Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question is from Michael Cos – Piper Jaffray.
Michael Cos – Piper Jaffray
My first question is on the Flow Controls side. You had mentioned the growth and the international being 91%. Was that a year-to-date number and if it was could you provide the difference between international and domestic growth for the third quarters specifically?
Ronald M. Moquist
Dan can you handle that one?
Daniel A. Rykhus
Pretty specific. I’ll try. I believe our third quarter growth was about 4.8 million, our third quarter sales of international, to our international customers was 4.8 million. I think in the third quarter we – our growth in international markets came closer to our domestic growth.
I can’t give you the specific percentage numbers right now but our Q1 and Q2 growth in our international markets far outpaced certain domestic growth and they’ve come closer together in the third quarter.
Michael Cos – Piper Jaffray
And then as you look at the international markets I presume that you’re still seeing good opportunities from a penetration perspective and maybe talk a little bit about opportunities to continue to expand outside the U.S. knowing the types of headwinds that the U.S. economy is facing?
Daniel A. Rykhus
Sure. We continue to be committed to growing in the international markets where we’ve established a footprint over the last two to five years, especially the last couple of years and those are South America, Australia, Western Europe, some in Eastern Europe and Canada primarily. And right now we’re not looking over the next 12 months to do a lot of work in new international markets, but we still see good upside potential as we talk to our partners in Australia and the UK and some of our South American partners.
We still see lots of penetration opportunities. They each have their own unique obstacles that they are working through but we continue to believe that we can grow those markets as we look forward to next year probably at a pace above our domestic growth.
Michael Cos – Piper Jaffray
I guess looking into the crystal ball do you believe that 2009 can be another double digit growth year for the Flow Controls segment overall?
Daniel A. Rykhus
That’s a tough question right now. Like Ron said, it’s cloudy for us and we’re doing-- we’re going to execute on our strategy that we have for the last couple of years which is to develop a better channel for the grower in the U.S. and you’ll see evidence of that in the coming quarters, some announcements we’ll be making.
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