Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from John Maietta -Needham & Company.
John Maietta – Needham & Company
Jeff, you had talked about potentially bottoming here, and then that activity has picked up somewhat in the month of July and as we move to the summer. Is that pickup been pretty broad-based or is it more concentrated in healthcare, energy any particular vertical or type of work?
Jeffrey Davis
No it’s pretty broad-based I think, consistent. The breakdown across sectors is consistent, where there is some differences sort of geography. We are actually up, flatter up in this forecast and 80% of our business units. It is really only four that are in a down cycle.
It’s interesting and those four went into this down cycle later. So I think they are just cycling through at a little later stage. The rest of the business is really like as I said 80% of business is actually, seems to be on demand and like I said forecasting flatter up for the quarter.
John Maietta – Needham & Company
Then a follow-up question to that; Paul made a remark and Paul I’m not sure if you meant down year-over-year or down sequentially, but on the bill rates. Is the bill rates, are they pretty much stable or--?
Paul Martin
Yes, the bill rates are down about $3 from the first to second quarter, so Jeff can give a little more color, but we’re seeing I guess some modest pricing pressure. Jeff, do you want add something on that?
Jeffrey Davis
Yes, I know I think that’s exactly right. We talked about pricing pressure for sometime now and I think modest is the right word, but it’s there and I think I mentioned that in our last call. So I think we are seeing the effect of that now on the revenue side.
So when we report bill rates, of course it’s based on booked revenue not sales. So where we had some pricing pressure for a while, we are starting to see that reveal more on the revenue side.
It’s not dramatic and but I’ll tell you the mantra that I repeat to our GMs and our sales folks that we don’t want to lose any deals based on price in this climate. So we are getting very competitive on pricing where we need to.
We are also still enjoying good rates in a lot of areas of the business, as you know we’ve got a lot of niche skills very, very deep skills that just aren’t duplicated in another firms. So we still got some good pricing power, but there is an impact there.
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