Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Deborah Weinswig - Citigroup
Deborah Weinswig - Citigroup
A lot of questions these days on food disinflation and how we should expect that to impact your business in 2009.
Richard Galanti
My guess is its going to go the other way. Inflation was a short-lived word at least right now. I’ll give you just a little color, random examples. If I looked at our various LIFO pools, what we call food and sundries, in Q1 it was still up about 0.50% in pricing. In sundries it was up about 0.50%. In electronics and computers and what have you, it was down 2.5%. Gas which also includes sporting goods, office, automotive, was down all because of gas. And tobacco, beer and wine was essentially flat.
But I just again look at some examples, in something as basis as ham and bacon and butter, are all down about $0.50 on $9 and $10 price points so down 4% or 5%. These are recent price decreases. Cheerios down $0.50 on a $5.50 item. Canned tomatoes down $0.80 on a $7.50 item. Forty cents down on juice, orange juice.
A year ago New York steaks were $7.99, they’re now $5.99, that’s all because of a lower demand. But we’re doing a heck of a job with that stuff. And on the non-food side, again just looking down a whole list here and just picking out a few, Kirkland Signature Diapers and Kirkland Signature Baby Formula are both down a couple of buck on $20 and $40 price points so 5% to 10%.
So we are seeing some of this come down. Gas of course is way down. You feel like you forgot to fill up your tank when it only says $38. Again who knows what tomorrow brings. When you read the paper there’s nothing in the world going on that’s going to change this very dramatically so my off-the-cuff guess, and its truly a guess, is is we’ll probably have a LIFO credit for the year whereas just three months ago, we in our own budgets were adding $0.03 or $0.04 to the number for the year of a hit.
So my guess is there’s going to be very little if any and probably a little again, headwind if you will on pricing.
Deborah Weinswig - Citigroup
And then just being in the [inaudible] and increase in terms of the instant manufacturer rebates which I believe are vendor supported markdowns, can you talk about the trend year-over-year in terms of what you’re seeing there.
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