Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James.
Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James
First off, Roy, receivables rose year-over-year with sales down. Was there a change or an extension of credit to certain customers or what was the driver there?
Jeff M. Fettig
You’re looking at the cash flow. If you look at the balance sheet, you’ll see our receivables. Compared to Q3 a year ago are 2.7 versus I think 2.6 a year ago but when you look at the cash flow statement which I think is what you're looking at, the key item driving that difference on cash flow is we had very sharp declines in our volumes in November and December so what we traditionally have somewhere in that $2.5 million range of receivables as sort of a normal run rate of Whirlpool.
If you’ll recall, that number was down to about 2.1 at the end of last year and so what you’re really seeing is the delta from the drop off in volumes at the end of the year which lowered receivables and we had the inverse of that at the end of the third quarter. We saw the strongest part of the pickup in both August and September which drove our receivables higher and so you sort of get the worst case scenario in terms of the comparability for the cash flow purposes.
We are not seeing significant change in terms of the second part of your question and from an overall credit balance perspective, our current receivables are actually slightly better than what they were at the end of last year.
Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James
It looks like price mix slipped sequentially. Is it mostly price, mostly mix, how should we look at that on a go forward basis?
Michael A. Todman
The fact of the matter is we did see a slight decline in some of our pricing for models that we have in the marketplace. Our promotional as I actually talked about on the last call, we were going to balance market share with a promotional activity and that’s what the primary driver. Mix actually continues to be very strong.
Sam Darkatsh - Raymond James
Roy, what should we look at for tax rate in 2010 and beyond?
Roy Templin
I’m really not prepared to talk about the tax rate in 2010 and beyond. I will remind you that as you know the key item that’s driving our rate to a credit versus what is traditionally a debit are the energy tax credits and we do anticipate continuing to earn energy tax credits in 2010.
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