Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Certainly. (operator instructions). Our first question comes from Joshua Zable from Natixis.
Joshua Zable - Natixis Bleichroeder
Hey guys, thanks for taking my question here and congratulation on a great quarter here in a really tough environment.
Richard Packer
Thank you
Joshua Zable - Natixis Bleichroeder
Just a couple of questions of clarity here; first of all, just let me understand, I know you guys are kind of keeping your outlook pretty similar. Obviously, I remember you guys have kind of talked about an uptick in the back half of the year. Ernie just some of your comments now seem to indicate that maybe, you still think there is going to be that uptick because some of the deferred contracts you're going to kind of come through and/or there is kind of going to be sort of the change in maybe the mix that you initially saw. So can you just kind of help clarify what gives you the confidence in the second half of the year? I mean just given the significant drop off in the hospital business in general obviously, I know you talked about the mix. But can you really make that up?
A. Whiton
So our view in the hospital market is that customers pent the whole products for seven to ten years. Products are standard of care. They can't decide not to carry them. When they get to the end of their life, they can get another quarter, another couple of quarters another little bit of time out of their products, because they are biomedical engineers on staff who are responsible for maintaining the equipment. But as time passes and this old equipment that's now past its time is ready for replacement, maintenance costs increase and the risk of a product failure increases and that is not a great profile for hospital. Our capital equipment, ZOLL's capital equipment is not incredibly expensive capital equipment relative to other capital equipment purchases made by hospitals.
So our belief is that the impact on our business from a capital equipment perspective and capital spending perspective is that customers can delay purchases when they lose visibility or they are unsure as to how much spending capability they're really going to have. Does that uncertainty rests and they start spending again. If their defibs are at the end of their life, we believe that we will be at the top at the pile. And Rick talked about some of the actions we are taking to try to help ensure that we're at the top of the priority pile as that happens.
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