Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(operator instructions). And the first question comes from the line of Catriona Fallon with Citi. Pleas go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst
Hi, this is Dave Ross (ph) for Catriona. How are you guys.
Stephen Lacy
Hi, Dave. Good morning.
Unidentified Analyst
Morning to you too. You talked a little bit earlier about how total expenses were down about 4.5% for the first half of the year. Do you have any idea how much the expense decline would have been if you exclude paper, postage, fuel you all said non-controllable costs?
Stephen Lacy
We can certainly made that calculation, obviously it would have been higher because the paper prices are up about 18% in the quarter. So Dave we can make that calculation and get back to you on a follow-up call. But paper prices are up about 18%, postages up about 3 and that's probably about where our printing prices are as well.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. well just following on to that. Your guidance for Q3 in terms of at least the advertising revenue suggest that, total revenue will likely be down a little bit more in Q3 then it was for the first half of the year.
Given that in all the cost cutting that you've done to date, both -- and your recent announcement this month and then previously in June last year. Where should we expect to see expenses falling for Q3 and beyond, in terms of how much cost cutting you've been able to do today?
Stephen Lacy
Well I -- if you make the assumption of the volumes that we gave you, because that's really important, especially on the publishing side because as ad revenue goes up or goes down, there is a relationship to all of the cost to good factors we talked about further. But you're going to see our expenses run down a little more in the back half of the year than in the front half, because of the move that we made effective at the beginning of the fiscal year, basically assuming that the revenue assumptions we've given hold true.
Of course if revenue begins to pickup, especially on the print side, total expenses will rise of course because of the increased cost of paper, printing and postage, but that would be a good problem to have, you can get my address.
Unidentified Analyst
Just one other question, with regards to publishing advertising revenues, what we've seen to-date in Q3 is that ad pages aren't running down as much as slightly below 15% as what you said revenues are.
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