Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions). And our first question will come from the line of Rich Valera with Needham. Please go ahead.
Rich Valera - Needham
Thanks, good evening gentlemen. Brian, you talked about EBITDA expected to be flat in ?09 versus ?08, can you give us the EBITDA number for ?08 if you have that convenient?
Brian Beattie
Yes, I do just, 2008 the number came in at $364 million.
Rich Valera - Needham
Great. Looking at your expected share account for fiscal ?09, it doesn’t look like you plan to get particularly aggressive on a buyback. This, despite the fact that it would appear that buyback is quite accretive at current stock levels. Is there anything that would make you get more aggressive on a share buyback or do you really want to keep that much dry powder around for other opportunities?
Aart de Geus
Yes. It's a great question. We're just constantly looking at the capital structure even more so now of what cash we have on hand, where we hold it and obviously how it's invested. So, it's an awful lot of visibility going into how that cash has been managed. I also outlined the amount of the cash that was both in the US and the amount of cash that was outside of the US. So, again that narrows the ability of using that cash in the US for things like stock repurchases and for some of the M&A investments we have here locally too.
So, we constantly look at where we're going spend that cash or lot of great opportunities both in terms of the operating piece of it. We need to maintain the flexibility given the current credit markets we've got, and again look for M&A opportunities that present themselves in this environment. So, the buyback program is still very consistent in part of that structure as well. We still have dollars remaining on our authorization and we'll continue to balance those opportunities as we move forward.
Rich Valera - Needham
Brian, you mentioned you expected a book-to-bill slightly less than one in fiscal '09. Can you elaborate on that, how much of that is due to a renewal schedule, which maybe is little lighter than fiscal '08 and how much of that is due to expectations of maybe lower run rates on renewals due to the weaker macro environment?
Brian Beattie
I’d say it’s almost all related to the renewal schedule as we look forward to the contracts that are up for renewal in 2009. It just looks like again a moderately decline in that book-to-bill ratio for the year, so really on renewals.
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