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Ambassadors Group Inc. Q1 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-04-28 05:54:09.0

Tags: Ambassadors Group Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Your first question will be from the line of Greg McKinley of Dougherty. Please proceed.

Greg McKinley - Dougherty & Company

Thank you. Guys, I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about your operating expense plans here. Selling and marketing, I know you indicated, benefited from some lower print costs. I thought it would be higher, though, with your stepped-up January campaign efforts.

As you look towards sort of continuing your enrollment retention for this travel season and I know you've commented in the past you're still going to promote heavily and recruit aggressively for '09, how should we think about -- I'm sorry -- selling and marketing expenses for '08 relative to '07?

Chadwick Byrd

Greg, thanks. So as we look at our selling and marketing expenses, there's a number of things I want to point out -- certain things going on with the quarter, but also in general. 75% of our selling and marketing expenses incurred in one -- in a given year are really for the following year's travel.

So in the first quarter, it's not quite the 75%, but we do have certain costs related to our future year marketing plans incorporated in there. We did receive some benefits by insourcing our mail production facility and creating those pieces in-house, but we also spread out certain of our marketing campaigns, which are -- generally took place maybe in just solely in the first quarter and now they're going over to the second quarter as well.

Again, our marketing -- our expense management plans are really trying to decrease the G&A costs, while allocating those dollars back to our selling and marketing expenses. So year-on-year, we'll see a decrease in our G&A costs, but relatively flatter increased costs in selling and marketing.

Greg McKinley - Dougherty & Company

Okay. When you talked about -- I think you said you're cautious on your guidance, does that mean your guidance is cautious or is that you're cautious on the ability to achieve the guidance given all the moving factors around the economy and fuel surcharges, etcetra?

Chadwick Byrd

The latter part.

Greg McKinley - Dougherty & Company

Okay. And then, in terms of enrollments, you guys have made some nice progress around narrowing that shortfall. I've looked back the last couple of years. Is it fair to expect a modest, we'll call it, decline in travel or growth relative to enrollment growth for the full fiscal year versus where your enrollments are in Q1? The last two years that's narrowed a little bit and I don't know if that's a typical trend that you see.

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