Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We will take our first question from Todd Slater with Lazard Capital Markets.
Todd Slater - Lazard Capital Markets
I have a question about the retail piece real quick -- it lost I think did you say $0.16 a share in the quarter?
Neal S. Nackman
Yes, that’s right, Todd.
Todd Slater - Lazard Capital Markets
And then last year it lost about $0.05 but I think that was only about 20 days, is that right?
Neal S. Nackman
That’s about right, yes.
Todd Slater - Lazard Capital Markets
So if you -- I don’t know if you can do this but you know, if it was sort of you had it for the whole time, you know, what would the comparable performance have been like for LY?
Neal S. Nackman
You know, it’s probably not a fair calculation because last year the business certainly was in quite a state of distress. You know, overall what we have been seeing so far at the Wilson’s retail business is slightly worse performance than last year and that’s really because we really feel that the strategies that we’ve implemented have not really just yet taken hold and we are now looking in the back half of this year for that to start to change.
Todd Slater - Lazard Capital Markets
And are you seeing any -- I know that’s your hope and plan but are you seeing any evidence of that maybe towards the latter part of the quarter, or why do you expect that to improve? And my real question is in your guidance, in your $0.95 to $1.05 range, what type of expectations do you have for retail relative to, you know, for this year relative to last year?
Neal S. Nackman
Let me start with what we are seeing as far as some proof positive -- we’ve got the month of August sales and we are starting to see some nice lift over the previous year and that starts to give us some comfort that the things that we are doing are working well for us.
In terms of what we are looking in the model for the second half of the year, last year was a very difficult year from an economy standpoint and a difficult year for us in terms of being able to strategically get done what we needed to get done at the stores. So we are looking for both top line growth and we are also looking for margin improvement. The margin improvement, if you looked at what we did in Wilson’s last year, it should be pretty easy to accomplish. And as I said, we are looking for the strategies to start to take hold for the last half of the year.
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