Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from Joseph Mondillo - Sidoti & Co.
Joseph Mondillo - Sidoti & Co.
First, I just want to start on the restructuring; could you just go into a little more detail on how much restructuring was realized in the first quarter, how much you expect to realize going forward such as the second quarter and further, and you mentioned it’s going to be saving about $30 million annually by year-end, is that correct?
Stephen E. MacAdam
Yes, that’s not only as the result Joe, just a restructuring; that’s basically all inclusive of the cost reduction efforts that we put in place, and the reason the restructuring is lower than what we said in the last call, the restructuring number frankly, is that we have decided to not implement as aggressive steps in France as we were originally anticipating because the cost of negotiating social plans in France proved to be prohibitive. So we are going with an alternative approach that won’t require as much restructuring expense.
William Dries
We’ve total restructuring charges of about $2 million in the first quarter, and as Steve mentioned in his report, we currently estimate something in the neighborhood of $5 million, and the balance of that will be pretty well spread throughout the balance of the year pretty evenly.
Joseph Mondillo - Sidoti & Co.
You’re expecting to realize $30 million by year-end; so most of that will be realized in 2010 or can we expect some to be realized in 2009 as well?
William Dries
Certainly, yes; and many of the actions have been implemented and will continue to be implemented; the $30 million is an annualized run rate.
Joseph Mondillo - Sidoti & Co.
In regards to pension expenses which you talked about on the call, the last call; could you give some detail on how that affected the quarter and how that’s going to be affecting going forward?
William Dries
On the last call we had indicated that we had anticipated our pension expense for the year would about triple. Our pension expense last year was in the neighborhood of $5 million or thereabouts, and we were expecting it to be closer to the $15 million this year, and that’s about what we saw in the first quarter; our total pension expense for the quarter was a little over $4 million and that compared about $1.5 million last year.
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