Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Budd Bugatch - Raymond James
Budd Bugatch - Raymond James
If you look at your company-owned retail and compare it to the system-wide retail performance in comps, can you give us a feel of that difference and how that progressed during the quarter with total sales being down 14.5% at retail. I’m more concerned about how your company-owned is doing compared to the independent dealer base.
Kurt Darrow
For clarity sake I will answer that question in two ways, one the statistic we give on the system is written sales and the numbers we report on our own retail segment is delivered. So there is a lag factor there between the two measurements.
Number two, due to some of the markets we’re in particularly Florida and some other operational issues we have, we are not performing as well as many of our independents and that’s one of the reasons we’ve made a change in leadership and organizational structure within our retail group and we don’t think there’s any reason that we can’t perform at our independent dealer levels but we haven’t been doing that for some time and we’re intent on changing that trend.
Budd Bugatch - Raymond James
How did it progress during the, you’re obviously October for everybody was a significant downdraft, many have said it had actually continued into November and I’m curious is you have any additional color on that, can you give us a feel of those issues?
Kurt Darrow
We are experiencing the trend just like everyone else. October was a significant downdraft and we were not immune to that. We did change some of our reporting this quarter. We normally only give a quarter’s same store sales indicators, we gave the month of October to give you some idea of the impact its had on us and that’s the extent of what we want to comment on but obviously things are remaining very difficult.
Budd Bugatch - Raymond James
Could you go through the mechanics, I know its somewhat arcane on the calculation of excess availability but that does impact as we go through the rest of the year your ability to avoid being in a covenant-tripping issue and which I think has an impact maybe on the balance of the dividend. Could you go through how that calculation works and maybe what were the LCs that impinge on that as well.
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