Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Your first question comes from Edward Aaron – RBC Capital Markets.
Edward Aaron – RBC Capital Markets
I was just hoping you could talk a little bit about further actions you might take to manage your cost structure. I realize you made some changes earlier in the year but your sales for 2008 aren’t actually down that much from where they were in the 2006 peak year and it seems like there’s potential for the rate of decline to accelerate in 2009 and just wanted to get a sense of further actions that you might need to consider to adjust to that. And also what limitations you might have in your ability to cut down your cost structure.
James L. Ziemer
On cost structure, we continue to have an ongoing program of operational excellence. Looking at both speed to market and quality and our cost structure throughout the organization it’s just not the cost to goods sold. Without going into specific actions we’re taking, but it’s just a continuous program and process that one of our strategic comparatives that we have constant attention on in all aspects of the business from manufacturing operations right through all our SG&A operations, marketing and engineering. It’s an important thing and it’s big on our plate. We’ll continue to address those issues.
Some of the cost structured things that those we’re currently seeing are some of the great enhancements we’ve seen. We’ve added to our product the redesign of our Tour line we have some new models and the V line Muscle and some other products. And so we continue to focus on the products. We certainly in this climate we did have a price increase on average going into the ’09 model year.
So with some of the commodity pricing and the metal prices plus there’s some future changes that add some compression on the margin as well as some of the actions to shut off production and some unplanned appropriations. We plan to address those as we continue to go further.
Edward Aaron – RBC Capital Markets
Then moving over to HDFS I guess a few questions there. First could you give us an order of magnitude of the retail price increase that you’re putting into effect? Second I realize it’s a moving target but do you have a sense of what the rates are on any incremental debt borrowing to fund those loans? And then third, as far as future funding needs are concerned you mentioned $1.5 billion in ’09. That seems like kind of a low number relative to what it’s been historically. And then finally, and I apologize for all the questions, but finally can you address just the strategy of buying back stock in light of the uncertainty in the capital markets and the funding needs for HDFS?
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