Earnings Labs

Belden Inc. (BDC)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 5, 2009

$128.23

-2.61%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+8.74%

1 Week

+0.42%

1 Month

-33.78%

vs S&P

-19.11%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to this morning's Belden Incorporated conference call. Just as a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, you are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session (Operator instructions). I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gray Benoist, Chief Financial Officer of Belden. Please go ahead sir.

Gray Benoist

Management

Thank you Bill. Hello, good morning everyone. My name is Gray Benoist; I am the CFO of Belden, thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 2008 earnings conference call at Belden. Joining me on the call today here from St. Louis is John Stroup, President and CEO of Belden. For some logistics, we have a few slides on the web. To see those, please go to investor.belden.com, sign into our webcast. There is no www in that address, just investor.belden.com. If you need a copy of our press release, you will find that in the same location. During the call today, management will make certain forward-looking statements. I would like to remind you that any forward-looking information we provide is given in reliance upon the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The comments we will make today are management's best judgment based on information currently available. Our actual results could differ materially from any forward looking statements that we might make. The company does not intend to update this information to reflect developments after today, and disclaims any legal obligation to do so. Please review today's press release and our Annual Report on Form 10-K for a more complete discussion of factors that could have an impact on the Company's actual results. This morning, John will begin with comments about the performance of the business in the fourth quarter and the full year 2008 after which I will review some additional financial results and segment analysis, then John will speak about our outlook for the business, and finally we will open up the line for questions. So at this time, let us turn to our President and CEO, John Stroup. John?

John Stroup

Management

Thank you Gray and good morning everyone. During 2008, the US economy entered a recession and economic activity turned down globally. In response, we have been very proactive in restructuring our operations and reducing our costs and in the fourth quarter we took significant restructuring in cost reduction actions. In this regard, we are continuing to make progress on our efforts to position the company for success when economic conditions improve and industry sales and production levels recover. Please turn to slide 3. Revenue during the fourth quarter was $417 million compared with $584 million a year earlier. Excluding acquisitions, divestitures and the effect of currency translation the organic change in revenue in the fourth quarter was a contraction of 26%. We estimate 5% of that decline with the result of price reductions due to lower copper prices. Before I discuss our operating and net income results for the quarter, I would like to briefly address the $461 million non-cash goodwill and other asset impairment charge you may have seen in our press release from earlier today. We recorded this charge in connection with our required annual goodwill and other asset impairment testing and is largely the result of the significant deterioration of the broader equity markets during the fourth quarter. We cannot stress enough that this is a non-cash item and it will not impact our cash flows, liquidity or borrowing capacity under our existing credit facilities and is in no way an indicator of our business outlook or our ability to build long-term shareholder value. Gray will provide additional information on this charge in a few moments. Adjusting for the impact of this charge as well as the effects of restructuring charges and the deferred revenue impact in the wireless segment, operating margin in the fourth quarter was…

Gray Benoist

Management

Thank you very much John. On January 15, the company pre-announced our fourth quarter results and provided our fourth quarter adjusted EPS range of $0.12 to $0.17 as we finalized what has turned out to be a deeply complex business and accounting quarter. We are pleased to deliver adjusted EPS at $0.26 in this release, about twice the level we had anticipated. You can imagine our conservative nature when creating estimates in these times but the improved result for mid January today does reflect better than expected final performance in both operating income margins from about $0.03 to $0.05 and the final effective tax rate of about $0.08. I will talk to both of these items in more detail later. For now, I will continue my comments with the discussion of the consolidated results of operations for the fourth quarter and the full year and then turn into the segment results, followed by a discussion of our cash flow, asset management, liquidity and working capital. If I could have you turn to slide 6 please, the weakening global economy and the resulting slowdown in orders hit us hard during the fourth quarter. Revenue of $417.3 million was 28.6% lower than a year ago. The company looks at many macro and micro economic indicators of the markets we serve. John shared with you many of the examples such as non-residential construction, the Architecture Billing Index, US industrial CapEx, Germany and China export trends, the Bishop report on connectivity. Both Gartner and (inaudible) reports on enterprise and wireless demand are excellent. These are all good, fairly reliable sources of market information. As we regularly examine these many road signs, there remains a general murkiness that makes the review of current period demand and the market analysis challenging and the future view of…

John Stroup

Management

Thank you Gray. If you could now turn to slide 14, over the last few weeks since we provided you our updated guidance not a lot has changed. Visibility has remained poor and business conditions are very tough however we have proven able to tackle difficult challenges swiftly and execute effectively. As a result of our strategic actions, we made progress in reducing our costs and are well positioned to withstand the downturn and emerge ready to capitalize on the recovery. Although it may take us slightly longer to meet our long-term objectives, we will continue to take actions and prioritize what investments we do make to achieve our stated goals when conditions moderate. These long-term goals remain organic revenue growth between 6% and 8%, operating margins of 15%, free cash flow to exceed net income, and return on equity of between 15% and 17%. As we noted in our Investors Day in December, until visibility improves we believe it is prudent for us to provide guidance on a quarter-by-quarter basis. For the first quarter of 2009, we expect adjusted revenue and diluted earnings per share to be in a range of $330 million and $350 million and $0.10 and $0.15 respectively. The first quarter of this year is typically our weakest quarter especially for the cable business because of the weather and the amount of construction that is being done. As we navigate through what is an extraordinary period in our economy, we remain focused on our efforts to implement our restructuring and Lean initiatives to strengthen our channel relationships and expand end-user demand to offset weak markets. We feel that our balance sheet and liquidity will work to our advantage and that as a Lean company we could be nimble and opportunistic to satisfy volatile demand. We feel that we have taken the right steps to be ready for difficult times and they are consistent with our management philosophy and historical actions. We will do the best we can for our customers and our shareholders. We will emerge from this difficult economic climate a stronger company, one with an even more attractive competitive position and one with a balanced portfolio of solutions that will continue to win the trust and loyalty of customers. In other words, we will become one of the true leaders in our market. Thanks to all of you in the call for your interest in Belden, this concludes our prepared remarks; we now have some time for your questions. Our operator Bill will remind you of the procedures for asking your questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions) Mr. Benoist, your first question comes from Celeste Santangelo, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. Celeste Santangelo – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: Good morning.

Gray Benoist

Management

Hi Celeste.

John Stroup

Management

Good morning Celeste. Celeste Santangelo – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: A quick question, could you provide a little more detail on the upside in the quarter, Gray, I think you identified the margin upside at $0.03 to $0.05, where exactly do that – what surprised you in –?

Gray Benoist

Management

We are in the process of closing the book Celeste. We had general accruals on the balance sheet, they needed to be reviewed and (inaudible) both internally as well as with the external auditors and through that process many of those positions were released most of those positions being in Europe. So we were surprised in our cost structure, most if it in SG&A associated with the release of those accruals, it was a very favorable circumstance. On the tax rate, there was really a balanced set of items, a very interesting set of items. First, we had not completed our 1048 work and the list of issues that we were dealing with was quite profound. So we are very conservative in our estimation of what the 1048 impacts would be. And then during the review of our final tax provision, several items associated with the complexity of our relationship with Cooper, which is a very complex relationship that goes back to a spin-off in 1993, surfaced that created some advantages for us most notably around the claim of the credit associated with the manufacturing tax credit allowance for US manufacturers. So, we have got some very nice pleasant surprises during the close [ph], I would say that there were a couple of negatives that surfaced as well but basically everything sort of just went in our direction, it was a very nice circumstance over the last couple of weeks. Celeste Santangelo – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: Then, looking at the Q1 outlook, if you look at the midpoint, it looks like operating margin should be relatively stable going into Q1, you outlined the kind of cost savings, the pace of cost savings throughout the year is $3 million in Q1, but how should we think about the benefit from lower raw materials given the demand stays basically where it is and assuming copper is where it is today, is that not really a benefit to Q2 because you still have inventory to work down or how should we think about that from maybe just a margin production standpoint?

John Stroup

Management

Celeste, this is John and I will start (inaudible), I think if you look at Q4 to Q1, clearly you have got lower revenue in Q1 than you do in Q4 largely because of seasonality that we typically see in Q1 but also we saw a significant deceleration through the fourth quarter. So our December run rate was significantly lower than November and significantly lower than October. So, you have got less revenue in Q1 than you have in Q4 and of course the very low margin impact on that is significantly negative. Offsetting that however is cost actions that we took that is going to give us benefit in Q1 compared to the fourth quarter and then of course also we are expecting to see some benefit in the first quarter on raw material because as we indicated in the fourth quarter, we had to start adjusting prices in the fourth quarter appropriately but then we were eating copper that had been purchased in the third quarter. So if you think about the break from Q4 to Q1, I think you should think about it as (inaudible) margin fall off in the first quarter and lower margin offset by improved cost as we talked about and also the fact that we will start to see some of the benefits of the lower cost of copper coming through the income statement. And I would reiterate in Q1 there is really two things driving the volume, one is that we exited Q4 lower than we entered and then secondly we typically have seasonality in Q1 which we would expect to see again. Celeste Santangelo – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: Okay and then just talking about the deterioration, the linearity in the quarter particularly in enterprise, I believe you talked about projects getting – although the new ones are rolling in, project cancellations or push-outs, was that broad based upon the whole business or can you talk maybe specifically about enterprise?

John Stroup

Management

I would say it was relatively broad based. We saw a pretty significant decline in November compared to October and then another decline in December compared to November and our enterprise business is more project driven system over other businesses and so we started seeing some signs of using the sales perhaps a little bit earlier. I would say though that if you look at our Q4 revenue numbers and you annualize that and you compare it to the full year numbers, you will see that we saw a more significant downturn in Europe and a more significant downturn in Asia than we did in the United States just doing the math. So, that was clearly a big part of what we saw but I think like we have heard from other companies and you probably heard as well, there was a very, very significant downward slope in the fourth quarter. Celeste Santangelo – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: Okay, thank you.

John Stroup

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Matt Mccall, BB&T Capital Markets. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: Good morning, everybody.

John Stroup

Management

Hi, Matt. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: I guess following up on the last question. In the guidance, I think in Q4 some of the non-operating items were maybe a little different than expected. Can you talk us through what’s baked into that guidance from looking at the other income lines, the tax rate, and share count?

Gray Benoist

Management

You’re talking about first quarter guidance then, Matt, with respect to the key assumptions? Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: Yes.

Gray Benoist

Management

Tax rate at 30%, right, the 26.7% was driven by a series of extraordinary items and for conservatism, we’re not currently forecasting the continuation of many of those items, so 30% on the effective tax rate seems to be a fairly good conservative assumption. With respect to other elements that drive performance, there is no change expected in the share count, so using the 46.8% that we just closed at seems to be a fairly good number. But as John mentioned, what we are guiding right now are adjusted results. So, they do not include other items that may surface associated with the fourth quarter restructuring. Let me reiterate that. And we had indicated on December 3 that the total program cost were going to be somewhere between $55 million and $65 million. We’ve incurred $33 million of that here in the fourth quarter. I think your expectation should be for modeling purposes on a GAAP basis, if in fact you’re interested in that, but we do have another $30 million of the charges that are currently in process, both cash as well as impairments associated with the completion of the fourth quarter restructuring activity. So, we are not guiding with respect to that per se, other than the fact that we hope we can get the majority of those activities concluded by the first half. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: All right. Thank you. And, Gray, you’ve said that – I think the words were you could have experienced about 500 basis points of top line pressure from copper. Walk me through the math of how that could have impacted your –

Gray Benoist

Management

Good, this is really theoretical, Matt. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: That’s right, that’s right, how that could have impacted your operating margin lines from this.

Gray Benoist

Management

I think, I would say generally, and this is just a general comment, where the value proposition has equity, has value, which is the majority of our portfolio, us and others in the industry have not seen the significant movement in pricing. The pricing has been fairly stable, but that is not true for the entire portfolio. Elements of our portfolio, most notably, the portfolio that’s in Thermex, on some of their high-temp cable, almost the complete portfolio at LTK is tied to the underlying commodity with respect to certain relationships they have with their customers. So, when we do the calculation, we’re using about a half-rate convention on price degradation associated with LTK and Thermex, a couple of other elements of the portfolio. And the theoretical calculations, just for the others on the call, have to do with the fact that the total copper that we consume on an annual basis is somewhere around 100 million to 110 million pounds. And when copper goes from $3.50 to $1.50, that’s about a $200 million impact associated with the input cost of the business; and if 100% of that were to be passed through, then you would see about a $200 million decline in the top line without any incumbent change in either your operating or your gross profit dollars. That’s the theoretical. And since pricing is held fairly consistently, at least till this last quarter, not to say that it will continue to be so in the future because we are looking for neutrality in our business model, not advantages or disadvantages associated with copper, we use about a half-rate convention for the fourth quarter. So, when you do that math, just quick and dirty, you can see $200 million divided by $2 billion is 10%, divided by two is five. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: Got you. Okay. And then, you also commented on the inventory issue in the channel said that it was part of the 19%, I think, sequential decline. Similar question, how much of a part and maybe what was the impact on your margins in general in the quarter? And what’s baked into the guidance there? Is that kind of like that situation maybe gotten a little better?

John Stroup

Management

It did not really affect our margins. What it really did is put pressure on top line because our channel partners are managing their inventory exactly the way they should. They are trying to adjust their inventory investment with the new sort of reality of demand, but we saw inventory in our channel partners come down again in the fourth quarter compared to the third, again, it is not surprising given the environment. And as we look at sell-through information with our channel partners, our performance was obviously better than it was on a billing basis. For example, we had a very good quarter with Anixter, Anixter announced great results earlier in the week, they did really very, very well and we were pleased that we did well with them also. So that is the relationship that we continue to value very much. I think that our expectations are that the channel inventory is probably going to either come down some more or it is going to remain stable. We have no expectation that in the short run it’s going to come back up. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. And then, final question, Gray, did I understand correctly or John, I’m sorry if it was you, but it sounded like it was more, the potential for more restructuring announcements to come or were you speaking about the savings? Did I misunderstand that?

John Stroup

Management

I think what we try to say, Matt, is that we have a plan, the plan has been completed for some time, the plan was complete at the time we shared with all of you the cost and the benefit. But some of the details associated with that plan have not been completely articulated. And as we make those announcements as we complete spending them, we will update you on that. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: No expected incremental savings?

John Stroup

Management

Nothing above what we have already committed. Matt McCall – BB&T Capital Markets: Got you, okay. Alright, thank you all.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from Jeff Beach, Stifel Nicolaus. Jeff Beach – Stifel Nicolaus: Good morning, John and Gray.

John Stroup

Management

Good morning, Jeff

Gray Benoist

Management

Hey Jeff Jeff Beach – Stifel Nicolaus: You were just talking a little about the impact of lower copper on a couple of businesses but if you can to some degree, step away from the copper, can you just run through all your businesses not only cable but the connectors and the other businesses Trapeze and talk in general about the pricing trends, let’s say, through the fourth quarter but also what you’ve seen in January.

John Stroup

Management

Sure. Let me try to do that for you. First of all, I would say our industrial Ethernet business; the pricing situation is quite stable. No significant shift in either direction. It is a business that has relatively shorter product life cycles and you are continuously trying to obsolete your own product through better technology, but I’d say the price environment there is really stable. At Trapeze, I think, the pricing environment has gotten more competitive as the growth rates are expected to come down. Companies like Aruba and Cisco and others in the space, I think are going to become more aggressive. And so, our team at Trapeze is working on how to deal with that effectively and modeling that appropriately. And then in our connector business, that is more of an OEM business Jeff, and therefore it is more of a design win business. And so I’d say the pricing environment there is also relatively stable. As we compete for new design wins that will have an impact on the future there might be a little bit more price pressure but I do not think that’s going to be significant. In the area of the cable products, I think as Gray appropriately said, you really have two sort of worlds, you got the product lines where the pricing tends to be relatively stable, largely because the product lines are highly differentiated, and the product lines, in many cases, have a much larger daily order rate or MRO component to them and we think that pricing environment will probably remain fairly stable. But then we have other product lines where it is more project-oriented, particularly in the enterprise segment and certain parts of our industrial segment where it is far more project-oriented, and we would expect that pricing pressure there will be very high. And in fact, we saw that in the fourth quarter already where our team did in fact take business at price level that makes sense based on current copper cost but were quite challenging based on the copper cost within our income statement. So that is a relative, Jeff, view of kind of the portfolio on the product line basis. Jeff Beach – Stifel Nicolaus: Alright. Another question, particularly in Europe where the volume is falling off the sharpest in your company, you’ve taken a lot of actions to cut cost, but employment, agreements, other things cause a lag there, when do you think that you’ll be effectively catching up with your lower cost, particularly in Europe and other markets with the lower demand that’s occurring?

John Stroup

Management

We’re going to see some of that improvement in the first quarter, Jeff, but I think that we’ll see sequential improvement again in the second quarter. You’re right, it does take longer to take the actions necessary to reduce your cost structure in Europe than it does in North America or even Asia, but I think sequentially, we’ll see improvement from Q4 to Q1. The team has made good progress. We’ve been negotiating intensely with the various constituents in Germany and other parts of Europe over the last two to three months. I think the leadership team is doing a good job in Europe, making good sound business decisions but also in a very sensitive and appropriate way. So, I think we will see sequential improvement, Jeff, but in Europe especially, we’ll probably see another ratchet from Q1 to Q2. Jeff Beach – Stifel Nicolaus: And by second quarter midyear, do you think unless the volume continues to deteriorate sequentially that even though you might continue to cut cost, that by then a lot of the actions you’ve taken are effective in stabilizing margins?

John Stroup

Management

I would say the current plans right now, Jeff, most of that will be completed in the first half as we indicated, but we’re watching the European business very, very closely. And we have got a couple of business that are especially tied to some segment that we think are going to continue to go through difficult times like the automotive industry, and so I can’t rule out at this point that we might not take additional actions in Europe, if that is what is required. Jeff Beach – Stifel Nicolaus: Last question. Back on Trapeze on a standpoint of a cash basis recognizing all of the revenues, is Trapeze near breakeven or losing money? Can you make a comment about that?

John Stroup

Management

When you adjust for the revenue and the gross margin deferral as we have in these results, Jeff, they did have a loss in the fourth quarter. And we believe that we’ve got the actions in place to turn that business breakeven in 2009, and that is what we are focused on. The team has already done some very good things in reducing cost particularly in sales and marketing. And, Jeff, as you recall, a big part of this transaction was what we believe a significant opportunity to leverage the existing Belden sales and marketing organization to their benefit, so the R&D investment in the business continues to be at a very stable rate. We’re looking at ways to make it more efficient, but the investments are at a very stable rate. What we are really focused on is driving a much, much better productivity from the sales and marketing point of view to get that business to breakeven as quickly as possible. Jeff Beach – Stifel Nicolaus: Alright thank you.

John Stroup

Management

Thank you, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go next to Gary Farber of CL King. Gary Farber – CL King: Yes, hi. Can you just talk in aggregate for foreign currency, the aggregate dollar value of foreign currency benefit to revenue in the past year?

John Stroup

Management

The aggregate, Gary, I do have, and if you go to your next question, I’ll retrieve the answer to that. Gary Farber – CL King: That’s the only question I have.

John Stroup

Management

Well, that’s not fair Gary. Somebody want to pull up the reconciliation? Gary, you’re looking for full year FX? Gary Farber – CL King: Right.

Gary Benoist

Analyst

Okay. That is the year over year; he’s looking for the full year. We already mentioned on the call that the quarter year over year was $14.8 million, unfavorable, but Gary is asking what the full year impact was of FX.

John Stroup

Management

Gary, we only have that right off the top, so if you don’t mind, we’ll try to get it while the call is still open. Gary Farber – CL King: Okay, sure.

John Stroup

Management

And we’ll pass that answer out to you, okay? Gary Farber – CL King: All right. Thank you.

John Stroup

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go next to Nat Kellogg, Next Generation. Nat Kellogg – Next Generation: Hi, guys, just a quick question, do you expect any change in the amortization expense given the goodwill and what not, write-downs, do they have any effect on amortization going forward?

John Stroup

Management

So interesting the way the FAS 142 is written out. The majority of the intangibles, I would say well almost 100% of the intangibles are staying on the balance sheet. Only the goodwill is being impaired, so we have a total balance in the excess of $150 million in intangibles, which are not impaired. The methodology that you utilized is associated with the impairment approach. So that is another anomaly associated with how FAS 142 is written. Great question, one that we addressed here in a lot of details just to understand how those mechanics work under 142. And I’m going to pause because I have the answer to Gary Farber’s question, and the answer Gary is $45.6 million [ph] favorable in our annual year-over-year results. And we recall that we said our organic growth adjusted for FX investitures and acquisitions was a minus 11.2. So you can see that about 2-1/2% of that relates to the FX adjustment. My apologies and now back to you Nat. Nat Kellogg – Next Generation: I think you guys gave the gross for Trapeze for the full year of 14% but I was just wondering what it was in the quarter. You may have said, I’m sorry if I missed it.

Gray Benoist

Management

Quarter Trapeze, John.

John Stroup

Management

We’ll have to get back to you on that. Nat Kellogg – Next Generation: Okay, that is okay. And that is all I got, thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go to Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Good morning. Just have a couple of questions real quick. I guess maybe just housekeeping as far as how should we look at CapEx, now looking at it for the year in 2009.

John Stroup

Management

Our CapEx for 2009, we have established a target similar to last year’s target when we met at the investor’s meeting on the 11th of December. We have modified our expectations. We are having a full review with the business groups here in the middle of February. I think it is going to be sitting in about 50% of our current appetite but we still have not finalized that. So somewhere around $30 million perhaps a little above or a little below depending on the prioritization of the projects, but we certainly have to cut back our appetite, and we have the processes in place to make sure that we are prioritizing the right programs for 2009. So, there is a place marked for free cash flow I would suggest using around $30 million in this juncture.

Gray Benoist

Management

And I would just add to that, remember that in the last two years, we had significant building investments, one in Nogales Mexico and the other in Shouzou, China that affected our 2007 and 2008 capital spending. We have nothing like that planned in 2009. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay. And if I understood correctly I am talking about a 30% tax rate for 2009?

John Stroup

Management

I think that is a good number to be utilizing at this juncture, yes. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay. If you could give a little bit more color on the new plan in China, I guess you’re ramping up with LTK Products first then followed by Belden Specific products next. As we look in 2009, would we expect any logistics savings or some type of savings as we get further into the year for that plan?

John Stroup

Management

We actually have two shelves in the new factory that are Belden branded cells. I was at the factory in January and so I got to see production in the new facility, so we actually do have two cells that are Belden branded localized production, so we do expect that our 2009 results will include the benefit of localization and the benefit of reduced logistic cost as we no longer have to import that from Europe and the United States. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Any way to put a little color around the possible value there versus what you guys were doing in 2008 in that amount?

John Stroup

Management

Yes. I think that – the way we try to describe it previously is that if you look at the average cost of labor and transportation, you’re looking at anywhere from 10% to 20% benefit and then we think that benefit will either translate into expanded margin or improved growth rate. So I think that in 2009, I think if you look at the Belden portfolio and the Belden branded products, you should expect that we would see 100 to 200 basis points margin improvement in that product line going in 2009 versus 2008. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay and then just a couple of last question. I guess, first off, you talked about nonmetal inflation cost coming through in 2008, is there a way you give us the dollar amount or what you would attribute to the dollar amount in 2008 for the year?

Gary Benoist

Analyst

Compared to 2007, copper was basically flat year over year. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay.

Gary Benoist

Analyst

Was it nonmetal? Non metal is about $10 million to $15 million worth of headwind that we needed to recover in order to get towards our $26 million target. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay, and then a final question, how long is the kind of the credit status or any change in bad debt expense as you kind of look at – I know you deal with some large customers but if you look at your customer profile is there increasing risk there of potential credit problems?

Gary Benoist

Analyst

Yes, and again the heightened level of attention, obviously, just about every other company making sure that the balance sheet is incredibly clean with respect to our activities with our customers and receivables. We have a luxury or the advantage of dealing with very, very strong channel partners. So the majority of our receivables are well defended and protected with very well-capitalized channel partners that is generally the case. There are exceptions and most notably in China, the exceptions where we deal in an extender or protracted supply chain with the LTK products, there are risks. And several of those risks were recorded in our balance sheet and income statement of the close. We increased our reserve for bad debt allowance in China specifically by almost $2 million in the quarter. And we also took a specific action associated with the declaration of bankruptcy at Nortel and the incumbent risks that were associated with that as Nortel is a critical OEM partner for Trapeze. We fully depended both the balance sheet as well as the income statement associated with those positions in our fourth quarter was a very good question, Keith, and various astute the things that we are dealing with. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay. So to make sure, the dollar amount, I guess was the $2 million related to the China account and then reviewed the Nortel situation?

Gary Benoist

Analyst

Yes the Nortel issue has been fully reserved that you would expect associated with our exposure at Nortel was under $1 million. Keith Johnson – Morgan Keegan: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And due to time constraints that will conclude today’s question and answer session. Mr. Benoist, I would like to turn the conference back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Gray Benoist

Management

Okay, thank you Bill. And thank you for everybody’s participation on today’s call. If we did not get to you, please give us a call this afternoon. Thanks again for joining us on the Belden earnings conference call. We sincerely appreciate your interest and we will be happy to entertain the follow-up questions if you have missed our call today. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude your call for today. You may now disconnect from the call and thank you for your participation.