Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Kate McShane with Citigroup.
Kate McShane - Citigroup
I just wanted to clarify one of your comments as you went through your outlook -- last quarter you had said you expected Q4 comps to improve as you anniversaried the downturn and the original guidance was for Q4 comps to be flat. Is that not the case any longer based on your comments?
William L. McComb
Very good question -- obviously you are hearing a slightly different tone from us as it relates to third and fourth quarter. You know, we think it’s very hard to call sales right now on it. We have said that as we begin to anniversary the big downturn starting in September, we’re saying that we believe the retail comp trend will flatten -- that doesn’t necessarily indicate zero. It could be in the -- the comps could be down in the low-single-digits, and that could happen. Obviously the profitability of the company in the fourth quarter will be very dependent on what the sales levels are. The call that we’ve put out here is that in general for the company, we think that sales will be down between 10% and 15% and that takes into account a projection that wholesale net sales will decline fairly significantly.
Kate McShane - Citigroup
Okay, great and are there any brands of yours at the department stores where you think inventories still need to be worked through?
William L. McComb
You know, as I think about it, no -- I don’t think we have any significant inventory bubbles out there. I think that what you are hearing in our tone is there is less of an inventory related issue around potential markdown liability in the fourth quarter but what we are doing is we are saying that the consumer phenomenon a la what we are hearing, seeing, and feeling about our own insight about back to school, the reticence of he consumer to show up and actually come back with a lot of spending suggests to us that the actual base consumer demand will be soft and that retailers will be -- that they will be promoting. Not from the perspective of last year to dump inventory -- our inventory levels are very clean at retail, even on the Liz business where there’s still some level of clearance out there and will be but that’s mainly in our outlet stores.
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