Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Steven Becker from Greenway Capital. Please go ahead.
Steven Becker - Greenway Capital
Good morning, guys. How much money did you lose in the CNS business this quarter?
Brian Cooper
You are talking, as a bottom line?
Steven Becker - Greenway Capital
Well, on operating basis or how we want to break it out.
Brian Cooper
All right. We haven't broken it out that way and the numbers we're putting our here, we're going to that in more detail in our Q. The gross profit was $4.2 million on net sales of 24 million for the quarter.
Steven Becker - Greenway Capital
Can you give us the sense of what the operating profit was?
Brian Cooper
Yes. Well, it was negative. We do allocations of our costs and there a lot direct costs associated with that business in our operating expenses
Rick Gilbert
Steven, this is Rick, It was a lot less negative than we had expected in our planning, beginning the year.
Steven Becker - Greenway Capital
It appears you are going to break it out in the Q. I mean can you give us a sense of the magnitude of how negative it was?
Brian Cooper
I'm not really prepared to do that right now, but it's an improving trend, as Rick said.
Steven Becker - Greenway Capital
Well, Brian in the next call I think it would be important to not have a conference call until you are prepared to give all your investors the information that they need, because how can we discuss this if we have to wait for these numbers to come out in the Q.
And I guess the second question would be, why would you continue to operate a business, I mean, if you have to make a transition to software and that transition is going to take some period of time, obviously, between here and there you stand to loss quite a bit of money in it? I guess the question, why run a business that loses money or why not cut it down to a size where it doesn't loss money?
Rick Gilbert
Steve that's an interesting question, but I guess my philosophy on it is, we have two fantastic channels to the two largest ILECs in the United States, Verizon and AT&T. And as we said in the call, we are picking up market share at CNS. So, it's true that at best it's going to be marginally profitable or still lose money on some of the equipment side of the business, but those channels represent a large opportunity on the software side and we don't want to walk away from those. So, we're going to continue operating the business and meeting the requirements of our customers who we value very highly.
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