John, I would just again highlight as I said in my remarks if you looked at the safety products business higher fixed costs business we are doing our restructuring activities, but again the order rates have remained low. That would be similar with our flow control so that coupled with some product mix we don’t expect the lift we would get on higher volume that we’ve seen in the past.
John Inch - Merrill Lynch
Let me ask it this way. Did the quarter progress such that your mix issues became kind of worse at the end and through July? Or are you just being conservative?
Ed Breen
No, I don’t think there was anything from a mix point of view that is his at all different and there’s nothing to indicate that the fourth quarter would be any different, but again the headwind on the revenue side, as Chris spoke about, that’s impact on our product businesses is meaningful and based on where we sit today, we see a revenue outlook for the fourth quarter and a margin outlook for the fourth quarter that is very, very similar to the third quarter.
As Ed pointed out in his remarks there are a number of items including corporate expense, tax rate and the performance of Electrical and Mental Products that are adjustments to those numbers.
Chris Coughlin
So on a year-over-year basis we are still going up against high growth that we had last year in both the third and fourth quarters.
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