Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Tim Lee of Piper Jaffray.
Tim Lee - Piper Jaffray
In terms of your outlook for the balance of the year, I know last year you suspended providing any type of forecast, but now with the business appearing to have stabilized would you care to provide some type of framework on how we should think about revenues in the second half and what the bottom line is for the second half of this year?
David Drachman
In terms of the third quarter I think the historical trends between the second and the third quarter will remain intact on a going forward basis. In terms of our guidance practices we will reevaluate our guidance practices during 2010.
Tim Lee - Piper Jaffray
Fair enough. In terms of your US business, I think one of your competitors last night reported that they were seeing some geographic anomalies, seeing slow downs in one area, more growth in others and it wasn’t really consistent across the US. Are you seeing something similar on that front?
David Drachman
Well we have communicated that there has been some slow down for the past several quarters. In fact we communicated that in the fourth quarter that we saw a decline in the fourth quarter that tended to flatten during the first quarter. So, we have acknowledged that there has been a slow down in procedure volumes for the past several quarters; however we do think that the slow down in procedure volumes has basically flattened and is more consistent on a quarter-over-quarter basis on a going forward basis.
Tim Lee - Piper Jaffray
But, just in terms of slow down is it broad based or is it primarily in any one specific region or customer group?
David Drachman
We can’t comment on the regional differences. In general our position has been that there has been an overall slow down that again occurred beginning with the fourth quarter; it began to accelerate through the fourth quarter, and began to flatten in the first quarter and in general we believe that the flattening of procedure volumes has stabilized.
Tim Lee - Piper Jaffray
Great and then on the ABLATE pivotal trial, what is the definition of success in that trial? I mean what kind of efficacy thresholds are you trying to hit?
David Drachman
At six months the patients receive a 24-hour Holter monitor and if the cumulative AF is less than an hour and no one single episode is greater than five minutes and the patient has discontinued the use of antiarrhythmic drugs, the patient would be considered a success.
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