Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press the "1" key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the "#" key. We'll wait for one moment, while we wait for participants to queue up. Our first question comes from Tim Nelson from Piper Jaffray.
Tim Nelson - Piper Jaffray
Hi, guys, nice quarter!
Ernie Whiton - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Nelson - Piper Jaffray
I would like to focus a little bit, first of all and foremost on your guidance. It seems to be a pretty healthy set of guidance. Has it changed at all from Q3, it seems to be about the same?
Ernie Whiton - Chief Financial Officer
From a bottom line perspective, it's the same, roughly a buck a share or so, but included in this are the investments in the hypothermia and LifeVest in business that Rick outlined during the call.
Richard Packer - President and Chief Executive Officer
So the top line is a little bit stronger?
Tim Nelson - Piper Jaffray
Little bit stronger. And since July, we've seen a lot of concern in the -- in the general market evolve about municipal finance and health or related to the subprime mortgage crisis and the impact on property values and tax receipts. I remember a few years ago, you had some issues with your municipal customers running out of or having some budget balancing problems and that had an impact on your business in the pre-hospital segment. Could you talk about what assumptions you've made in your guidance relative to that potential risk?
Richard Packer - President and Chief Executive Officer
It's a good question Tim, and you are recalling correctly that when the states had those unprecedented deficits, it certainly eventually found its way into the EMS market.
In '08, we are not anticipating much of an effect just because of the way that these things have a tendency to lag through. And if there is an effect, we expect it to maybe kick in at the end and perhaps in '09. But we're certainly not seeing anything right now and usually there is a pretty good lag time from when people begin to worry about it to when the EMS agencies actually get affected.
The other thing that may offset that, that's a little bit different than what was going on previously is that there still is a significant amount of grant money flowing through different parts of the Federal Government that are supporting EMS agencies. And I think that's a little bit different than where we were a few years ago. That money really hadn't found its way out to the streets, so to speak. So, that may also moderate the effect on this particular municipal service.
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