Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
With pleasure, sir. (Operator's Instructions) Gentlemen, our first question comes from the line of David Burtzlaff of Stephens, Inc.
David Burtzlaff - Stephens, Inc.
Good morning, Tom and Dan, and congratulations on a great quarter. A few questions, Tom, I know you kind of mentioned it and I think I just kind of skipped it. Can you give the retail in the scrap margins again?
Thomas A. Bessant Jr.
Sure. Well, basically for the total company overall the retail margin was 38.4% for retail, scrap was 28.5% for a combined 34.2%.
David Burtzlaff - Stephens, Inc.
Okay. And then how much stock did you buy back in the quarter and what was the dilution from the convert?
Thomas A. Bessant Jr.
The dilution probably amounted to about a penny as hare, Dave. We finished on the quarter at 30.6 million shares. We did buyback stocks during the quarter and we are filing our Q3 either today or tomorrow for the specifics on that. We invested about $11 million in the quarter in share buyback.
David Burtzlaff - Stephens, Inc.
Okay. And then in terms of your guidance for next year, what kind of macroenvironment do you anticipate, primarily employment, that's based into those estimates? And also what kind of share count are you looking for as well?
Daniel R. Feehan
Yeah. Let me take the first part of that. Again, I think as I indicated in my comments, we remain petty cautious about the macroeconomic environment. If you look at our business across the US and you've got to understand reasonably where we're concentrated in markets, we obviously have a big presence in Texas which has probably done better than a lot of the other regions around the country, but we also have a big presence in Florida and Nevada. In the Midwest I think that it's been particularly hurt by unemployment levels and falling home prices as I indicated earlier.
So I remain pretty cautious and my guidance to our FD&A group here has been not to expect a significant resurgence in retail demand in either the fourth quarter or next year. I hope I'm wrong about that, but as I travel about and I talk to our folks out in the field, I don't have the confidence yet that the economy's going to be recovering to the point where we're going to be a strong resurgence in retail demand. Obviously we're in some markets as I indicated, in regions of the country, that when the country does begin to come back people regain some confidence and start spending again, we ought to be enjoying pretty significant increases and I view that in the future as a positive.
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