Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Your first question comes from the line of William Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
William Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey
I guess on the EPA part it sounds like you’re uncertain in the fines. Is there any chance of other recalls or have you kind of gone through all the product lines by this point?
James Hagedorn
No, I think we’ve done sort of a high view of all of our active registrations so I don’t think we see the sort of significant issues that we saw on the four that are sort of in the news. We are right now, we’ve brought a third party in to take a look at all of the detail in our active registrations and see if there’s anything else there. But, that process is underway, in fact, that really very fine sort of view just started today and this is something we’ve been talking about with the EPA and they’ve encouraged us to do and we want to do.
William Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey
Then in terms of just what you talked about on strong April sales, is there any way to kind of shed the easy comps and the catch up from a weak March and figure out what the consumer is doing on the global consumer part of the business? I mean, are you seeing some sensitivity there, or is it fairly normal?
William Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey
Bill, it’s the big question, I think. It’s a righteous one that you’re asking. If you ask Barry, Barry would say that he believes that there’s less consumer foot traffic and that’s driving about half the issues and I think he’d say half of it is weather. I’m trying to make sense of for instance the northeast where they’ve had pretty darn good weather so when I come back on Monday’s and they’re saying, ?Oh the weather was terrible.? We’ve actually had great weekends on the east. And, by the way, last week’s numbers are also looking good so far based on the POS we’re seeing. But, just for example, and this just makes it confusing for me, I don’t know what the answer is other than I think Barry’s probably more right than he is wrong. But, if you look at the northeast they had like almost 100% increase in the month of April, no admittedly against easy comps because that same sales region last year would have been near despair. But, year-to-date they’re up like almost a third. Year-to-date POS which I think is really good and so you say, ?Okay what the heck does that say about the consumer?? And, when you ask them, as far as our sales folks, ?What do you see about sort of competitive activity?? They say, ?We’re doing really well and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of competitive pressure out there.?
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