Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Todd Schwartzman – Sidoti & Company
Todd Schwartzman – Sidoti & Company
What type of price increases have you announced if any, non-North American?
Brian Walker
We did a price increase in international. I think they’re all fairly consistent, somewhere in that sort of 4% range. We’re a little bit ahead in international. We did it in two steps. One of them came in a little bit faster then the one we’re doing in the US. But overall they’re all in about the same range give or take.
Todd Schwartzman – Sidoti & Company
Is there any way to quantify to what extent international sales might have benefited in Q4 from buying ahead?
Brian Walker
We don’t believe that there’s any impact of buying ahead in this quarter. That’s more likely to be seen as we get into—and it won’t show up in sales as you know if you’ve watched us in the past, as much as it will show up in orders right before the price increase. But to be frank, by the time—when we make the announcement, we don’t give anybody advance warning of the announcement so it’s not going to come in prior to the announcement, its going to come in prior to the effective date typically. We didn’t really announce the price increase until the very end of the quarter in May sometime. So very unlikely we’d see any impact of that other then—in fact I can’t think of any part of the business we’d have seen an impact of that in yet.
Todd Schwartzman – Sidoti & Company
I know you’ve mentioned some pockets of strength in the Middle East, South America, parts I guess of Asia, on the whole in the month of June, what type of change in business conditions are you seeing overseas?
Brian Walker
I would say we don’t have enough data yet on June to really make any comment on June. We’re only a couple of weeks in to June and right after year-end and first two weeks of any period, the data is hard to read because of what happens right before you finish a period so, I would say I don’t think we have any read there that would have been a change in June. Overall if you looked at the information that Curtis gave you, we saw pockets of strength throughout international in the fourth quarter. If there’s any area that we’ve looked at that we’re paying attention to is some of the big financial centers where of course all the issues come in with the bank would be the area that we’d be paying most attention to going forward.
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