(Operator Instructions) Welcome to the American Greetings Third Quarter 2009 Earnings Conference Call. I’ll now turn the call over to Greg Steinberg, Treasurer and Director of Investor Relations.

Joining me today on our conference call are Zev Weiss, our CEO and Steve Smith, our CFO. We released our earnings for the quarter fiscal 2009 this morning. If you do not yet have our third quarter press release, you can find a copy within the Investors section of the American Greetings website at investors.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 10-Qs, 10-Ks and annual report are available on the Investors 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.

This morning we will share with you our fiscal 2009 third quarter results. I will briefly discuss a few of the major items that impacted our financial results this quarter, share some comments on capital deployment and lastly I will discuss the impact of the economic environment on our full year earnings outlook. Before I talk about our overall performance I’d like to discuss a few issues that had a material impact on our third quarter financials. As a result of the recent deterioration in the global economy certain indicators arose during the third quarter, prompting us to review the value of our goodwill and certain other long lived assets. As a result of this review, our third quarter results include asset impairments of approximately $247 million. Earlier this year we talked about our desire to decrease costs. We worked hard on several projects throughout the year. In addition, on December 9, we announced the elimination of about 275 positions as part of our cost reduction effort. The position elimination was a very difficult decision but necessary to ensure we remain competitive in this challenging economic environment. We are assisting the affected associates with severance and out placement service. As a result of the severance, we have recognized a charge in the third quarter of about $7 million and expect an additional charge in our fourth quarter also related to the positions eliminated on December 9. We truly appreciate the hard work and dedication these associates have provided and thank them for their efforts. Our results have been impacted by the downturn in the economy. With decreased foot traffic at retail we saw a decline in revenues for the first time in several quarters. In addition, our margins were also depressed. While our total revenues were down I was pleased…

I have three components to my prepared remarks today. I will start with comments on several major items that impacted our consolidated results this quarter then I will share a review of our reported segment, finally, a quick walk through a few key components of our financials. We will then open the line for questions. Overall, our consolidated revenues were down $32 million from last years third quarter or 6.5%. Included in our $454 million of revenue was the adverse impact from foreign exchange of $19 million over the prior years third quarter. Holding aside the foreign exchange impact revenue was down about $13 million which is about 2.6%. However, our operating loss of $222 million was about $264 million lower than the operating income of $42 million in the prior years third quarter. Goodwill and other asset impairments of $247 million and a severance charge of $7 million drove most of the decrease in operating income. The decrease in operating income was partially offset by lower variable compensation expense of $11 million. Holding aside these three items operating income was about $20 million lower than prior. The remainder of the shortfall is best explained at the segment level. As Zev mentioned the recent deterioration in the global economy caused us to accelerate the process to review the value of goodwill and other long lived assets. We have completed the preliminary assessment of the goodwill testing and as a result we’ve recorded and estimated impairment of goodwill in both our international and AG interactive segments. Within our international segment we recorded a charge of $82 million. Within our AG interactive segment we recorded a charge of $150 million for goodwill and $11 million for other intangible assets. These charges represent the majority of the goodwill that was previously recorded in…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Jeff Stein – Soleil Securities

Can you talk a little bit about financial covenants? In the 10-K you allude to the leverage covenant and interest coverage but there’s no numbers and I’m wondering where you guys are at trailing 12 months relative to the covenants in your revolver?

We have two covenants, one is a leverage ratio and one is interest coverage. We’ve passed both for the past quarter, the preliminary work that we’ve done.

Can you tell us what the tests are for leverage and interest?

Yes, they’re public. Rather than get into the details here we’d be glad to go offline and do that with you. The bottom line is its net debt to EBITDA and then EBITDA to interest coverage.

In terms of the numbers themselves is the interest coverage 3.2%.

I prefer not to get into that over the line.

Can you talk a little bit about the affect of technology cards on your gross margin during the quarter?

Speaking to it in general we continue to see sales in technology cards, both cards that are music based but also evolving and do other products as well. I think we’re doing a better job getting arms around how we distribute this to make sure that we’re at least optimizing sales and profits in the distribution. I also think we’re doing a better job on the sourcing side. I know that for going forward I’m sure all that has yet impacted the third quarter numbers.

Have you been making progress in terms of getting the scrappage rate down on the year on year basis?

Yes, I believe we’re doing a much better job in the way we’re distributing the product to do a better job on the scrap rate. Obviously Christmas is going to be an important holiday for that so we’ll see how that goes. We’ll know probably in a week or so.

On the pending sale of Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake, if you do not sell the business to Cookie Jar how does that affect the relationship between the two companies because I think if I’m correct there was some litigation and will that be an issue if the deal does not go through?

It’s hard to say. It’s probably not right to get into all the details. If it doesn’t go through it remains to be seen as to what’s going to happen.

Are we correct and assuming that you are committed to moving forward with the sale of that business if it is not to Cookie Jar Entertainment.

That’s correct.

Your next question comes from Carla Casella – JP Morgan

A couple of clarifications on the retail impairments of $3.9 million, what line item is that included in?

Let me give you the detail on that. On the retail the $4 million is in our sales, distribution and marketing line for the quarter.

What about the severance?

The severance is spread out amongst three different line items. Of the $7 million a little more than $1 million is in our MLOPC, a little more than $3 million is in our sales, distribution and marketing, and just over $2 million is in administration and general.

Your short term borrowings were significantly higher than last year; do you still expect to pay that down? What was the timeframe you would expect that to come back down to?

We haven’t forecast the end of the year’s cash balance or cash flow. The historical pattern is for us to be collecting a significant amount of cash here in the fourth fiscal quarter including the month of December which in fact is happening now. We can’t come to a specific figure for you.

Do you have to bring that down to zero, is that written in the agreement?

There’s no cleanup required.

Your next question comes from Alan Fournier – Pennant Capital

Could you go through what I’ll call plan ‘B’ is in terms of dealing with short term maturities if the asset sales are not consummated?

First of all let’s talk about the maturity profile of our different financing instruments. We don’t have anything that’s significant that matures until really 2011. We have an asset backed securitization structure which rolls pretty much every year that’s in the neighborhood of a little less than $100 million. The revolver facility that we have with a group of banks doesn’t mature until 2011. Beyond that the $200 million in senior notes does not mature until 2016. From a liquidity perspective there is a significant amount of time until they mature. The un-drawn component of our facilities of about $740 million is about $266 million at the end of the last fiscal quarter.

I thought they were about $248 million of short term maturities.

No, that’s current portion of long term debt doesn’t mean that they mature. That’s the amount drawn under the revolver and asset backed securitization.

Your next question comes from Charlie Carter – Suntrust

Following up the higher content at higher tech cards remind me in the last quarter what percentage of your overall gift cards sales did the higher content cards represent this quarter?

You asked gift cards but you probably mean overall cards, right?

Sure.

I don’t have the exact number. It’s definitely less than 10%.

With the negative mix shift how much of that is the scrappage and how much of it is a structural difference in how you’re able to price those and what the ultimate gross margin could be on those cards relative to just your plain vanilla gift cards that you’re selling?

I think what you’re referring to is probably two different issues. One of them as to do with the percentage of cards that are technology related that are either music and/or other things like lights. Depending on the product there is different flexibility around the pricing and how new and how different the product is and that gives you more ability to make sure that you can get the pricing that you need to make the margins. The other has to do with making sure that our yields, which means really the amount of scrap that we may have in all of our product, whether it’s our everyday product or a seasonal product. I would consider that more within our reach to get, a little bit more structural but within the company’s own reach. That’s something that we’ve been working on for the past six months. I think we’ll be seeing benefits of that in the very near term.

If you had to say we’ve got this of the mix shift that’s happening within that segment of the business would you say most of its scrappage related or most of it’s a structural change in the way that or how much that pricing that product can garner in the marketplace.

A lot of it is scrap related, its both, it’s related to technology product and to our other products as well. A lot of what we’re trying to do on both products is to make sure that what we ship out actually sells through the register so that we’re not actually taking scrap on it.

Your next question comes from Jeff Stein – Soleil Securities

I’m wondering what the remaining goodwill on your balance sheet relates to? Can you talk a little bit about the number of stores where you have lease renewals to negotiate in 2009?

The goodwill that remains is in the North American social expressions segment. On the retail card stores could you refine that question for me?

How many leases come up for renewal in 2009?

I don’t have the figure in front of me. Something in the order magnitude of 50 to 100 would be the number out of the 415 that we have in North America.

On Recycled Paper Greetings does the weakness that we’ve seen in the economy incrementally since you made this investment or the impairment charge that you took would either of those events either impair your ability or affect your interest in pursuing a combination with the company?

There’s not much I can say to comment on Recycled right now. Unfortunately getting to your answer would lead into commenting on it. At this point there’s nothing really more we can say about it.

Having no other questions at this time I’d like to turn the call back to Mr. Steinberg for any additional or closing comments.

That does conclude the question and answer portion of our conference call today. We look forward to speaking with you again at our fourth quarter earnings release which is anticipated to occur in mid to late April. We thank you for joining us this morning.

That does conclude today’s call. Thank you for your participation have a good day.