Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Joseph Altobello - CIBC World Markets.
Joseph Altobello - CIBC World Markets
On the Liz quarterly flow here if you look to fiscal 09. How much of the incremental Liz revenue do you expect to see in the first half of the year versus the second half?
Stephen J. Smith
I think that’s sort of reflected Joe in the guidance that was in the press release. We provided the guidance for the first half of the year.
Joseph Altobello - CIBC World Markets
Yes. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s 60%, if it’s 65%. Is that the ballpark figure you’re looking at?
Stephen J. Smith
Yes. It’s consistent with the overall business.
Joseph Altobello - CIBC World Markets
It sounds like at least at the retail level in the US the department store channel started to see some improvement. How did Europe flow throughout the June quarter? Was it worse towards the end or did you see some level of improvement there?
E. Scott Beattie
I would say that it wasn’t significant one way or the other. It was kind of continued weakness during the second half and what we’re seeing through the summer and into the first half of this year as I mentioned was continued weakness particularly in the UK and Spain and France and Germany markets.
Joseph Altobello - CIBC World Markets
Obviously the Liz deal, at least in our eyes, looks pretty good. Are there other similar potential deals out there where you’ve got a captive fragrance business within a fashion house of this size?
E. Scott Beattie
The answer I would provide for that is that we’ve done probably somewhere between 10 and 20 of these kinds of acquisitions over the years where we acted as a distributor for the brand and then ultimately acquired the business. There are certainly lots of those opportunities that continue to exist, not just in North America but internationally. Obviously with the number of new launches you have in fragrances on a global basis, it creates opportunities to acquire these brands over time. So that will continue to be a growth driver for us as it has been over the last 15 years.
Joseph Altobello - CIBC World Markets
Are these similar in size to the Claiborne?
E. Scott Beattie
Well they’re different sizes. The size isn’t as critical to us. It’s really the quality of the brands and what we feel we can do with those brands on a long-term basis. So we obviously aren’t interested in very small businesses but we are interested in classic fragrances from $25 million and up on a global basis and brands that have been around that we feel that we can fold into our portfolio and provide to our different channels of distribution.
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