Welcome to the EZCORP third quarter earnings call. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Mr. Joe Rotunda.

Welcome and thank you all for joining us today. With me on the call is Dan Tonissen, our Chief Financial Officer. I’m going to begin with a high level overview of the quarter’s performance, including some commentary on each of the business segments. I’ll also bring you up to date on our store development program thus far and for the balance of the year. Dan will follow and provide more detail with our financial statements. We’ll continue with an update on the final quarter of the year before providing an opportunity for questions. Overall, quarter three was a great quarter for EZCORP. It’s also the 24th consecutive quarter of year on year earnings improvement for the company. We grew our net income to $10.8 million, an improvement of $4 million or 60% over the same period a year ago. On a diluted earnings per share basis, we grew to $0.25 from last year’s $0.16. That $0.25 compares favorably to the guidance we provided in April which was $0.21 and is dead on with our July 8 update. It’s noteworthy that these results are after a $0.02 per share impact of two non-recurring charges, the closing of 11 EZ Money stores in Florida, and the settlement of a lawsuit with the Texas Attorney General. Before we look at the segment results, I think it’s appropriate to make a comment about the macro economic environment. A new element was introduced during this quarter when the government began issuing economic stimulus checks. These began in May and they continued through the middle of this month. These stimulus checks have been both good and bad for US business. The adverse impact has been slightly lower than expected seasonal demand in new homes in both of our domestic businesses. The upside has been a favorable…

Joe gave you an overview of some of the numbers and now I’ll give you a little more detail, starting with the consolidated statement of operations for the quarter which is on Page 3 of our earnings announcement. For the quarter, our pawn net revenues comprised sales growth profit in lines 2 and 3 less line 11. Pawn service charges, line 4, and other revenues, line 6, increased $10.8 million or 31% to $45.4 million. Merchandise sales, line 2, increased $5.1 million or 17% to $35.7 million. Same-store sales for the quarter increased 6%. With margins unchanged from the prior year period, merchandise gross profit, line 2 minus line 9, increased $2.2 million or 17% to $15 million. Scrap gross profit, line 3, less line 10, increased $2.8 million to $7.2 million. Higher gold values net of higher costs and more volume delivered the increase in scrap gross profit. During the quarter we scrapped approximately 1.3 million grams of gold jewelry, an increase of roughly 13% from the prior year quarter. Proceeds per gram increased 35%, a little better than what happened in the gold market during the quarter [inaudible] gram increased 24% to $8.23 due to increases in gold loan values and what we paid to purchase gold. During the current quarter we realized approximately $600,000 in proceeds on the sale of loose diamonds compared to $700,000 in the prior year quarter. These proceeds are included in jewelry scrapping sales, line 3. We continue to forward contract our gold scrapping and currently have our estimated September quarter quantities locked at around $945 per ounce, which looks pretty good relative to the current gold market. For the quarter we turned our inventory 3.4 times, the same as the prior year quarter. Inventory levels per ending store increased to $122,000 at…

First let me take a moment to talk about the Value Pawn acquisition. We now have an expanded $120 million credit agreement in place pending the closing of the acquisition and we plan to close the transaction in early August here in Austin pending the favorable outcome of the value shareholder meeting. In our fourth quarter, we anticipate a benefit of approximately $0.01 in diluted earnings per share and will discuss the anticipated earnings benefit for fiscal year 2009 during out quarter four earnings call that will be in early November. Guidance for our fourth quarter and the year remains unchanged from our pre-announcement two weeks ago. We expect $0.35 earnings per share in fourth quarter and $1.19 for the year. This represents a 35% increase in earnings for both the fourth quarter and for fiscal year 2008. That concludes our prepared remarks and I pause now for Dan to cover the Safe Harbor, then we’ll open up the call to questions.

This conference call and earnings announcement contains certain forward-looking statements regarding EZCORP’s expected performance for future periods, including but not limited to new store expansion, anticipated benefits of acquisitions, and expected future earnings. Actual results for these periods may materially differ from these statements. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties such as changing market conditions and the overall economy in the industry, consumer demand for the company’s products and services, actions of third parties who offer services and products, and the company’s locations, changes in the regulatory environment, and other factors periodically discussed in the company’s annual, quarterly, and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We will now open the conference call to questions.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Dennis Telzrow from Stephens, Inc.

Joe, I know you may not want to put numbers on this, but obviously next year’s store growth I can assume that you’re working to sort of uptick the Mexico number and moderate the payday number. Is that a fair sort of trend expectation?

I would say that is appropriate, yes. We see tremendous potential in Mexico as we’ve spoken about it for the last several quarters and we’re going to continue to gear up. The greater the base of stores, the easier it is for us to be able to open new stores because we’re able to generate inventory to seed the new stores and that’s extremely important in a pawn operation. At the same time we’re going to look at filling in and enhancing the presence in the states that we’re in today in the US in EZ Money.

And I know you’ve talked about Canada but the pace of regulatory change up there is about at a glacial pace so I assume you’re just going to bide your time until those things evolve?

We’re going to continue to watch it and we’re going to help that Manitoba isn’t indicative of what’s going to happen in the other provinces.

Okay, thank you.

Your next question comes from John Ro wan from Sidoti and Company. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: If you would just go over the credit agreement that you have in place for the acquisition. You said it was $120 million but can you give us more detail? Is it a revolver and what’s the rate that you’re going to pay on it?

There’s a layer that would be term debt and I believe the term of that is 4 years and the balance of it would be revolver and John, just off the top of my head, I think it’s a 30/90 split and then the rate that we would pay on it would be, if the leverage ratio we’re anticipating post-acquisition would be about 175 over LIBOR. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: Over the 30 day LIBOR rate?

Yes. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: And the 30/90 split, 30 is the term or is 30 the revolver?

The term. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: And that’s a 4 year term, okay. Let’s see, after the acquisition with the debt, you guys said you’re going to have about $72 million of debt post-acquisition. Would you look to pay that off next year or pay part of it off?

Yes, barring any other transactions that we may do. We could put a pretty good debt in that $70 million. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: Okay, and just to make sure I have it right, you had a $300,000 one-time charge in the bad debt expense and the $600,000 settlement was in the administrative expense line, right?

Yes, actually the exiting the stores in Florida, the total is about $700,000. $300,000 of that would hit the bad debt line. $200,000 is hitting the loss and disposal of assets, and then we backed out the accrued fee receivables on the loans to Florida and that’s about $150,000 roughly up in the fee revenues, and then there’s a modest charge in operating expense related to other closing costs for a total of about $700,000 related to closing the 11 stores in Florida.. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: Do you know about how much cash is in those stores in Florida?

How much cash? John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: Yes.

I’m no t sure I understand the question. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: I’m just trying to understand, obviously your cash balance is going to have to come up when you make the acquisition, I’m just trying to understand if it’s a significant amount.

The 11 stores would not be material if that’s -- John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: No, I meant the value acquisition.

Broadly, with let’s just say a $110 million purchase price, your total consideration including expenses, we anticipate that let’s just say that $20 million of that would be [inaudible] that would draw down the credit facility. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: Okay, and just one last question. Can you just give me the CapEx numbers again?

I think it was a total of about $3.5 million. $1.2 million was growth and $2.2 million was maintenance. John Rowan - Sidoti & Company: Great, thanks a lot.

Your next question comes from Andrew Moore from B. Riley.

I don’t think you guys have FY ’09 guidance out there, but just at a high level, could you talk a little bit about what you see the split of pawn versus payday revenues is next year as well as kind of an operating income line?

With the value acquisition, I just mentioned a minute ago there was roughly a 69/31 split at the operating income line. I would suspect that that’s going to shift 7 or 8 points into the high 70s.

Okay, good enough, thank you.

Your next question comes from Liz Pierce from Roth Capital Partners.

Congratulations guys, nice quarter. I just had some housekeeping things. I couldn’t write fast enough. Could you just go over the closings again? It was 3 in this quarter, 8 year to date, and then 3 more, is that right?

That’s correct. Plus the 11 in Florida.

Okay, right and I know you don’t want to talk about next year but should we think that this could be a natural kind of cadence of store closings over the next few years?

Without Florida it’s a possibility. What we would prefer to do is to relocate the site to one that is more beneficial to the business. Our intent is not to reduce the number of sites we have out there but just to insure or maximize the productivity of the locations that we do have.

Okay, so this is not an effort to reduce the fleet size, this is just to improve productivity?

That’s right. We opened our first store in July of 2003 and over that time we’ve closed 1 or 2 here and there, and we’re getting to the point now where we have a convergence of leases expiring to allow us the opportunity then to evaluate each of the locations, whether we want to move forward with them or not. In some cases we also have the ability then to plan as we’re nearing the end of a lease and opening somewhere near that store. Frequently or occasionally what we’ve found with these is that we’re able to merge the agreements to maintain, we hope, a high level. When we release the information our plans for fiscal year 2009 next year then we’ll go through in detail the store openings by individual segment, our plans for the year, and we’ll give you some indication then of growth by segment as well. Of course we’ll give you earnings guidance for the year at that time.

Right, and then the loose diamonds proceeds, how much was that?

It was about $600,000 this year versus $700,000 last year.

Okay, and then on the merchandise sales between merchandise and scrap, the $17.9 million, should I just assume a comparable amount was in for Mexico, I think in the second quarter it was about $200,000? I’m trying to sort that out. I know you release it in the Q.

Mexico you’re going to see there are scrapings at lower levels than in the States and part of the reason –

$100,000? I’m just trying to look at the split on that $17.9 million for modeling purposes.

About $100,000 in net proceeds as I recall.

$100,000? Okay. You know what, I think that’s it, at least for the next 5 minutes.

At this time I show no further questions.

Okay, well once again we want to express our appreciation for your continued interest and support of EZCORP and we look forward to talking to you then next quarter.