Earnings Call Excerpt
Rite Aid Corporation (RAD)
F3Q09 Earnings Call
December 18, 2008 8:30 am ET
Executives
Frank G. Virtano – Chief Financial Officer, Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Administrative Officer
Mary F. Sammons – Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer
John T. Standley – President & Chief Operating Officer
Analysts
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs
Lisa Gill - J.P. Morgan
Edward Kelly - Credit Suisse
Mark Wiltamuth – Morgan Stanley
Robert Willoughby - Banc of America Securities
Bryan Hunt – Wachovia Securities LLC
[Caru Martinson] - Deutsche Bank Securities
Karen Eldridge - Goldman Sachs
Emily Shanks - Barclays Capital
Presentation
Operator
My name is Chris and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Rite Aid’s third quarter fiscal 2009 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks there will be a question and answer session. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Chief Financial Officer Frank Vitrano.
Frank G. Virtano
We welcome you to our third quarter conference call. On the call with me are Mary Sammons, our Chairman and CEO, John Standley, our President and Chief Operating Officer. On today’s call Mary will give an overview of our third quarter results and I will discuss the key financial highlights. John will have some comments and then we’ll turn it over for questions.
Before we start I’d like to remind you that today’s conference call includes certain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made in the context of certain risks and uncertainty that can cause actual results to differ. Also, we will be using a non-GAAP financial measure. The risks, uncertainties and definitions of non-GAAP financial measure along with the reconciliation to the relating GAAP measurements are described in our press release.
I would also encourage you to reference our SEC filings for more details. With these remarks I’d now like to turn it over to Mary.
Mary F. Sammons
Thank you for joining us today. As you can see from our release this morning, our operating performance, the best indicator of our progress and future success improved significantly in the third quarter. We increased same store sales, improved margin rates and most importantly achieved an 8.5% increase in adjusted EBITDA over last year and in an economy dramatically weaker than it was in the last third quarter.
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