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Arrow Electronics, Inc. (ARW)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 3, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Arrow Electronics conference call to discuss their fourth quarter earnings. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Greer Aviv for opening remarks and introductions.

Greer Aviv

Management

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Arrow Electronics fourth quarter conference call. I am Greer Aviv, Manager of Arrow’s Investor Relations Program and I will be serving as a moderator on today’s call. If you would like to access today’s call via webcast, please visit our Investor Relations website at www.arrow.com/investor and click on the webcast icon. With us on the call today are Michael Long, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Paul Reilly, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Andy Bryant, President Global ECS; and Peter Kong, President Global Components. By now you should have all received a copy of our earnings release. If not you can access our release on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we get started I would like to review Arrow’s Safe Harbor statement. Some of the comments to be made on today’s call may include forward-looking statements including statements addressing future financial results. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results or facts to differ materially from such statements for a variety of reasons. Detailed information about these risks is included in our SEC filings and you can refer to our 10-K which was filed this morning. We will begin with several minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a question-and-answer period. As a reminder to members of the press, you are in a listen-only mode on this call, but please feel free to contact us after today’s call with any questions you may have. At this time, I would like to introduce our Chairman, President, and CEO, Michael Long.

Michael Long

Chairman

Thank you Greer, and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us this afternoon. We ended the year on a very positive note with sales, earnings per share, and cash flow well above our expectations. Our results reflect the exceptional work of our employees around the globe and demonstrate our commitment to our strategic priorities despite the external economic environment over the past year. In 2009, it has been a particularly challenging year, with the world’s economies in a recession. Despite this we’ve made great strides to accelerate our sales excellence strategy, advance our industry leading position and simplify our business and strengthen our financial base. Our sales excellence strategy is creating great short and long-term sales opportunities and we’re committed to growing market share. I’m pleased with the positive trends we’ve seen across our business. The current recession has been more broad based and deeper than expected, so the industry still has some recovering to do before revenues return to the levels seen prior to the downturn. We’ve made great strides over the past year which can be seen in today’s results. In global components we’ve seen a significant improvement in revenue and improving gross margin in all regions, with this segment posting its first year over year sales increase since the third quarter of 2008. All of our components groups performed better than expected and North America and Europe saw sales growth well ahead of normal seasonality. Our enterprise computing solutions business also had a strong quarter. Sales growth in North America coming off an unusually strong third quarter was in line with the upper end of normal seasonality and our European business outperformed normal seasonality. While we have been focused on streamlining and simplifying the organization we took further steps to contain and…

Paul Reilly

Management

Thanks Michael, as reflected in our earnings release there are a number of items that impact the comparability of our results with those in the trailing quarter and the fourth quarter of last year. I will review our results excluding these items to give you a better sense of our operating results. As always the operating information we provide to you should be used as a complement to our GAAP numbers. For a complete reconciliation between our GAAP and non-GAAP results please refer to our earnings release or the earnings reconciliation slide at the end of the webcast presentation. Fourth quarter sales of $4.2 billion were well ahead of our initial expectation and represent an increase of 3% year over year and an increase of 15% on a sequential basis. This marks the first quarter of year over year sales growth in over a year. Global component sales of $2.6 billion increased 6% year over year and 2% sequentially or an increase of 2% year over year and 1% sequentially excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Our gross margin saw a 100 basis point increase compared to the third quarter but do remain below the year ago levels. As always we are focused on improving operational efficiency and cost containment activities throughout our global component organization. We decreased operating expenses by 11% year over year despite the resumption of sales growth. Our operating margin increased 40 basis points year over year and 80 basis points sequentially while operating profit grew significantly faster than sales demonstrating the significant leverage in our business. Disciplined working capital management resulted in a 460 basis points year over year decrease in working capital to sales while return on working capital increased 700 basis points. Sales in North America declined 1% year over year and increased…

Michael Long

Chairman

Thank you Paul, in summary we performed very well this quarter and ended the year on a strong note, 2009 was one of the most challenging economic periods in recent history with extremely limited visibility and more uncertainty in the marketplace than normal. Our sales excellence strategy, improved efficiencies from our disciplined approach to expense reductions, our focus on efficient working capital management, have all served to strengthen our already strong financial position and it will allow us to accelerate our strategic priorities as we enter 2010. I’m confident that the Arrow team will leverage the momentum from the third and fourth quarters to maximize sales and profitable share growth, while taking advantage of opportunities in the market. We will continue to selectively invest in initiatives we believe will provide the best growth and differentiation such as ERP, our vertical markets, emerging markets, and our talent and we’ll continue to be a critical link in the supply chain as our customers and suppliers depend on us for the best in class service and operational execution. I’d personally like to thank all of our employees around the world who have sacrificed and persevered through the challenges of the past year, while staying focused on our growth strategy, strengthening our industry leading position and protecting our financial position. We are glad that we have returned the majority of the employee sacrifices as we enter 2010 which are reflected in our guidance going forward. Looking ahead to the first quarter we believe that the total sales will be between $3.675 and $4.275 billion with global component sales between $2.675 and $3.075 billion and global enterprise computing solutions sales between $1 billion and $1.2 billion. As a result of this outlook we expect earnings per share on a diluted basis excluding any charges to be in the range of $0.50 to $0.62 per share.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs

Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

The tone in the press release and on the call sounds a little stronger on the focus on growth can you just discuss just what you see in the competitive environment and as the industry rebounds what you’re thinking from a market share perspective.

Michael Long

Chairman

We first off, do expect to outgrow the market and as we said our customer surveys are showing us that customers are still expecting growth into the first quarter. We believe we’ve positioned our inventories to capture that growth. I believe our sales force is looking for more selling opportunities and servicing the accounts better. We would expect during the first quarter to outgrow the market that is presented to us.

Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

As a follow-up can you just, it was mentioned that you’ll see some of the employee costs come back in as the environment improves, can you just discuss for 2010 what you’re expecting for OpEx growth relative to sales growth.

Paul Reilly

Management

First off on the temporary expense reductions that we initiated in 2009 recall that our target was $50 million and we probably exceeded that a bit so we would expect to see round numbers let’s call it $12 to $13 to $14 million come back in on a quarterly basis. As Michael mentioned we’ve given those rewards back to the employees. We appreciate their great sacrifice to generate more cash when liquidity was critical in 2009 and then really what we’re looking for is our variable expense to sales increase in generally 3 to 4%, I use generally because it depends on what business it comes from. But also remember that with our in hand and improved liquidity we can afford to invest as the recovery accelerates. So that means that we’ll look to invest in really customer facing employees and that’s an opportunity for us to outperform the marketplace because some of our competitors may not be as strong from a liquidity standpoint or may not have adjusted their expense structure the way we have. So to try to break it down into chunks, there’s two that I can quantify. One is which will be around the temporary savings, the second one which would be our historical 3 to 4% of variable cost for each dollar of sales and then that third piece which that’s competitive advantage for us and not going to be willing to lay it out for anybody at this point in time, but know that we’ll invest ahead of the market to ensure we capture more of the market going forward.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

A couple of questions regarding the component business, obviously stronger than seasonal and your guidance and your tone also implied that you’re seeing better than seasonal strength across most businesses but if you look at the guidance still pretty wide range of guidance, about a $500 million gap between the high end and the low end, is that because you still don’t have a lot of visibility in China because post Chinese New Year you don’t know how that’s going to play out or what are the other factors there.

Michael Long

Chairman

There’s a couple of factors that go into that and I would love to tighten that range, one of them as you know we always come into this problem in Q1 with Asia with the Chinese New Year but having said that we’re seeing increased demand on our business across all regions. The problem we still fundamentally struggle with is the visibility of the customers out. So while we’re managing our inventory to more of what I would call short-term needs by the customers we have yet to totally see the supply chain come out with annual orders or even six month orders to give us that better visibility. So in many ways we’re seeing and managing this increased growth internal without a lot more visibility from the customers.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

So is that a good way in some ways because customers are still being relatively cautious because as you know there’s a concern with inventory dollars creeping up and book to bill is going out that customers will just order and really not know what they’re going to end up needing so is that a good thing that customers are still being relatively cautious.

Michael Long

Chairman

I believe we would all in the industry would love to see more visibility. We have started to take as we’ve indicated to you guys that our design win activity has been increasing. And since that has been increasing we’ve started to take the parts that are design win parts for our manufacturers and started to pipeline them further out which will hopefully give us more inventory in those products. And we’re trying to use the information we have to make sure we have the right inventory to capture what we think is an upside. We would all like to see the visibility from the customers returning their production levels of the past but I believe they’re still reconciling their inventory in house with their production needs and don’t quite have all of that balanced yet. But I believe as the year goes on visibility will get better and they will get that problem solved.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

And can you be more specific about the book to bill numbers that you talked about, you said well above one.

Michael Long

Chairman

It was well above one and we’re pretty proud of the book to bill for the quarter. If you look at it it would indicate that we will be above seasonality in all three regions for the first quarter.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

But is that 1.1, 1.05, could you be more specific.

Michael Long

Chairman

Its closer to your first number.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

And then on the ERP roll out, it sounds like its been going fine, I know the plan was to take the components roll out to Europe this spring, is that still on track.

Michael Long

Chairman

Yes it is and let me back up on that, we did complete the enterprise computing business last year in 2009 and that roll out we believe was successful. One of the things that was not in our scope of that roll out initially was our software business. As you know we acquired that after we started working on ERP but we were able to get that done in the year last year. We have now installed in Australia New Zealand and had a successful launch there and have retired that system. We’re doing some extra programming if you will around the volumes that will be increased as we go to Europe and we fully expect to be on the schedule that we’ve rolled out for that for the year.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Maybe just to pick up on that last question, you talked about Europe but I think your original expectation as we see the full benefit of ERP savings in 2011 and I don't think you’ve converted the North America components business either, so could you just give us an update on whether the entire ERP roll out is still on track and if you could just remind us of what those savings will be once you’re finished.

Michael Long

Chairman

We expect to have Europe rolled in 2010 and we expect that to remain on schedule. We had about three months hiccup and I wouldn’t really even call it a hiccup. It was extra programming to take care of the volume base that exists in Europe versus Australia New Zealand. Its much like the same issues we found when we went from our Sun business to our IBM business that the transaction load was heavier in that. And we decided to do some extra programming before we did the install. Doing that programming up front allowed the installs if you will or the implementations to go faster as we proceed and that’s exactly where we are with the program right now. And we’re managing it a year at a time and we do expect Europe to be rolled out this year.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander - Raymond James

I was also asking about North America because I think that still remains to be converted although Europe may be a little bit more complex, so any thing on sort of time wise for the project.

Michael Long

Chairman

We’re expecting to be done in 2012.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander - Raymond James

And the savings in 2012 versus your original estimate, no change there.

Michael Long

Chairman

We don’t have any changes in our estimates of savings or benefits along the way.

Paul Reilly

Management

Its pretty interesting because as we put the system in, Michael already mentioned we were able to accelerate in the software business, we’re seeing that the benefits are more than we thought so we’re even more confident now that we’ll deliver on the benefits though we’ve taken a very risk adverse approach to what we’re doing so it means probably a six months to a year later to get the full benefits but we think the benefits will have some upside. Not ready to quantify that yet because Peter Kong and Andy Bryant are on the call and we had to twist their arms a little bit to come on the line and put it in there plans, but what we’re seeing really is upside on the capabilities of the package and you may recall we’ve also said all along that the real benefit of the package will come as the business goes back to normalcy where we are at less in the way of expenses and the uptick. So we’re still very excited about it but yes, we’re probably slipping six months or so.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Just a follow-up on the March quarter outlook, operating margins down maybe 20 basis points sequentially historically not uncommon to see overall operating margins up, although that was in years where your components mix was heavier especially in the western markets, and you’re adding back some temporary costs so understandable that you wouldn’t see the same rate of expansion but maybe could you talk about your outlook by segment specifically within the components business in the March quarter, how much are you expecting operating margins to expand and how much of that is due to continued gross margin improvement which you just saw in December.

Paul Reilly

Management

We absolutely expect to see a continuation and expansion of gross profit percent in each of the businesses, in our core businesses so that’s an absolute given. In fact that’s one of the reasons why when people ask about the wide range of guidances, we’re not sure that we can call that with as much accuracy so that’s the one thing that really is a big cloud for me. So we expect GP expansion in all of the regions as we go forward and we also would expect that operating margins will expand but we have to also factor in as we’ve talked about the temporary savings that we’ve had in 2009 that will come back in 2010. Remember that most of those were in the components business so when we talk about $12 to $14 million of temporary expenses coming back, the more heavily tilted towards the components business then they may have been in the computer products business. So that distorts to a certain extent how you might think about the segment change in operating income percent.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of f William Stein - Credit Suisse

William Stein - Credit Suisse

Analyst · f William Stein - Credit Suisse

Maybe address book to bill, trying to address it a little more directly, when we’re well above 1.0, maybe 1.1, something investors are always concerned about is double ordering. Can you tell us whether you think you might be seeing that despite the no change or no unusual order cancellations currently. It seems like this is something we never see coming, eventually it happens in every cycle. If you don’t think its happening what’s giving the company confidence that its not.

Michael Long

Chairman

Typically when we see double ordering you see an increase of cancellation rates on those orders. And what happens in a double ordering scenario is a customer may order a part from Arrow, may order a part from our competitor and when the part shows up they call the other guy and cancel the order. So monitoring your cancellation rates during an increase in book to bill really go hand in hand. And if you go through the last actually several declines that the industry has seen and then been concerned with double ordering where double ordering and strong allocation have gone together cancellation rates have increased. We have not seen an increase in our cancellation rates and in fact in some regions those cancellation rates have gone down. So that’s what gives us the confidence that the inventory we’re bringing in does have a home for it. And we are seeing an increase in demand.

William Stein - Credit Suisse

Analyst · f William Stein - Credit Suisse

And then if I can go back to the restructuring and margin comments for a second, it seems that typically, if I contemplate the midpoint of the revenue and EPS guidance it looks like you’re guiding margins down about 30 basis points and I think normal seasonality would suggest maybe more flattish is that because we’re seeing some of the cost benefits that were achieved flow back into the model or is there anything else going on.

Paul Reilly

Management

You’re right, you got it right on, that some of those temporary savings are coming back in. I look at it is that our employees sacrificed tremendously in 2009 and we said when we improved profitability we’d reinstate those and we have. I think part of it is a little bit of mix also. So there’s lots of different moving factors as we look forward. Remember we have targets set for operating income dollars and percent and for working capital per sales dollar and working capital in total for each of the businesses and that’s how we manage the portfolio. How it flows out for Arrow Inc. or the segment itself gets impacted by product mix as well as geographic mix.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Suva - Citigroup

Jim Suva - Citigroup

Analyst · Jim Suva - Citigroup

What do you expect for SG&A in dollar terms in the March quarter and for interest expense.

Paul Reilly

Management

Well the second part I can answer very easily because its going to be I think around $21 to $22 million in interest and then we’re not really talking about breakdowns of actual GP percent targets or operating expense targets at this point in time because it depends quite honestly in part on the pace of the recovery and the mix of the business. So I would say that our expectations would be that Arrow Inc. would see an uplift in GP percent in the first quarter as we get more components business, that also has a higher cost basis so we see a bit of an uplift in the operating expense percentage but for sure year over year we should see an uplift in our operating income percent.

Jim Suva - Citigroup

Analyst · Jim Suva - Citigroup

And then can you talk a little qualitatively about what your [var] customers on the computing side are telling you now as far as pipelines of quotable new business that they might be seeing and what areas, product areas specifically seem to be garnering the most interest at this point from, and rolling our new projects.

Michael Long

Chairman

As you know and as we’ve reported our business did perform well and ended on a strong note and we do believe the growth is in line and at the high end of normal seasonality. We’ve seen the market all year long improve in storage so storage software and we’ve seen in increase in proprietary servers of recent. Those activities for us or those product lines for us have been relatively successful in the near-term here. Earlier in the year they were down. If you look at some of the growth estimates for 2010 there’s a presumption that the market will grow at mid single-digits maybe a little less than that. We would expect to outgrow because we believe the storage market will grow a little faster. We have a great practice there. We believe software will also continue to grow. We have a good practice there. And even hardware is expected to grow this year and we expect to outgrow that market albeit the market is not expected to be exuberant. Our resellers these days appear to be working again on more productivity enhancement for the data center. And we’ve seen them if you will be more bullish on the upcoming year.

Andy Bryant

Analyst · Jim Suva - Citigroup

I would use cautiously optimistic, Michael said bullish, it depends on the reseller that we’re talking to but I think in general the reseller community has a positive outlook for 2010. I think the big swing in the number for our business in the enterprise space is we’re still looking for the large enterprise rollout projects to return. And I think when those large enterprise rollouts return we’re well positioned as Michael mentioned from server storage and now even virtualization, we had a spectacular quarter in virtualization in Q4. We’re well positioned to take advantage of it. So overall I think its positive.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : Looking at just the working capital management great job done this quarter, maybe if you could comment on what you see in terms of 2010 both in terms of the cash cycle and some of the pieces and just can you maintain working capital say on average around 10% or less than sales.

Paul Reilly

Management

It’s an interesting question because we’ve made so much continuous process and in fact we’ve probably outperformed any measure of expectation that we had for 2009. If I look to the full year 2010 I would expect for us to be cash flow from operations positive. But when I say that I do have one caveat which is we look at the liquidity that we have built up, real liquidity I’m not talking about committed but cash on the balance sheet as a competitive tool for us. And that may mean that along the way we may choose to be prudent but more aggressive in taking some extra risk around customer credit or around inventory. You look at the fourth quarter we improved two days year over year in DSOs, inventory turns improved, but that’s all real blocking, tackling. We may choose to be a little bit more aggressive and use some of that liquidity, balance sheet driven liquidity to be more competitive. So and that only depends on the market, develops throughout the year, Michael’s talked about it, visibility is still really restricted to about one quarter. But we’ll make those decisions as we roll forward so, would I expect us to be cash flow positive, yes. Pace and recovery will determine exactly how much we will be cash flow positive. Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : And then what should capital spending be maybe a range for 2010.

Paul Reilly

Management

I think our number was about $121 million in 2009, I would say that if you used a rate that’s about $125 million, it will be close enough. Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : And then based upon just the commentary and the presentation it looks like with gross margins in the electronic components up 100 basis points sequentially that your gross margins in the computer products business declined sequentially, if that’s correct maybe you just kind of talk about the dynamics that occurred this quarter to maybe drive it down sequentially.

Paul Reilly

Management

Operating income percent was up sequentially in our ECS business in both North America and in Europe. Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : Operating income, was gross margin percentage up as well.

Paul Reilly

Management

Yes gross margin percentage was almost on top of Q3. So it was within spitting distance of the same level. I think part of that is driven a little bit by mix of product but we’re right about for the entire segment right about on top of each other. Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : So it was more mix related than anything else.

Paul Reilly

Management

Yes, absolutely.

Michael Long

Chairman

I think overall if you’re having a question here about the model we have seen very stable gross margins in the computer business for the last three years. Its not been dramatically different over that timeframe. We got a little bit of a decline as you well know into the first and second quarters of the year given the economy but for the most part that business has been stable. And I think we’d all would have been very excited if the entire business would have the stability of the computer business on the gross margin side. Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : And the lift going forward was in the gross margin is mainly tied toward Europe continuing to come back since it sounds like North America may be performing within the targets.

Michael Long

Chairman

We have seen this year a very nice increase in our margins and profitability in Europe. We still have a ways to go and as we said Europe reached a record quarter for us in operating income and we still believe that our team there can improve on what they’ve done so far so you’re right the expectation for Europe to come up faster, North America is already well run and producing good results so the improvements this year for us will primarily come out of Europe. Shawn Harrison – Longbow Research : And that’s more volume versus process.

Michael Long

Chairman

Yes, it’s a matter of continuing to round out or portfolio.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

I just wanted to ask about the SG&A again, I guess I’m just a bit confused I know you said gross margin would be about $12 to $14 million higher than 2009, is that on a year over year basis, is that on a sequential basis, and does that suggest the dollar amount of SG&A will be up sequentially.

Paul Reilly

Management

I was referring to operating expenses on a sequential basis. Though to be honest year over year it would be very similar because we implemented the employee sacrifices in the first quarter. So as an example the furlough, the temporary time off that we instituted in the first quarter of last year so it would, those costs would be out last year at the beginning of the first quarter this year. The other thing that I didn’t mention, I probably should I apologize, is don’t forget we have a full quarter of the A.E. Petsche operating expense dollars in Q1 where we only had 10 days in Q4. That will naturally drive some incremental if you’re trying to do a roll [inaudible] from Q4, as you add the dollars together that’s another item that would increase SG&A year over year and sequentially.

Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

So we’ve got OpEx about $12 to $14, there’s A.E. Petsche which is another couple of million and then you said there’s 4% on top of that related to variable.

Paul Reilly

Management

Yes so we’re saying $12 to $14 million in temporary savings coming back in, A.E. Petsche would be $7 to $10 million coming in and then we said variable would be 3% to 4% round numbers.

Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

That suggests that operating expenses will tick up pretty significantly in the quarter.

Paul Reilly

Management

Yes, that’s true but we’ll still be able to deliver very competitive earnings per share because we’ve taken a significant number of fixed costs out of the business and they’re not coming back in at the same pace of the increase in GP dollars as we go forward.

Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

And then as we look through the rest of the year, would you expect operating expenses to continue to more a bit higher as we move through 2010 and revenue improves, or can you keep them relatively flat.

Paul Reilly

Management

Our real challenge will be to ensure that the permanent expense reductions that we took out, we say permanent based upon that level of activity do not come in at the same pace as revenue dollars or GP dollars. So that is what our challenge, we say about managing the business a challenge, its not impossible, and that’s what we’re managing to. And Andy’s focused on it in the ECS business and Peter Kong is focused on it in the components business and that’s really what we’ll manage to. We don’t want those expenses to come back in. Remember we’ve talked about in the past our success ratio has been about 60%, when I say success is 60%, as you go back to periods of normalcy those permanent costs that we got out, really about 60 to 70% are kept out of the business and that’s really our target because that means that we’ll get an uplift and when you do it on a comparative basis to the last time we were at that level of sales, we’ll be more profitable.

Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank

And can you just remind us where we are in terms of restructuring charges, do we have more restructuring charges in March.

Paul Reilly

Management

I think we’ll see some more dollars because the way the accounting rules are is when the person leaves the payroll, that’s when the restructuring charge is incurred. We did have some people in Europe because of the notice period that we’ll have some impact on Q1. I don’t have a hard fast number right now, but you’re seeing that the charge that we’ve incurred throughout the year has come down on a quarterly basis and that would continue. So that would be my expectation as we go into Q1.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Brendan Furlong – Miller Tabak Brendan Furlong – Miller Tabak : Inventory build possibly in the March quarter in terms of dollars, are you hoping to build some more for growth later in the year.

Paul Reilly

Management

We were up about $100 million in what I would call our quality components inventory and I use quality, that’s the normal stuff we sell because we’ve talked about some of the stuff that’s slower turning as well as the fee per service type engagements that go up and down depending upon the customer and/or supplier needs. So that’s about a 10% improvement or increase in Q4. So we don’t have as much visibility into what demand will be in Q2 but we have very clear visibility into lead times and we have a regular dialogue probably daily with suppliers and that’s how we adjust up or downward so I would think that we would see a bit of an uplift in inventory dollars on March 31, but its tough to quantify whether its going to be a very large number or not. We’ve been managing our turns pretty tightly. We’re still below record level of turns so we may decide to tighten up and get back up to the record levels. We may let it slide a little bit just to be able to better service the marketplace going forward. Brendan Furlong – Miller Tabak : And the question, my assumption on your gross margins were that your ECS gross margins were down quarter on quarter as well, and now you’re saying they’re flat which is fine but normally correct me if I’m wrong, you normally get a bump up, your gross margins in ECS normally increase in the December quarter because of seasonality, is that correct or am I wrong there.

Paul Reilly

Management

Yes I said it was flattish, so within a couple of basis points of being up or down, and the thing that for us drove the change really is mix in products more than anything else. So that’s really what we’re seeing there is the mix changes, because don’t forget there’s a different profit profile for storage versus servers. There’s different profit profile between the multitude of servers that are out there, software is different, services are different to those all impact the blended rate if you will. We did not see any significant and I’m looking at Andy right now just for confirmation and he’s saying yes, we did not see any significant gross profit pressure on product sets as we moved through the fourth quarter. Brendan Furlong – Miller Tabak : And then to go back to that last question, the $12 to $14 million that’s going to feed back into the model, I’m confused now, is that going to bleed in over the course of the year, or they’re all going to flow in in Q1.

Paul Reilly

Management

Its $12 to $14 million per quarter and it comes in January 1 because that’s when we gave back the employees the vast majority of the give backs they gave last year. Because we said, hey look as soon as we get back to more rational time periods and more rational profit profile and we can afford to give it back we will and we’ve proven, we did it last year with tremendous liquidity. You look at $850 million of cash flow, that’s a significant number out there and you look at how we see that the revenue number is going up, the GP number is going up, and we’ve proven again or validated again even to ourselves, the significant leverage that exists within our business. Brendan Furlong – Miller Tabak : There’s no harm in people getting paid.

Operator

Operator

There are no additional questions at this time; I would like to turn it back over to management for any additional or closing comments.

Greer Aviv

Management

Thank you. Before ending today’s call for those participating in today’s web cast we will quickly scroll through the slides referenced in our web cast that contain a reconciliation between GAAP and adjusted results. This reconciliation is also included in our earnings release and both the release and this presentation will be available in our website. I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to participate on our call this afternoon. If you have any questions about the information presented today please feel free to contact Paul, Mike Swanson, or myself. Thank you and have a nice day.