Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) The first question comes from the line of Tao Levy from Deutsche Bank
Tao Levy - Deutsche Bank
The strength in the quarter internationally, it seems like you get blocks of systems from countries, like 5 in Germany. Are these government tenders or how does that process work or is it is just coincidence? Also if you can just comment on what you see developing internationally just given the economic issues that they are also facing right now.
Benjamin Gong
You are right. We had for example 5 different sales in Germany. That was not part of one system sale for a government. They were actually five different individuals, but to your point selling three systems in Korea, and we do have probably a headwind with the exchange rate in Korea being much weaker against the dollar, and what you saw in Q4 was certainly a strong quarter, but as we saw in Q1 of last year, international system sales sequentially in Q1 are likely to be lower than what we saw in Q4.
Tao Levy - Deutsche Bank
In general, the international environment, what you’re getting from sales force, has that changed just as much as you’ve seen here in the US?
Marshall L. Mohr
When we look at the things that we can see, and the most important thing we can see are procedures, and Q4 procedures, both US and OUS were really strong, exceptionally strong OUS, so when we take the temperature of the individual salespeople and people focused on procedures, it seems really strong in DVP. We are starting see a little bit of nice uptake in DVH, which we have talked about in the past as has lagging. The cancer procedures around nephrectomy and partial nephrectomy, and as Lonnie mentioned in his summary, even some procedures that we don’t see being performed in the United States in great numbers are being performed in places like Asia, mainly thyroidectomy, gastrectomy, and some of the colon procedures, so I would say in general as we have said in the past, international is made up of multiple markets, but if I were to assess it globally, I would say that it was very strong in Q4. Individual systems, as we talked about in years past or quarters past, for example, when we see a spike in Belgium or in Korea, that’s going to vary from quarter to quarter, country to country.
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