Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Anthony Gikas - Piper Jaffray
Anthony Gikas - Piper Jaffray
Could you give us a quick comment on the inventory levels of Grand Theft Auto IV at retail, are you expecting, it sounds like your guidance might be implying fewer shipments in the fourth quarter then maybe we were expecting and could you just outline your view of where the upside was in the quarter, there was a considerable disconnect on the EPS relative to your guidance and where was the upside relative to your expectations or guidance?
Strauss Zelnick
I think the upside was really across several titles, GTA IV obviously outperformed but Top Spin 3 outperformed especially well in Europe. Carnival Games turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving and since we launched the [inaudible] it’s only improved the value of the franchise in sales of that franchise. Civilization Revolution also outperformed so I think if you look at our release schedule just about all of our titles have outperformed expectations and so I wouldn’t hang too much on GTA IV although obviously that contributed a lot to what’s going on.
And then finally you also have to look at our cost savings initiatives, I think while we’ll take some cost savings and reinvest it in other parts of the business overall I think we’re operating much more efficiently then we were certainly a year ago and those benefits benefited us during the quarter so all of those factors together contributed to the outperformance of the quarter and obviously we’re very proud of our performance.
With respect to inventory levels, we don’t disclose inventory levels in the channel. I know there are those that do channel checks, and you can probably get it that way, but we don’t, we’re comfortable where our inventory levels are and we’re comfortable that going into the fall and holiday season that sales of GTA IV will pick up.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey - Janco Partners
Mike Hickey - Janco Partners
Just done some quick math, but it looks like based on the mid point of your new guidance your stock is trading at about 11x, you stripped $440 in cash and trending about 9x, that compares to a market of about 14x in a group, trading on 21x, you ex out yourself, it trading about 24x, so what do you do to get a more adequate multiple for the economics you’re generating and do you think at some level the expired tender from EA is creating a cap to your stock price?
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