Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Shannon O'Callaghan – Barclays.
Shannon O'Callaghan – Barclays
Can you maybe give a little more flavor on this monthly trend you are talking about with things getting worse in January but then February looking a little better? Can you fill that out in terms of what you are hearing from your customer base? Is this a kind of stabilization you can have some confidence in or what do you make of it?
Michael Grebe
Obviously this is a period very limited visibility and I think I speak for a lot of CEO’s when I say that it has been quite some time since we have seen a period like this. I guess to maybe just put specific numbers on those figures that I gave you; I mentioned that December was down 13.5% on an organic basis. January was down 14.1% on a year-over-year basis and February so far month to date is down 11.1%. So it is nice to see numbers moving slightly in the right direction. It is still hard for us to determine the long-term trends there. Obviously we like the fact that it is picking up. Typically we would see more sales come at the end of the month than the middle of the month. We are still hopeful that February will end even stronger.
I guess if you think about what we sell to our customers as we have always said it is common, every day repair parts and typically customers can reign in hard for a period but at some point these are properties they own and need to be maintained. There are studies out there that show it is equally dangerous to under invest in a property than it is to over invest. We would like to think some level of stability might be coming back. As I said earlier we are clearly seeing larger renovation projects being put on hold, being stopped and so forth and we are not at this stage thinking those are going to snap back very quickly. So hard for us to really discern a long-term trend. All we know is we have pointed our sales professionals in the right direction, keeping them focused in on the initiatives we can execute on and hopefully gain market share during a tough period.
Shannon O'Callaghan – Barclays
What about the point on inventory? You started to take inventories down but you said you are not done. Is there a certain inventory turn level you are targeting to get to or how are you thinking about it?
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