Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Michael Cherny - Deutsche Bank.
Michael Cherny - Deutsche Bank
As we go through the guidance a little bit, I just want to see if there are any more details you can provide in terms of directionality. I mean, when you talk about conditions being weak throughout the year, is there any type of back half pick up you expect? First, where numbers come out, obviously for the fourth quarter it’s being an easier comp, but any more color you can give us around guidance and directionality would be greatly appreciated.
Andrew Eckert
Well, it’s a bit of an uncertain environment. I know some companies in our industry are quite bullish and some are not giving any guidance. What we felt was prudent here as to give you a floor of where we feel the performance is for the year.
I think its way premature to predict where this market will be in the second half of the year. Our pipeline has not noticeably shifted one way or another, although we continue to see some clients experiencing financial difficulty and so we are trying to be as prudent as we can with respect to where we see the profitability, kind of profile of the business throughout the year.
As Dave mentioned we’ll clearly update the guidance as we move forward if it is of substantive change. Obviously our hope is to pick up on that number throughout the year, but this is our best very studied estimate as of this time.
Michael Cherny - Deutsche Bank
I know you said that you took some steps to realign your cost structure to bring it more in line where you see business being. Can you talk about kind of how much of an impact that would have or is that detail you’re not ready to provide at this time?
Andrew Eckert
Not really; we took out a significant piece of capacity in our services business. We saw utilization kind of drop off in the second half of the year and clearly it’s been the right move, because we’ve seen a pretty strong first part of this quarter in terms of project management and resource utilization and so we’re just trying to continue to not get ahead of ourselves and size this business appropriately.
So, clearly we are not in hiring mode. We continue to hire in certain areas of the business. We’ll continue to invest. If you had my job, you would invest in the businesses that are clearly growing incredibly rapidly and there are pieces as Jay and I described of our portfolio that really fit today’s marketplace.
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