Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Robert P. Napoli - Piper Jaffray.
Robert P. Napoli - Piper Jaffray
You are clearly in a great position to make an acquisition. Less than two times balance sheet debt to equity, that is the book at this point and I know you can’t say much but how do you think about these investment opportunities? The discussion in the market is that CIT, GE and Wachovia all have sizable portfolios and I just don’t know what, when you’re looking at investment opportunities what size is too large for you and how likely are you to make an acquisition of something that is that large or are there opportunities besides those for fleet acquisitions that are smaller that would fit better with your strategy? This is a strategy question more than asking you specifically about an acquisition that I hope you can give some color on.
Brian A. Kenney
Well that’s certainly what we prepared the company for over the last couple of years and that is why leverage is so low and it’s been our investment strategy over the last few years to not invest at the peak as dramatically as where we are now. So, yes that is a strategy. That’s what we’re looking for, to invest more aggressively in the downturn. That’s just no acquisitions, though Bob, of fleets and companies, that’s also perhaps going out there and placing the big order as we did during the last downturn. So, yes that is entirely the focus. I think we put ourselves in the position to do that and we’ll vet every opportunity fully that presents itself.
Robert P. Napoli - Piper Jaffray
But Brian I was hoping you might be able to give color on size of acquisitions that might make sense for you and this is exactly what years ago you said you were looking to do. It was different than probably what you pointed is that your market is actually in pretty good shape so far, but you have these properties out there. Can you maybe give some size, what you would prefer to invest in?
Robert C. Lyons
It’s a bit of a difficult question to answer. What I can tell you is being as big a player as we are in the marketplace we look at every opportunity that comes our way and there’s nothing that would deter us just based on size. You don’t get dictate size of portfolios that are in the marketplace so you have to respond to what’s out there and we will, as Brian mentioned, clearly vet all of those opportunities and there’s nothing that would preclude us based on size from pursuing anything that was economically attractive for our shareholders.
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