Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Rosemarie Morbelli with Ingalls & Snyder. Please proceed.
Rosemarie Morbelli – Ingalls & Snyder
Good morning, all.
Joe Gingo
Hello.
Paul DeSantis
Good morning, Rosemarie.
Rosemarie Morbelli – Ingalls & Snyder
So, what was the capacity utilization in November and December at that particular level of business?
Joe Gingo
Paul?
Paul DeSantis
I don’t have the month of November handy. Let’s see if we can dig that out. We will have to dig it out. It was significantly lower than the capacity utilization we reported for the quarter though.
Paul DeSantis
Rosemarie, we can’t find that right now. We will surely get it to you.
Rosemarie Morbelli – Ingalls & Snyder
Okay. And as a follow-up to that, why wait until you see February environment before you actually decide to cut some more. It sounds to me and I don’t have the number I just asked for, but it sounds to me as though you still have a lot of excess capacity both in Europe and North America, so why not take those steps that you need to take right now?
Joe Gingo
Rosemarie, actually I don’t think we have a lot of excess capacity in North America at this point in time with the cuts we announced in December which were fairly significant cuts. I think your question is very relevant with regard to Europe, and let me assure you that we are looking very hard at the situation in Europe right now. As soon as I have specific plans, they will be announced, and there’s a strong possibility that will be before February.
Rosemarie Morbelli – Ingalls & Snyder
Okay. And then lastly if I may, just a quick question. What triggered your separating European and Asian results considering that Asia is still a very small number?
Paul DeSantis
We have a General Manager of Asia that we appointed as of September 1 to manage Asia. That General Manager reports directly to Joe who is our chief operating decision maker when it comes to looking at segments and evaluating performance. And as a result of that, we felt it was necessary to break that out as a separate segment.
Joe Gingo
Well, also, Rosemarie, to your point, I think in the future, not in the short term, Asia is going to have to be a growth region for this company, and I wanted to begin to develop a specific Asian strategy now and I felt it would be better placed by having an individual responsible for it who didn’t have responsibility for our much larger European operation and our much smaller Asian operation. So a lot of my decision was based on strategy development.
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