Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Joshua Zable with Natixis, go ahead.
Joshua Zable – Natixis
Hey guys, thank you very much for taking my call here. Kudos on the cost restructuring here and executing, you know, it’s tough out there but for what it’s worth we appreciate it. Just a couple of questions here. The market – you guys have been pretty upfront from the get-go about the market softening up. Clearly, we’re seeing that in the numbers and there’s a limit to what we can do. We’re also getting to the point where we are starting to anniversary some of that softness. Can you just talk about – I mean I don’t think anyone really predicted the mess that’s out there right now even if we did present some softening. Can you talk about maybe if your expectations have changed towards the level of softening the market if you can, and I know it’s hard to gauge of what inning we’re in, are we in the seventh inning of the softening or are we like in the third inning here, and just when do we see the uptake weather be because the (inaudible) or just because we?ve hit a point where we are at the bottom and regardless we should see a little growth?
Sam Westover
Well, you’re right. I don’t think anyone anticipated that the stock market and the credit markets would be behaving this way at this point so we were seeing some softening slope. I wouldn’t say recessionary but slow – slowing of growth in the US economy as far back as December and we reported that in February. And the reason that we think that the hearing aid market softens is based on consumer confidence. When people are insecure and they’ve seen their portfolios adversely impacted, they tend to defer elective healthcare purchases and the hearing aids in that category. So as long as we see continuing stream of news reports in the newspapers and on television that the economy is uncertain, consumer confidence tends to be lower and people defer their purchases. But because it is healthcare you can’t defer it forever. People still need to hear even in of that economy. The purchases will happen it’s just not as robust as we would have seen a year or two ago. So when will consumer confidence start to turn around? I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that one. We’re hoping sooner rather than later but it’s based on, in large part, on some of the macro events that are driving the overall economy and that’s above my day grade.
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