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Avnet, Inc. (AVT)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 24, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

I would now like to turn the floor over to Vince Keenan, Avnet's Vice President and Director of Investor Relations.

Vincent Keenan

Management

Good afternoon and welcome to Avnet's second quarter fiscal 2008 corporate update. If you are listening by telephone today and have not accessed the slides that accompany this presentation, please go to our website, www.ir.avnet.com and click on the icon announcing today’s event. In addition to disclosing financial results that are determined in accordance with generally accepted accounting principals, or GAAP, the company also discloses non-GAAP results of operations that exclude certain items. Reconciliations of the company’s analysis of results to GAAP can be found in the Form 8-K filed with the SEC today and several of the slides in this presentation and on Avnet's investor relations website. As mentioned on our last call, in connection with the acquisition of Access Distribution and reflecting recent industry trends, the company started recording sales of supplier service contracts on a net revenue basis rather than on a gross basis effective in the third quarter of fiscal 2007. While the change reduced technology solutions sales and cost of sales in the second half of fiscal 2007 and the first and second quarters of fiscal 2008, it has no impact on operating income, net income, cash flow, or the balance sheet, thereby positively impacting margins. As we provide the highlights for our second quarter fiscal 2008, please note that we have excluded the one-time gain on the sale of assets from the current period in the accompanying financial slides. Additionally, in discussing pro forma sales or organic growth, prior periods are adjusted to include acquisitions as well as reflect the revenue change from gross to net related to the sale of supplier service contracts. Before we get started with the presentation from Avnet management, I would like to review Avnet's safe harbor statement. This presentation contains certain forward-looking statements which are statements addressing future financial and operating results of Avnet. Listed on this slide are several factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. More detailed information about these and other factors is set forth in Avnet's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In just a few moments, Roy Vallee, Avnet's Chairman and CEO, will provide Avnet's second quarter fiscal 2008 highlights. Following Roy, Ray Sadowski, Chief Financial Officer at Avnet, will review the company’s financial performance during the quarter and provide third quarter fiscal 2008 guidance, after which a Q&A will follow. Also here today to take any questions you may have related to Avnet's business operations is Rick Hamada, Avnet's Chief Operating Officer; Harley Feldberg, President of Electronics Marketing; and John Paget, President of Technology Solutions. With that, let me introduce Mr. Roy Vallee to discuss Avnet's second quarter fiscal 2008 business highlights.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Thank you, Vince and hello, everyone. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to be with us and for your interest in Avnet. Starting with the highlights for the second quarter of fiscal 2008, it is hard to zero in on any one area of our business as it was another solid, all-around quarter. Across the enterprise, whether we look at operating group, geography, productivity or financial results, almost every key metric points to continued progress in what has become a multi-year trend of year-over-year improvement in quarterly performance. This quarter is no exception, as we set quarterly records for sales, operating income, earnings per share, and return on capital employed. Even though we are proud of these income records, we are most encouraged with the top line growth. While there has been considerable concern about growth, given the current economic environment in the second quarter of fiscal 2008, both operating groups achieved better-than-normal seasonality, which drove our year-over-year organic growth rate to a five quarter higher of 6.3%. On a reported basis, revenue grew 22.2% to $4.75 billion as a result of the combination of this organic growth and seven acquisitions that were completed since the second quarter of fiscal 2007. While it is difficult to gauge where growth my settle in 2008, we remain confident that our organic growth initiatives, supplemented by value-creating acquisitions, should allow us to grow faster than the markets we serve and continue to grow profits even faster as a result of the scale and scope advantages we are creating. Some of that operating leverage was evident in the results of the second quarter of fiscal 2008, as operating income grew 26.9% year over year to a record $207.9 million. As we continue the process of integrating the recently completed acquisitions, we…

Raymond Sadowski

Management

Thank you, Roy and hello, everyone. Let’s begin with a review of our operating results for the second quarter fiscal 2008 as compared to the prior year quarter. Please note that we have included a reconciliation to GAAP net income at the bottom of the slide to account for the one-time gains recorded in this year’s second quarter. As previously mentioned, beginning in the March of fiscal year 2007, our method of recording revenue related to the sales of supplier service contracts has been adjusted to record those contracts on a net rather than on a gross basis. On this slide, the second quarter fiscal 2008 reflects the new method while the second quarter fiscal 2007 remains as reported. In the December 2007 quarter, sales of $4.75 billion were up 22.2% in reported dollars and up approximately 17.7% in constant dollars as compared with the year-ago quarter. Organic revenue growth was roughly 6.3% over the year-ago quarter and was 2.5% when adjusted to exclude the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates. Clearly our M&A activity and the weaker dollar are allowing us to continue to deliver double-digit top line growth. Gross profit of $596.7 million was up $102.8 million, or 20.8% as compared with second quarter fiscal 2007, due primarily to the impact of acquisitions and the year-over-year weakening of the U.S. dollar against the Euro. Year-over-year consolidated gross profit margin was down 14 basis points, even though EM was up five basis points and TS was up 60 basis points. Avnet's consolidated gross profit margin was down primarily due to the business mix shift as technology solutions grew as a larger percentage of consolidated revenues at 48% this December quarter as compared with 40% in the year-ago quarter. This increase in TS’ percentage of enterprise revenue was…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Jim Suva with Citigroup.

Jim Suva - Citigroup

Analyst · Citigroup

Thank you very much and congratulations on a great quarter and outlook. About six months or so ago, you gave a full year outlook of sales to go up -- or I’m sorry, EPS to go up 15% to 20%, which implied around a $3.17 to $3.31 full year fiscal 2008 EPS number. Now that we’ve got two quarters behind us and some guidance for March, it seems like that that number is a little bit out of date, a lot of it because of the moving parts of acquisitions. Because if it weren’t out of date, it would imply a $0.70 June ’08 quarter, so I was wondering if you could update us, given all those moving parts, about what we can expect for that.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Jim, first of all, good afternoon and thanks for the comments. You know, it is our normal practice to provide guidance for one quarter at a time. The trend, as you’ve pointed out, through the half year and with the guidance that we’ve given for the March quarter, would indicate that we should be at the high end of that range, or possibly higher. However, we are not yet forecasting the fourth quarter, so I really don’t want to try to provide an update to that annual guidance.

Jim Suva - Citigroup

Analyst · Citigroup

Okay, so let me try a different question then; on your guidance as far as the EM group, you mentioned seasonality for both groups but if I look back historically, EM didn’t post that strong a sequential gain. Maybe it’s because there’s some moving parts with the acquisitions as far as the closing, whether it be through your acquisitions that close this quarter -- can you help us understand why that number appears a little bit more aggressive than normal seasonality based upon the data we have?

Raymond Sadowski

Management

You know, I think this is the fundamental problem with trying to talk about the word normal but if you recall at the analyst day, we did provide what we think are the normal ranges for our groups and I think we indicated that somewhere between 5% and 9% sequential would be normal for electronics marketing. And our guidance is actually somewhat in line with that norm. I’m sure Harley could drill down on this. We think that perhaps the Americas region is going to be a little bit stronger than that word “normal”, Jim. Europe might be just a little bit weaker and Asia appears to be pretty much right in line with what we would define as normal. So our view is on an overall basis, coming off a somewhat stronger December quarter than we expected, we think we’ll get that normal sequential bump at electronics marketing.

Jim Suva - Citigroup

Analyst · Citigroup

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Alexander with Raymond James.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander with Raymond James

Thanks. Good afternoon. Just to kind of go back to some of the comments you made earlier where it sounded like you were still comfortable through cycles that you could generate the 12.5% ROIC. I guess specifically if the markets you serve don’t grow this year and potentially contract, how comfortable are you that for calendar ’08, you could still deliver the ROIC target as well as the operating margin target, which I think is 4.5% to maybe 4.9% for the year? At what level of shrinkage in the market do you start to become concerned with being able to achieve those targets?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

I think it’s a very appropriate question, given all of the concern and things we’re hearing about through the media. It’s a difficult question to answer, Brian, but let me take a couple of shots and also see if any of the rest of the team here wants to comment. My first comment would be that the impact to Avnet's P&L in any downturn is a function of really two things -- one is the amount of the total decline and the rate of that decline. So if we got a relatively mild weakening in some or all of the markets that we serve, and it occurred somewhat gradually, I think I would say that we could take actions to fundamentally protect the P&L and protect the operating margins. If the decline were to be fairly pronounced and also come at us fairly rapidly, we would fall behind temporarily and then we would take action to protect the P&L. As you know, Brian, on the balance sheet side of the equation, the cash flow generation is exactly inverse to the impact on the P&L. The faster that sales decline, the faster we liquidate inventory and receivable, and the more cash that we generate. And then, I think the last comment I would make, unless Ray would like to add something here, is we are committed to that threshold of 12.5% return on capital at any level of sales. So the management actions that we would be engaged in and attempting to take would be to ensure that at whatever revenue level the markets found us at or allowed us to achieve, we would drive our business to that 12.5% return on total capital.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander with Raymond James

Okay, great, and just a follow-up -- this is more of a clarification on the TS calendar issue. How much of the upside in the December quarter for TS revenue which, relative to my model is a couple hundred million, how much of that was due to the calendar not working the way you expected? It sounds like that was a little bit over $100 million but the balance was true upside?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

I guess I’ll take a shot and then ask John if he wants to chime in. We ended up -- I think it was $174 million above the midpoint of our guidance and the way we were thinking about things, and I think we’ve also disclosed how much revenue we generated on the first day of -- well, on 12/31, which is the first day of our March quarter. In round numbers, we think about half of the $174 million upside was our ability to actually get those revenues captured in our December quarter and roughly half of the upside was actual upside with strength coming from all three regions, and again predominantly in our enterprise class IT hardware section, or segment. So I’d say roughly about half of the upside was we got the billings in that we were concerned we may not, and about half of it was strength across the regions. John, do you want to add anything?

John Paget

Analyst · Brian Alexander with Raymond James

I would agree with you. That’s a clear indication of what happened.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander with Raymond James

And if you just had to look at some of the recent acquisitions on the TS side of the business, particularly Magirus, would you say that they’ve performed in line or better or worse than your expectation in the quarter?

John Paget

Analyst · Brian Alexander with Raymond James

We would say they performed in line, Brian, especially -- it gets mixed up pretty quickly in that we both had businesses in the same countries in many cases and were quite competitive with each other. It just depends upon which side of the line it fell but we’re pleased with the combined performance of both groups.

Raymond Sadowski

Management

So Brian, as we look at our IBM and HP revenue in the countries where we had Avnet and Magirus operations, because it gets difficult to separate, we’re happy with the combined result therefore we believe Magirus is performing in line with our expectation.

Brian Alexander - Raymond James

Analyst · Brian Alexander with Raymond James

Great. Nice job. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Roy, just a first question regarding the operating margin in electronics marketing. It was down sequentially and just around flat year over year but you had better-than-seasonal revenue in the December quarter. Is that a function of mix or pricing or anything else?

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

It’s essentially 100% mix.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay, could you be more specific?

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Yeah, it’s the continued increase in the percentage of our total revenues derived from Asia. If you look year-on-year, going from memory now, I think we were pretty close to our previous stated 30% of total from September in the December quarter once again, up from closer to 25%-ish a year ago.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay.

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

And then Matt, as a function of that same mix, return on working capital and return on total capital were up nicely year-on-year for EM.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay, so as that percentage stays the same or goes up, then is there still room for improvement in the margins in EM? I know that the IP&E initiative is part of that, but are there other things you are looking at?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Well, there clearly are. I was just scratching some notes here in preparation for this question and just to give you a general, a couple of things to think about, if you think about the acquisitions that we’ve announced already this year, in this fiscal year, they’ll add $400 million to $500 million and in the aggregate, that business, primarily IP&E, is all at or above our current operating income level and at or above our long-term goal in return on capital. So that overall will add, as we start to enjoy that in the second half of the fiscal year. In addition, our number obviously is very strongly influenced by the strength of our business in the west and typically, as we go into the second half of our fiscal year, that portion of our business has its strongest quarters.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay, great and then my second question on your revenue guidance for EM in the March quarter, are there some acquisitions there that will add some incremental revenue? I know that you closed a couple of deals at the end of December or the beginning of January in -- one in Taiwan and one in Europe.

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Yes, they will add incremental revenues. Are you talking about specifically the second half?

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Well, how about for the March quarter?

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

For the March quarter, they will add -- we will get the full benefit of the acquisition that we made in Asia. I’d think about that in the $40 million to $50 million range. And in Europe, It will still not be significantly impactful because the largest of the three we announced really will not roll in until fiscal Q4.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay, and then just my last question, if I may, regarding your inventories. We saw days down and I know part of that was mix but I also assume that you are pretty conservative with your component inventories, so could you give us some more color on your component inventories and what’s your position going to be going into a stronger March quarter here?

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Sure. Our inventories were down modestly. I wouldn’t call it a large move. We did take our inventory down in the quarter but we did not dramatically reduce it in anticipation again of the stronger second half of the year. So we are very comfortable with our inventory and I think as Ray said, our velocity metrics continue to improve.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

So as Harley just said, in EM global terms, the inventory was down very slightly. That includes about $35 million of inflation due to currency, as well as a few million dollars that we picked up in the acquisitions. So we had expected EM inventory to be flat to down in the quarter and in fact it was. And I think our expectation for the March quarter is that in round numbers, it should be up roughly equal to the revenue growth.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay, but given the lead times that you’ve discussed, basically you’re sticking in a six to eight week range. There’s no reason for you to really build much here, right?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

That’s correct.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

All right. Thanks a lot.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Matt, one thing I wanted to also comment on relative to EM’s mix and the margins; you know, we’ve had three quarters of rising revenue and we’re forecasting a fourth quarter of rising revenue, but one of the big factors relative to EM’s global margin is where that revenue falls relative to Europe, America, and Asia. I think Harley said that in other words. If we see Europe return to year-on-year growth in the way that we are seeing America, that would have a positive impact. If all of the growth, or a large part of the growth came from Asia, it could have a negative impact on the margin. So it depends on the growth overall and more specifically, which regions the growth comes in.

Matt Sheerin - Thomas Weisel Partners

Analyst · Matt Sheerin with Thomas Weisel Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Carter Shoop with Deutsche Bank.

Carter Shoop - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Carter Shoop with Deutsche Bank

I wanted to talk a little bit about the acquisition story here. I guess maybe first off, could we talk a little bit about the integration that you guys have performed so far on the seven deals? I guess what I’m trying to get at is have we closed the warehouses of the acquired companies and consolidated that into other Avnet locations? Or are we going to keep a couple of those and maybe consolidate them later on? How is that overall integration process going?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Carter, I think what I would like to do is just ask Harley and John to each take their respective businesses, so Harley, why don’t you start?

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Carter Shoop with Deutsche Bank

I think the way I would think about that is in Europe, where we’ve announced three acquisitions, in general terms we’ll be working this quarter to integrate the IP&E acquisitions we announced, Flint and Betronik. And in those acquisitions you will see some of the back-end consolidation that you referred to that really drives some of our synergy expectations. The third acquisition we announced there, I can’t comment a whole lot on that being Azure, as I mentioned, because we really will not get a lot of traction on that one this quarter but I would expect that you’ll see similar activities relative to driving our synergy expectations in our fiscal Q4. In Asia, we announced the acquisition of a company called YEL, primarily a greater China IP&E distributor. And although all acquisitions provide opportunity for synergy and efficiencies, that one primarily is about building our IP&E business in Asia and expanding and growth. So that one I would offer up modest synergies and modest efficiencies, although again there are always opportunities, especially in the back-end. But in that particular one, I would not expect a lot relative to our customer influencing and customer facing roles.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

John.

John Paget

Analyst · Carter Shoop with Deutsche Bank

Let me go all the way back, Carter, to the Access acquisition. We’ll actually be moving that warehouse in right around the first of July. We are building a facility here that will be opened and prepared to do that at that point in time. The rest of that acquisition is already completed. The Magirus acquisition, we’ve already begun moving warehousing and inventory into current facilities and the systems changeover for Magirus will be at the end of this month, so that will be pretty much complete from an infrastructure standpoint, albeit we are still dealing with the synergies and looking at appropriate synergies around numbers of people, numbers of sales territories, et cetera and so forth on there. Acal is much smaller in terms of where we are. We’ve already begun to integrate the offices, probably not expecting that to be completed until the end of our fiscal fourth quarter. And then Channel Works was the other one in Australia, which is nearly all completed and was completed in our fiscal Q2.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

So Carter, in summary, between this quarter and next quarter, or in other words by the end of the fiscal year, the seven acquisitions should be fully integrated and the only summary comment I would put on that is that on an overall basis, there were not a lot of synergies associated with these because each one of them was relatively small, but you may get a million or two dollars per, maybe a little bit more than that on the larger transactions, and in aggregate it should help the operating leverage in the model.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch.

Steven Fox - Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch

Just a couple of questions; first of all, you mentioned the organic growth of 6%. If you exclude currencies, what type of organic growth did the company put up this quarter?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

I think it was in the 2.5%.

Steven Fox - Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch

And then, you had a very good quarter on the server side. I was just curious -- how much would you attribute that to end market growth versus just broadening of your own product portfolio and penetrating new customers, et cetera? Is there any way to sort of say how much was just driven by your own sales efforts?

John Paget

Analyst · Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch

I think generally speaking, we saw a stronger growth across all of the server product lines. We continued our growth in the industry standard servers. We also saw in the proprietary server and storage range growth again across all regions. Certainly there’s -- with the acquisitions, certainly there’s some proprietary server growth that comes along with the acquisitions in Europe because they made sense, but generally speaking as you look across all of our product lines, and this is especially true in the solutions practices, things like networking and security, we see -- we are seeing some good growth and some good cross-selling activity going on across our resellers and across to all of the countries in Europe.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

I would just add, I think when you look at the size of the numbers, it is -- it just seems logical to me that the majority of the organic growth that we talked to you about would be driven by some combination of market growth and market share, and then, to the extent that we could extend franchises, as we’ve done say into Singapore and into certain countries in Europe, we can add to that. But I think when you start with the critical mass of the existing business, the numbers have to be predominantly a reflection of what’s going on in the market and then, to a lesser extent, a reflection of what we are doing inside of Avnet.

Steven Fox - Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch

Okay, because I would have thought maybe it was more Avnet than market, because if you look at IBM hardware sales, they weren’t really up much year over year at all. Sun is not going to be up a lot. I just figured maybe there’s more of an effort there going on under the covers than we realize.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Well, it’s happening but I think that again, we have a large share of a large market where we currently serve. That’s going to be the heart of the number. I don’t want to take anything away from our team because I think our team is doing an outstanding job honestly around the world, probably an atypical CEO comment, but I do believe we are executing quite well. And I think one more thing, Steve, and John was alluding to this but that there’s interesting cross-sell opportunities as we continue to not only expand where we have franchises by geography but add a reseller base and an employee base that have the ability to take our existing products and cross-sell into those larger and larger number of resellers.

Steven Fox - Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch

Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks, Roy, and then real quick on the Acal acquisition, is that in -- that’s in the guidance for this quarter. My rough cut says it’s about $50 million of sales out of the box for you guys in Q1?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

I think we would call it between 40 and 50, being that it’s a Q1 calendar, and yes, it’s in the guidance.

Steven Fox - Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Steven Fox with Merrill Lynch

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Will Stein with Credit Suisse.

Will Stein - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Will Stein with Credit Suisse

Thank you. Roy, you guys have done a good deal of talking about IP&E on the call and I noticed in the middle of the quarter, or maybe it was after the quarter end, you guys signed up Taiyo Yuden as a supplier. I think they are pretty big in the [inaudible] market. I’m wondering if you can comment on the size of that supplier, whether that’s something that’s very meaningful, whether we should pay a lot of attention to that, or if it’s a smaller part of a bigger strategy change?

Harley Feldberg

Analyst · Will Stein with Credit Suisse

I wouldn’t view that as a substantial driver to significant top line. It’s obviously a terrific product line but unless I’m missing something, I don’t view that as a game mover, although it is clearly consistent with expanding our offering in IP&E in general.

Will Stein - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Will Stein with Credit Suisse

Okay, great. And then I’m wondering if you could also talk briefly on the M&A pipeline today in terms of focus areas -- component, systems, or both. And then also, geographies.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

You know, we’re continuing to do the same thing we’ve been doing for the past several quarters, and that is by operating group and by region, we are looking for opportunities to expand our product and services portfolio, expand our customer base, and/or consolidate in markets where the economics make sense. It sounds like a non-answer but it’s the honest truth. We have opportunities by group and by region all around the world. And then, of course, if you ask me to handicap them, I’m going to give you my typical response, which is it’s practically impossible to handicap the progress of conversations relating to M&A. But the pipeline is still quite active. We are enjoying success. We are pleased with what is happening and we intend to continue pursuing these value-creating M&A opportunities.

Will Stein - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Will Stein with Credit Suisse

Great. If I can slip one more in, I’d like to get a little clearer picture of inventory on the systems side of the business. John, maybe you can talk about -- we know that systems is generally an inventory light business, since it’s mostly drop-ship, but how should we think about inventory days in your part of the business in terms of the level today and then whether there’s any seasonal or cyclical shift? Thank you.

John Paget

Analyst · Will Stein with Credit Suisse

Our overall strategy, as you correctly stated, is sort of inventory-less, if that’s an appropriate word. A lot of drop-ship in that category. Certainly as we have entered into some newer markets, such as Acal and so forth, there is a little bit of inventory that goes along. We’ve been very consistent over a number of quarters now on where we are from an inventory standpoint, so it does not require that we increase inventory and as we continue to change and work on the models, I think you are going to see us very consistent with where we are today.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

I think we pointed out to you that as we got large in the Sun business, it turns out that Sun is more of an inventory model, a more traditional inventory model, whereas we had a lot more drop-ship activity in the HP and IBM space, and of course, by the way, we don’t inventory software or services. Those things accelerate inventory turns. But I think -- think about TS on average running between 20 and 25 days. It typically drops down seasonally in the December quarter because the revenue spikes so high but over the course of a year, we’ll run between 20 and 25 days typically based on our current product mix.

Will Stein - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Will Stein with Credit Suisse

That’s great. Very helpful. Thanks, Roy.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jay Hingorani with Standard & Poor’s. Jay Hingorani - Standard & Poor’s: Most of my questions have been answered. I just wanted to get an idea of where you guys think -- you know, Asia -- you talked about margins and stuff like that and I just wanted to get a little better idea of with what’s happened in the last week and so on if you see, you’re getting any feedback if the other markets as well are starting to see some sort of real slow down or they are starting to have the same view that we have here domestically.

Roy Vallee

Chairman

The answer is no. If we think about our components business in Asia, which is a business where we have a fairly large footprint and we’re a big enough part of the market that we are probably a good proxy for at least the distribution market in Asia, you know, we had a reasonably good quarter in December. The start to this quarter we would describe as normal. Interestingly, if you want to sort of drill down, we had a stronger October and November than we did December. There was a little bit of weakness late in the quarter in Asia but in aggregate the quarter was strong, so we sort of chalked that up to just different buying patterns and the way the supply chain is being managed. And the current quarter is off to what we would describe as a very normal start. In our TS business, I’m not sure we’re large enough in Asia to be a good proxy, but we’re not hearing or seeing anything in our numbers that would indicate any concern there either? Jay Hingorani - Standard & Poor’s: How about Europe?

Roy Vallee

Chairman

Europe is the region that actually appears to be the weakest right now. We saw relative strength in both EM and TS in America in the December quarter. In the current quarter, we think that Europe is likely to be a little weaker than normal seasonality, just based on an extension of the overall economic conditions there. And we don’t know how much of that to attribute to the indigenous GDP growth as opposed to the strength of the Euro, but we do see a little bit of weakness in Europe and we’ve seen that over the past two to three quarters. Jay Hingorani - Standard & Poor’s: Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time there are no further questions. Gentlemen, do you have any closing comments?

Vincent Keenan

Management

Yes, thank you. As we conclude today’s quarterly analyst call, we will now scroll through the slide mentioned at the beginning of our webcast that contains the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation of results presented during our presentation, along with a further description of certain charges that are excluded from our non-GAAP results. This entire slide presentation, including the GAAP financial reconciliations, can be accessed in a downloadable PDF format at our website under the quarterly results section. We would like to thank you for your participation in our quarterly update today. If you have any questions or feedback regarding the material presented today, please contact Deana at the Investor Relations department by phone or e-mail. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.