Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Christopher Warren - Caris & Co.
Christopher Warren - Caris & Co.
Just wanted to drill in on fourth quarter guidance a bit, I noticed it looks like the street’s $18.5 million on the top line. You’re guiding, it seems a little bit below that. Does your guidance reflect any incremental hesitation or any change in the market environment from three months ago?
Howard Root
No, it doesn’t. Here’s what happened this year. We’re hitting our annual guidance and we give annual guidance in the quarter ahead all the time. We substantially exceeded it, I think, in the second quarter?
James Hennen
The second quarter and fourth quarter numbers were never adjusted by the analysts.
Howard Root
So what happened is I think the analysts back loaded a lot of the growth. We got the growth earlier than they were projecting, but consistent with what we were seeing, and so we’re kind of where we thought we’re going to be. So it’s not anything about our business or our products that’s causing the analysts to be higher than what we’re projecting in the fourth quarter.
Christopher Warren - Caris & Co.
Understood, and just as a follow-up to that, just looking at the strong performance of the D-Stat family this quarter, any reason to think that next quarter, on a sequential basis, there would be much deviation from the number and performance you put up this time around?
Howard Root
No. I mean, the third quarter, keep in mind, is our summer months, generally. So that’s the slowest in terms of some of the procedures now. More on the Vari-Lase side than on the cath lab procedures, but there’s a little bit of that as well in the diagnostic area. So we think the fourth quarter will certainly be above the third quarter in terms of the hemostat products, and the D-Stat Dry in particular.
Operator
Your next question comes from Ernie Andberg - Feltl & Co.
Ernie Andberg - Feltl & Co.
The only line item that looks high relative to my expectations is in the R&D line and, James; you made some comments there. What products are really driving that and where do you think that heads in 2010? Does it stay up at the 10% or 11% level? That’s what I’m searching for.
Howard Root
The R&D is the one item that we can decide what we want to do as much as we want to do it, and this year we were really pushing to get a lot of new products out with 12 new products launched, and I think that sets us up well, and as we’re kind of continuing to hit our number and grow, I don’t want to limit our innovation by saying, let’s not get on these new products.
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