Question-and-Answer Session
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the questions-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Angela Larson. Please go ahead.
Angela Larson
Good afternoon and thank you for taking the question. The trends on the international sales have been generally overall weaker than the overall business, but with the restructuring you have seen, you are looking for them to be inline with the US business. So tell us a little bit more about why you are actually expecting, accelerating growth from that franchise?
Steven Carlson
Thanks Angela. When you are going to clinic, you may change the international structure, but local representatives and the local regional times zone and then more effectively partner with our distributors in building their business. What we have also seen is we are having that local presence and partnering with the more identified appropriate distributor pool, we are seeing faster, new distributor agreements better new distribution agreements and then acceleration of key product registrations within those countries. So we actually expect to see international sales towards the back half of the year meet or exceed our US growth rates.
Angela Larson
That’s helpful. Could you give us all the EBITDA on the tax rate outlook for 2008?
Stephen Garcia
From the tax rate perspective, we believe that we will get back to what we had experienced and in prior years, more in the range of 38 to 40%. Of course, we are exploring ways that we can look to leverage our infrastructure or any advantage we may have we’ll be able to lower that rate. But this year was kind of anomaly for us, and again it was reflective of the class associated with the RF offering that were not deduct able.
Angela Larson
Thank you. And my very last question. Looking at the number of reps, you did not add any reps in the fourth quarter, should we view that as a negative sign or an opportunity that you are expanding the leverage of the existing sales force?
Stephen Garcia
When we look at the fourth quarter, and as we look at sales reps overall, we add reps based on the demand that we have within new accounts. We don’t try to get in front of growth by adding reps pre materially. So in the fourth quarter the decision was made in order to focus on our business, we still see strong new account growth and you can anticipate 3 to 5 additional reps per quarter have been added throughout 2008.
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