Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Michael Binetti – UBS Securities, LLC.
Michael Binetti – UBS Securities, LLC
Just a couple of housekeeping questions first off. Could you tell me from where we sit today and what you have flowing through the P&L what we could expect for acquisition related boosts to North America attendance in 2009?
Ann M. Sardini
Probably in the range of 2%.
Michael Binetti – UBS Securities, LLC
From where we sit today, could you walk us through, I’m really trying to beat up on the attendance numbers here, can you walk us through how the attendance numbers, how you see them playing out through the quarter just so we have some idea of the cadence you guys are looking at?
I’m just trying to understand the run rate that you guys expect and what your guidance implies. David, it sounded like you were saying it could be at about today’s run rate or maybe even worse. So maybe you could just clarify that for us.
David P. Kirchhoff
You mean for 2009?
Michael Binetti – UBS Securities, LLC
Correct.
David P. Kirchhoff
As we express the guidance for attendances in 2009 you know it’s an interesting exercise for the obvious reason being that the macro economic environment is to say the least volatile right now and it’s a little bit difficult to predict how the consumer mindset that we’re seeing in Q1 which is as bad as it’s ever been since it’s been measured what that’s going to look like in Q2 through Q4.
So what we did when we were forecasting our attendances for the year is we tried to come up with a reasonable range that somewhat reflected that inherent volatility in the broader environment but was based significantly on some of the trends we were seeing in the first two months of this year. I don’t have any reason to believe that we’re going to see degradation in the back half of the year nor am I presuming we’re going to see a sudden hockey stick in improvement.
We assume that what we’re seeing now is probably going to be fairly typical of what we see over the course of the year and that’s how we approached our view of the attendance forecast as we move through 2009 understanding that there’s the usual things associated with seasonality. For example Easter timing will somewhat benefit Q1 versus Q2 and there’s some of the usual idiosyncrasies that at this point you’re used to in following Weight Watchers.
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