Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question will come from the line of Eric Bosshard with Cleveland Research. Please proceed.
Michael Hoffman
Good morning Eric.
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company
Good morning guys.
Stephen Wolfe
Good morning.
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company
A couple of questions, first the SG&A performance in the quarter was quite impressive in terms of year-over-year contraction. Two things, one can you talk about how the SG&A is down as much as it is $10 million or $12 million in the quarter. If that is sustainable sort of how is it done and is it sustainable? And then secondly the actions that you've taken recently in the last it sounds like 30 or 45 days, what's the incremental benefit, net benefit that we should expect from that as we go through the year?
Stephen Wolfe
Yes, this is Steve, Eric. That is the result of a couple of things. One is spending which you said that's the primary piece where we told you I think even at the fourth call -- quarter call in December that we were starting to watch open head accounts. We were filling those begrudgingly. In fact, we didn't fill many from December through now. So we're getting the benefit of some of that.
The overall budget spending, we've had several rounds of spending through our divisions in terms of cut backs in spending. And then the other thing is we had just an unusual item. We had a distributor change cost in last year's first quarter, we didn't have this year that makes that number look a little bigger. But to your point those should be sustainable. Those are things that we will continue to look at as we go forward to see if we need to do even more and the thing that drilled us as you mentioned to our announcement earlier last week in terms of the overall cost cutting we've done in terms of head reductions, salary freezes, all that sort of things and that those dollars are somewhere in the $16 million range in terms of sustainable benefit that's what you should expect and we will continue to watch that to see if there is anything else we need to do in any of those categories as we get further into the end of the year.
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company
And that 16 million, is that net of expenses to implement that and is there a run-rate that we should start to think is appearing, and coming in the second quarter?
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