Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Youssef Squali – Jefferies & Company.
Youssef Squali – Jefferies & Company
A couple of questions, first I guess starting with you Rolla and just following up on the comments you made in closing about kind of going forward and what to do with the business, has the urgency that you’ve had about the consolidation play changed considering what you’ve been seeing in the market from the last three to six months both from potential partners and from the market.
As a corollary to that how long will you wait before you kind of walk away from the consolidation place because obviously there’s really only one large player that makes sense that has any scale and you start considering the recapitalization of the business?
Rolla P. Huff
Youssef I have to say I don’t feel a big sense of urgency other than I believe that the consolidation makes sense for anybody that has an ownership in assets like this. We continue to actively look for ways to make that consolidation take place but I don’t feel like I’m on fire. Our business is performing reasonably well and we’re continuing to look at other things that we can do that might enhance our growth profiles but I think first and foremost we’re really focused on just trying to run our business with excellence.
Youssef Squali – Jefferies & Company
I guess in terms of the adjacent industries in the last year you’ve talked about maybe using New Edge as a kind of spearhead to moving to that area. Now, with that kind of slowing down it doesn’t look like, or is it still kind of an area you consider adjacent? What other areas would you consider adjacent?
Rolla P. Huff
What Earthlink is, is we’ve got strong competencies in consumer business models and small and midsize business customer models. We’re looking at all of the areas that we can leverage our competencies. The link that as I’ve talked to you and others about is one of the things that we’ve suffered from in the past was there was such a substantial difference between our valuation multiples and other decent companies valuations multiples. We had just traded down. The relative strength of our equity has gone up dramatically and the balance sheet of our company relative to a lot of good business models out there is substantially stronger.
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