Good day and welcome to the American Greetings first quarter 2009 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I’d now like to turn the call over to Mr. Greg Steinberg; please go ahead sir.

Good morning everyone and welcome to our first quarter conference call. I’m Greg Steinberg the company’s Treasurer and I help manage our Investor Relations. Joining me today on the call are Zev Weiss our CEO and Steve Smith our CFO. We released our earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 this morning. If you do not yet have our first quarter press release you can find a copy within the Investor’s section of the American Greetings website at www.invenstors.americangreetings.com. As you may expect some of our comments today include statements about projections for the future. Those projections involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of any forecasts or estimates and we do not plan to update any forward-looking statements. If you would like more information on our risks involved in forward-looking statements please see our Annual Report or our SEC filings. Previous earnings releases as well as our 10Qs, 10Ks and Annual Report are available on the Investor section of the American Greetings website. We will now proceed with comments from both our CEO and CFO followed by a question-and-answer session. Zev.

Thank you Greg and good morning everyone. This morning we will share with you our fiscal 2009 first quarter results. Overall we experienced mixed results during the first quarter. While I am pleased with our revenue performance particularly given current economic conditions, I am not pleased by the incremental costs that depressed our earnings. Some of these cost pressures were anticipated and some were not. For example, we anticipated costs associated with the rollout of our new card line in Canada, but we did not fully anticipate increased costs of sales and distribution during the quarter. I will briefly comment on the items that affected performance and then share some comments on our photo acquisition integration and our full-year outlook. With respect to revenues, I am pleased with our sales productivity at retail and point-of-sale performance. In North America our card sales increased in many accounts, the results of which were offset by the rollout of the new Canadian card line. In addition, we recognized increased revenues from our retail segment in our international segment. We have spent a lot of time and energy ensuring we get fresh, new products to retail and I believe we are seeing the results of those efforts as consumers are buying the product offering. The creative excellence reflected in our cards was recently recognized by industry peers at the 20th Annual International Greeting Card Association Award ceremony last month. Eleven of our cards were selected as finalists and we took home five awards which honor the best greeting card and stationary products of the past year. We believe the awards are public recognition of our deep understanding of how consumers use greeting cards to express themselves and to emotionally connect with others. As I mentioned in my opening comments one of the operational items…

Thanks Zev. I have three components to my prepared remarks for today. I will start with the summary of a few major items that impacted our financial statements this quarter. Second I will share a brief review of our reported segments and finally a quick walk-through of a few key components of our financials. We will then open the line for questions. Overall our consolidated revenue performance from operations during the first quarter was essentially flat with the prior year. Our total revenue was up $8 million from last year’s first quarter or 2%. Included in our $428 million of net revenues was a benefit from foreign exchange of $7 million over the prior year’s first quarter. So holding aside the foreign exchange impact, revenue was up $1 million. However our operating income was about $34 million lower then the prior year’s first quarter. The decrease in operating income was driven primarily by two factors within the North American social expression segment. First was the rollout of our new Canadian card line and second the lower yielding sales particularly in our seasonal cards. About $20 million or 60% of the increased costs associated with these activities was anticipated in our planning, the remaining 40% was not. Let me examine both of these incremental costs drivers. As Zev mentioned in his remarks we expect the affect of the new Canadian line conversion to be completed in the second quarter of this fiscal year. As a result we expect the transition costs associated with this conversion to abate during the second half of the fiscal year. The Canadian line costs amounted to about $10 million in first quarter; $10 million of the $34 million of decline in operating income and these line conversion costs we all incremental versus the prior year’s first…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Jeffery Stein - Soleil-Stein Research

I’m wondering if you could just discuss what percent of your greeting card revenues today are technology cards versus let’s say a year ago at this time and secondly if some of these costs are going to reoccur over the balance of the year, why are you still so confident that you can make your initial earnings guidance range?

So the percent for the technology cards is less then 5%. Last year, I don’t know the exact number, but it was much lower then that. We had a small amount out, but very little. On the cost side in terms of why we still feel confident on the year, some of these costs were anticipated so they were in our original guidance and in our plans. Some of them were not, which means we’ve got to make that up either through, on the sales side or find cost savings through the balance of the year and the management team is very focused on that and so we feel confident that we can do that.

If you were a betting person Zev, where do you think it’s more likely to come from; cost save or revenue?

Well first of all, I’m not a betting person. Actually unlike I’d say previous years where it was definitely coming from the cost side, looking at what’s happening with point-of-sale, I think it’s going to be a combination of both.

Can you talk a little bit about the interactive side of the business, you did cite the fact that you are, that you did see lower revenues from advertising and I’m wondering, is this part of an industry trend or is this AG interactive specific?

I think that there may be some shifts happening in the industry in general, but I think by the time this year is done, we feel that we’ll be able to bring in that revenue line where we had expected and it just was a soft first quarter for them.

With regard to Canada, can you share with us your best guesstimate in terms of what types of costs you may incur in the second quarter as you complete this rollout compared to what you incurred in Q1?

It would be low single-digits. We’re mostly through that and there’s a little bit left, but its low single-digits.

We have no other questions in queue; I’d like to turn the call back to Mr. Steinberg for any additional or closing comments.

That concludes the question-and-answer portion of our conference call today. We look forward to speaking with you again at our second quarter earnings release, which is anticipated to occur in late September. We thank you for joining us this morning. This concludes the conference call.