Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Your first question comes from the line of the Steve Denault of Northland Securities.
Steve Denault - Northland Securities
You provided a little bit, in a way, of color regarding the first quarter, I think you had mentioned we should anticipate ad revenue to be flat relative to the fourth quarter, and then the lead revenue up modestly which is seasonally related I would imagine. Let me ask this, I mean, how many new car dealerships were there in the quarter, was there any significant change on a sequential basis?
James Riesenbach
Steve, you know the answer is that we are relatively flat in fourth quarter relative to third quarter. Fourth quarter is typically the weakest quarter from a seasonal basis and we pretty much maintained our dealer base during that period. As far as your questions, yes, I would say that on the advertising side, we would expect that this quarter will be relatively flat, that the lead base is modestly improving and some of that is seasonal, but we are also seeing some continued improvements from our multi lead distribution system that we implemented during 2007.
Steve Denault - Northland Securities
Okay. Should we anticipate continued softness in the finance leads?
James Riesenbach
I would say that we were basically watching that very, very closely. I would say that we don’t see any signs that would point the significant change over the next couple of quarters.
Steve Denault - Northland Securities
Okay. I missed your comment about the page views, what were the page views in the quarter?
James Riesenbach
$17.8 million.
Steve Denault - Northland Securities
Okay. Where do we stand from an employee count exiting the fourth quarter?
James Riesenbach
We exited the quarter at about 250 employees.
Steve Denault - Northland Securities
So what was the – what was realized in terms of – if you have to sort of try to assess it in a vacuum the cost savings realized the quarter, how should we think about operating expenses heading into the first quarter versus fourth quarter?
Monty Houdeshell
We would expect to see some continuous improvement over the year quarter to quarter, although there will still be some noise in the fourth quarter, we’ll have some additional severance related costs in the first quarter and it’s probably not until the second quarter that we see the significant change in operating expenses. And then we have additional – come into additional costs reductions in the balance of the year after the second quarter.
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