Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Michael Cherny – Deutsche Bank.
Michael Cherny – Deutsche Bank Securities
So I just want to dig a little bit more into these comments you made regarding some modest but encouraging signs about the market turnaround. I guess can you dive a little deeper into kind of what specific points you can make regarding that market turnaround? And then also more importantly, kind of what it would take to move from kind of a modest but encouraging sign to a truly encouraging sign of recovery?
Mike Carrel
Well I'd say the specifics that we're pointing to are obviously our own results, which is we continue to see our – obviously it's modest, so we're not trying to say that the growth is coming in fast. But we have quarter-over-quarter sequential increase and we feel good about what we're looking at into our fourth quarter as well relative to that.
And so from our standpoint, that's what we're seeing. And looking at our pipeline, having conversations with our customers, we're beginning to have more and more conversations about actually budgeting for things in 2010 and 2011. That was not the case six months ago. Six months ago there was complete freeze and I was on this call saying that 70% of the hospitals had basically frozen their capital spending.
There's still a lot of tension there, so I'm not saying that money is freed up from that standpoint. But there are a lot more conversations going on. And it also comes from our conversations with many of our industry partners in terms of, again, just conversations relative to more dialogs that are going on and there are possibly some more dollars that might be freed up.
In terms of the second part of your question which is what it's going to take. I mean there's just a lot of uncertainty in the health care market today because of health care reform. And I think until that dust has settled over the next 12 months or so, you're going to – there's going to be uncertainty in the marketplace in general. I'd say that's the biggest piece of uncertainty relative to our marketplace.
Michael Cherny – Deutsche Bank Securities
And then just on the cost side, you guys have obviously done an exemplary job of continuing to remove costs from the business to right size yourself ahead of this pending market recovery. I guess as we look to model out, especially into next year, how much more leverage do you have in this business?
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »




