Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Okay. Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti & Co.
Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti & Co.
Clearly you seem to be making a lot of progress on margins. I don’t know if you can give us a sense of detail going forward how much we can expect the improvement to go. I mean, are we looking at potentially 40% sort of you know too high a threshold?
Andrew A. Krakauer
Well, you know, we obviously had a good quarter because we continue to promote disposables and sterilants and filters. I would say slow and steady improvement is the best way of looking at it, especially with some of the uncertainties as we go forward. So continue to look from here, I would say, for slow and steady improvement. As you know that’s always been my guidance.
Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti & Co.
And I know do you have much room for quarter price increases or is it sort of pretty much over in light of material costs coming down?
Andrew A. Krakauer
I would say for the rest of this year there is not a lot of room for price increases. So I would say we are where we are for the rest of the year.
Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti & Co.
And I know you continue to invest in sales and marketing. If you could give us an update with regards to, for example, the size of your sales force now and sort of, you know, the market in terms of expansion there.
Andrew A. Krakauer
Well, in general, we are out the full investment in terms of the numbers of people on the various teams. But on a year-to-year basis that includes some growth from prior year comparisons. But in places like Healthcare Disposables when we’re talking about increases we have – we may increase one sales position still this year. But we are putting a lot more money into reaching our customers as well as just general advertising and promotion of both new products and a slightly different approach because we feel it’s important to get out there and promote our products in this sort of difficult trading time. So it’s not about headcount. In some cases it’s simply about a year-over-year comparison. We’ve made the investments and in some cases it’s heavier spend in actual just marketing and advertising dollars.
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