Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Eric Bosshard from Cleveland Research.
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company
Jim, you commented on the outlook for revenue growth in 4Q that basically implied that volumes in the fourth quarter would be I guess similar to what we saw in the third quarter. First of all, can you confirm that’s right, and then secondly, the thinking within that one considering the trends that you’re seeing underlying in Europe, why the numbers wouldn’t be worse in 4Q and then as we go into 2009.
James M. Loree
I can confirm that I said that. Whether it’s right or not only time will tell. The unit volume was down 7% in the third quarter. Price was 3%, organic was down 4%. We think that unit volume will be slightly better, partially because the third quarter in Europe, a lot of the softness was already reflected in the third quarter number, so from a sequential perspective, there’s not a lot of negativity to happen, but also because the two things that we have going on, one in security, which is the mid quarter anniversary and the fourth quarter of the hardware loss, which is worth about $10 million to $20 million. It’s a $55 million a year loss so on a quarterly basis it’s about $12 million and about half of that is $6 million so you can see that’s working in our favor, and in addition to that, we did have a win, I don’t know if when the telephone cut out if you heard it or not, but we have a relatively significant win with a major construction DIY customer impacting consumer tools and storage and that load in has begun and it’s a rather significant win, so for all those reasons, we think that the volume... Assuming that the market conditions were similar in the fourth quarter to the third quarter, and the late third quarter in Europe, that we would probably be a point or so maybe favorable on a unit volume perspective.
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company
Then secondly within Europe, can you frame a little bit how the year-over-year Europe numbers have moved as we’ve gone from 2Q into 3Q and kind of where that’s going, just sort of what the overall year unit numbers look like?
James M. Loree
Europe is running about a point negative in terms of organic growth. Probably about 4 points negative in terms of physical volume, unit volume.
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