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Henry Schein, Inc. (HSIC)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 24, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Henry Schein fourth quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. (Operator instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Susan Vassallo, Henry Schein's Vice President of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, Susan.

Susan Vassallo

Management

Thank you operator and my many thanks to each of you for joining us to discuss Henry Schein's fourth quarter results. If you have not received a copy of our earnings news release, you can access it on our Web site at www.henryschein.com With me this morning are Stanley Bergman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein and Steven Paladino, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to state that certain comments made during this call will include information that is forward looking. As you know, risks and uncertainties involved in the company’s business may affect the matters referred to in forward-looking statements. As a result, the company's performance may differ from those expressed in or indicated by such forward-looking statements. Also, these forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained in Henry Schein's Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, today, February 24, 2009. Henry Schein undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. I ask that during the Q&A portion of today's call you limit yourself to a single question and a follow up before returning to the queue. This will provide the opportunity for as many listeners as possible to ask a question within the one hour we have allotted for the call. Thank you very much. With that said I would like to turn the call over to Stanley Bergman.

Stanley Bergman

Management

Thank you very much, Susan. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. We are pleased to report solid operating margin expansion and 8% growth in diluted earnings per share, excluding the restructuring charge that Steven will cover a little later. Operating margin for the quarter reached 8.1%, which is up 76 basis points compared with the prior year fourth quarter. For the year, our operating margin was 6.9%, which is up 35 basis points and is in line with our stated company goal for annual operating margin expansion. On the top line, our local currency internal growth rate, if you adjust for the low margin pharmaceuticals and through sales timings, was approximately flat. Now taking into consideration the impact of the strengthening US dollar, the worsening economic condition since our last guidance and expectations for continued weakness, we remain cautiously optimistic about the future. That caution is reflected in today's adjustment to our 2009 financial guidance. Yet, with the realistic view of the future and a companywide commitment to tightening managing – manageable expenses, we are confident in our ability to grow market share and achieve the revised guidance we announced. The markets that we are in are not immune to the macroeconomic trends, but we believe are relatively resistant to the vagaries of the economy. So we remain quite optimistic about the future, and as I said a few seconds ago, are confident that we will continue to gain market share and confident that we will continue to gain market share in all of our sectors, major business units, dental, medical, international, local currency and practice management and value added services. In a moment I will comment on each of our business groups, but first I will ask Steven Paladino to provide an overview of our fourth quarter and full-year financial results, and our revised guidance. Stephen?

Steven Paladino

Management

Okay, thank you, Stan and good morning to everyone. First let me point out that our fourth quarter results reflect the wholesale ultrasound business as a discontinued operation. This business was part of our medical group and had 2008 sales of approximately $12.7 million. All current and prior year financial information has been restated to report this business as well as the oncology pharmaceutical and specialty pharmacy businesses as discontinued operations and therefore to exclude them from the detail of our income statement. Our fourth quarter also included a $23 million one-time pretax restructuring costs related to our cost saving initiative announced during our third quarter conference call. For purposes of comparison, I will discuss our 2008 Q4 and full-year results from continuing operations excluding the one-time restructuring costs, and I will refer to those results as adjusted results from continuing operations. A full reconciliation of our GAAP net income and EPS to our non-GAAP net income and EPS has been included in our earnings press release as Exhibit B. Our net sales for the quarter ended December 27, 2008, were $1.58 billion reflecting a 7.5% decline compared with the fourth quarter of 2007 or a 1.8% decline in local currencies. Our internally generated sales were down about 3% and we had acquisition growth of approximately 1.2%. You could also find the details of our sales growth in Exhibit A of our earnings news release, which was issued today. As I said, we previously announced an initiative of reducing sales of lower margin pharmaceutical products. Excluding sales of these products, worldwide internal sales in local currencies were down approximately 1.1%. Since this initiative has analyzed in the fourth quarter and was in place for all of 2008 it will not impact our sales comparisons going forward into 2009. Our adjusted…

Stanley Bergman

Management

Thank you Steven. Let me provide you with some commentary on each of our four major business groups. On the dental group side, that’s the North American dental, US and Canada, we do believe that the market for dental consumable merchandise sales was basically flat to slightly down during the quarter. Our customers are therefore looking more and more to added value, which we believe Henry Schein is ideally positioned to provide. The customers are seeing their business slightly down. The business is basically solid in the dental office but slightly down, specifically with some of the specialty areas and certainly on the expense of dental laboratory side, although the labs do have work but it is down on expensive procedure side. The current economic environment has particularly impacted the market for high-end equipment as well as elective procedures. As I mentioned, the orthodontics implants – and when I say implants, we’re talking essentially North America here, and certain other, as I mentioned, dental laboratory products. This is especially true in situations where there is no reimbursement. But overall, the dentists are still busy and the challenges are often regional. Over the last few years we have invested heavily in our sales force training in order to enable our FSCs, our field sales consultants, to help our customers improve the profitability and productivity of their practices. As another way to bring value to customers, Henry Schein offers nearly 20,000 proprietary private brand items. Many of our private brand products have a leading market share in the respective market category. Let me point out that although these products have a lower selling price, they provide a similar level of profitability in absolute dollars as branded products. I think it is clear that customers are moving towards the lower priced private brand…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Our first question will come from the line of Larry Marsh with Barclays Capital. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: Good morning. Thanks for the update. Just a couple of things maybe wanted to drill down on, Steve, so you basically communicated today a $0.15 reduction in kind of your expectations for 2009 with, I guess, $0.05 of that coming from FX. Just curious on the point, it sounds like you are now assuming what we are going to see further – a fair amount of dollar strengthening versus Euro and other currencies for ’09, is that right?

Steven Paladino

Management

Well, let me first clarify what you first said. The $0.05 decline versus our last guidance compared to today's guidance was looking at the US dollar where it was and what the expectations were for ’09 versus where it is today and what those expectations for ’09. So we are really not assuming a significant additional strengthening of the US dollar, but there is some strengthening that’s built into that. And again, it's really that the dollar did strengthen further since the last time we give guidance. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: Right. Because you had alluded to that back in November that could be a further headwind, so it seems to be consistent. So there's really, I guess another $0.10 of change and I just want to, to extent you can elaborate. It seems like directionally we would have assumed some slighter, lower margin on – lower impact from flu in ’09 versus ’08. Is there any change specifically to that expectation versus November?

Stanley Bergman

Management

Flu vaccine really is – our expectations are the same as the last conference call which is that we expect to distribute 12 million to 13 million doses of flu vaccines during 2009. I think really, the other main reason for the change in our guidance is clearly if you look back since end of October, the first week of November compared to now, it’s clear that the economy is in worse position. It's clear that our markets – we think our markets were basically flat, maybe flat to slightly down in Q4. So, it really reflects our outlook that – again we are trying to be a bit conservative given the macroeconomic conditions. We are assuming that the economy is not going to improve at all during 2009 and we are assuming that the markets that we serve are also not going to improve at all in 2009. And hopefully, that will turn out to be untrue and hopefully the markets will get a little bit better, especially maybe in the second half of the year. But we felt right now given all of the uncertainty that it was best really not to assume any improvements today. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: Well, so the message is I guess you had a $0.10 has to do with kind of top line expectations further tempering those. And so I know you guys usually don’t talk about your top line expectations around consumables and equipment and various divisions, but just directionally just to understand where you are thinking, is it fair to say that your expectations for ’09, say specifically in dental on consumables and equipment are going to be roughly consistent with what we saw in the fourth quarter, directionally worse or maybe directionally a little bit of pickup?

Steven Paladino

Management

I think we still believe that we can gain market share. The key question is whether the market is going to do so. If the markets are flat or slightly down, we think we can still gain some market share, but I want to point out Stanley's comments talked about customers really looking for lower priced solutions and that will also impact our top line in that during the fourth quarter our private label sales, the Henry Schein private brand sales were up actually 7% during Q4 on a worldwide basis. And with flat sales growth and private label sales being up 7%, obviously the private label sales are per unit anywhere from 20% or more less expensive than the branded. They have a very good gross margin from a bottom line perspective. The profitability is about the same maybe slightly more. But definitely, it negatively impacts top line and that’s also reflected in what we expect to continue going forward.

Stanley Bergman

Management

And Larry, I think it’s very, very important to realize that although – and specifically on the dental side, we do seek customers buying equipment whether it’s chairs, units, lights or it’s some of the x-ray equipment, buying less expensive units for the units are not as badly impacted by the economy as the selling price, so the average selling price is coming down. And if you come down that would be switched to generics on the consumables worldwide. This impacts the top line but it’s not as severe on the bottom line. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: Right. So I understand the equipment dynamic of lower selling prices and how that flows. I think what your message on the generics is you define it same operating profits. Still, even with slower top line, it’s interesting that mitigates some of the downside on the top line but obviously not all of it around just lower volumes overall. Is that fair to say?

Stanley Bergman

Management

I think Steven indicated that assuming the economy doesn’t get much worse, the numbers that you saw in the top line in the fourth quarter do indicate that we grow market share. And so that’s more or less what we’re – what we banked on 2009 budget done. We, of course, are watching the expenses. We reduced our web force by 2.5%. As of now, we don’t expect to have that kind of situation occur again. We did hold salary increases for 2009 because we do expect continued price deflation in most of our product offering. But at the same time, we continue to keep our benefit plans in place. So we’re managing very, very cautiously and we continue to invest in the business. And as Steven mentioned, we’re taking down our capital equipment investment a little bit, but that’s also because we don’t have any need to open any distribution centers or make any major investments in that area although we’re making investments in software, we continue to do that. So – when we look at sales growth, we start to look at in tens of basis points here either way and someone has to be very careful not to read too much into that. The business is solid. We’re generating good cash. And obviously we don’t know where the economy is going, so therefore we’re being a little bit more cautious and that’s in the past. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: I got it. Two other quick things and one would be I think you alluded to some challenges of the manufacturer of non-flu related vaccines. Can you elaborate anymore? And is that a part of your reduced expectations for ’09 and did it affect you in the fourth quarter at all?

Stanley Bergman

Management

First of all, I don’t want to mention the specific manufacturer but I think you can do your own market research. Second, our gross margin, our gross profit on the sale of branded vaccines is not very large, so it’s not material really to the overall performance of the company from the bottom line point of it, but it does reflect in the sales growth. It’s not really something that’s important to the bottom line at least for 2009. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: Right. Okay. And finally then – I know you’d mentioned the increasing importance of the private label financing that you have through several sources in the market place. Do you anticipate in your expectations that that’s going to continue to grow meaningfully as a percentage of your total equipment sales TN ’09 or are you assuming no big change?

Stanley Bergman

Management

In the budget we’ve assumed this to be constant. To tell you about it. We do expect we will do better, specifically, as we take our know-how in this area at Global, and we’ve seen some good impact to that in markets outside of the US. Our approval rate was something like 99% a year ago and it’s 95% today. We’re comfortable if that will remain in that range and I think it’s a big competitive advantage that we have. We get relatively prompt approval and our sales force is quite well-educated in how to go about getting these approvals, and we actually achieved some astounding successes in that area because one of our major resources exited the market. I think Steven was on the third quarter and we were able to find two other sources rather quickly and we have four sources of funding for our private label financing and we’re not taking any balance sheet risk in there but we’re getting approvals. Larry Marsh – Barclays Capital: Okay. I’ll stop there. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, I would like to remind everyone to please limit your questions to one per caller. Out next question will come from the line of Lisa Gill with JP Morgan. Lisa Gill – JP Morgan: Thanks very much and good morning. I was wondering Steve, maybe you can talk about few things. One on the restructuring initiative, are they fully in the runway to savings now or will they continue to ramp for 2009? And then, secondly, within the guidance, can you maybe just talk about the flu vaccine expectation. I’m not sure if he’s given a range around that. And then also on the buyback, it looks like you still have $58 million left on the buyback. Is there some component of a buyback in your guidance as well?

Steven Paladino

Management

Okay, sure Lisa. First on the restructuring, we did get some benefit in Q4 but it was not a lot. Really I would say that, starting in Q1 but we’re not going to see the full benefit because there are still some activities that we’re taking an additional $1 million to $3 million of restructuring costs. But I would say that starting in Q1 you have a very hard percentage of the benefit in Q1 and then clearly in Q2, Q3, and Q4, you’ll have the full benefit that will get to the $24 million to $27 million for the full year. So some really substantially all is occurring of that benefit starting in Q1 is really the short answer. Lisa Gill – JP Morgan: Okay, great.

Steven Paladino

Management

I’ll flew to your second question, yes we – well, we didn’t specifically put in our press release, our guidance for flu vaccine remains consistent, a 12 million to 13 million doses to be sold in 2009 so there’s no change there. And lastly on the buyback, you asked me correctly. We do have about $58 million still approved and our guidance does not assume any significant amount of buy back in 2009. So if we did buyback there would be an opportunity that is not being affected by our guidance. Lisa Gill – JP Morgan: Okay, great. Thank you.

Steven Paladino

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of John Kreger with William Blair. John Kreger – William Blair: Hi thanks. Just a follow up on Lisa’s question. If you think about your 5% to 10% EPS guidance in terms of growth, could you give us just a little bit more of your thoughts behind that and how much would you say would come from top line versus margin and leverage versus anything below the line like lower interest expense or lower share count?

Steven Paladino

Management

Okay. Really, it’s significantly weighted towards tightly managing expenses in the expense reductions. Now, we don’t – this was the first year in our budget process that the guidance that we gave and the targets that we gave to our business unit leaders was really to ensure that they get their profitability targets with very realistic sales members. So while there some sales drop baked into our own budget, a very big share – a very big piece of it is related to managing expenses and getting cost savings. There’s really not much change – there’s really very little impact on the interest line or on the share account line, very little. Again, so the bulk of it is that managing expenses with very modest sales growth. John Kreger – William Blair: Great. Thanks Steven.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Jeff Johnson with Robert Baird. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: Good morning, guys. How are you?

Steven Paladino

Management

Good.

Stanley Bergman

Management

Very good. Thanks. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: Good. Steve if I can just follow up on one comment you just made there. There is some sales growth baked into your ’09 guidance not to flick hairs, but is that on a – I would assume you’re talking out an organic basis or organic plot acquisition for XFX. I’m just trying to figure out because it sure is hard to get to a positive revenue number in my model if I don’t have acquisitions in there.

Steven Paladino

Management

You’re correct. It would include acquisitions and let me mention a couple of things. One, we did make an announcement on the three European acquisitions sometimes there in January that represented about $150 million worth of sales on a last 12-month basis. But there were also a number of smaller acquisitions that were completed either in Q4 or Q1. Individually, all of them were really small enough where we elected not to make a press release because they were small; but in total, they represent a little bit more than an additional $100 million of sales on the last 12-months basis. So we really have acquisition sales growth assuming no loss of business on integration. If something north [ph] of $250 million from acquisitions. That’s all on a constant currency basis also. So, acquisitions as we said, we think that there’s good opportunity for us with the strength of our balance sheet. A number of smaller players were rather very active acquisition pipeline, so all of that – hopefully we’ll see some more acquisitions going forward. But again, our guidance does not assume many additional acquisitions, only the ones that are complete as of now. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: Okay, great. Helpful. The $100 million in smaller deal – we knew about the Spanish equipment, dental equipment acquisition that you hadn’t talked about but how do we layer the others into medical, in the international, where should they go?

Stanley Bergman

Management

Okay. The bulk of it is – it was some small international but the bulk of it is in the US market and I would say that real rough numbers. You probably have 75%, 80% in the US dental market and the balance in the US medical just as very rough numbers, and a little bit of an international because of the Spanish acquisition. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: Great. Last question I guess for Stanley, on the dental equipment side, your biggest competitor is describing the next year outlook of strength on the high-end, weakness on the basic equipment side. You’re almost describing an exact opposite. Is that just a mixed issue kind of some of the better offerings you might have on the basic equipment side and some of the strength they may be seeing in the high-tech side. How would you differentiate those two comments?

Steven Paladino

Management

I really wouldn’t want to comment because quite frankly I have a problem understanding some of the numbers being reported. But I would say that we see a specific downwards, spiral on chairs units like and we see the same on the 3D x-ray. Now, whether we have a bigger market share on those in 3D x-ray I don’t know. On the other side of the equation, we’re seeing a very strong demand for the 4D. Now, we have vertical in the comparables for D4D in 2008. Although we did have a nice quarter, fourth quarter, but it’s very hard to compare the two, like I told you as what our view is of our business. Remember that on the Violet side and on the IFR side, we do have exclusives, and so there will be an impact on the sales of both of those, although we remain quite optimistic about both of those product lines. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: And, Stanley, when you described it as a downward spiral on the basic on the chairs-like stand on that, correct me if I’m wrong, I thought your earlier comments where that might be where a little bit of positive performance comes from this year?

Stanley Bergman

Management

Well, my downward spiral was really related to pricing, right? And moving trading down to less expensive units. It’s hard to tell where the economy is going to take that, but if you take that all into account, from an overall Henry Schein point of view, it’s not that material to the overall performance of the company because you’ve got to equipment as a percentage of our North American dental sales and you have to further take that as a percentage of our global sales. So, you got to take it in within some context. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: Fair enough. And just very quickly, if you break your international down into dental debt and medical now, are we going to start seeing those broken out or international broken out into those segments or will you still just report just the international results?

Stanley Bergman

Management

Boy, Steven, do we want to –?

Steven Paladino

Management

No, we don’t want to add any more accounts.

Stanley Bergman

Management

Yes. I’m sure we can give some additional color and flavor on the breakup between dental, medical and vet. As it is now, when you look at our press release, there’s probably, compared to other companies, there’s a lot of detail on sales; so, maybe we’ll give it just some color on the conference call script just really because it’s really, it’s a lot of detail. We can obviously give some more detail on the scripts.

Stanley Bergman

Management

It was very, very important, we drew report on the business unit’s report, sales, local currency sales, break it down with acquisition sales, and it’s constant; dental, medical, and International Antec. And I don’t believe there’s any other company in our state that’s providing that information on a consistent basis and the more metrics we start providing, I think, just the more difficult it becomes and the more expensive it becomes. So, I think the information we provide is probably a little bit more transparent than most. Jeff Johnson – Robert Baird: Understood, but any additional detail would be appreciated. Thanks, guys.

Stanley Bergman

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Robert Willoughby with Banc of America. Robert Willoughby – Banc of America: Yes. Profitability was probably the highest we’ve ever seen despite a fairly disappointing revenue number. Can you refresh me, what were the primary points of leverage to the EBITDA margin, three or four things that went particularly well? And why doesn’t that run rate continue in ’09 even on a less inspiring revenue outlook?

Stanley Bergman

Management

Well, I’m not sure we said it. It doesn’t continue. I think we do expect continued margin expansion. Really, the big things were our restructuring efforts, our overall management of expenses. We really went up and down the entire organization. Every business leader, every senior executive looked at their expense structure and we said, “Look, how are we going to do more with less and spend less money?” And we’re starting to see some improvements in Q4. We’ll see more improvements in 2009. As I said earlier above, I think the good news about our guidance is it’s very heavily weighted towards expense management; enough to say that we’re expecting no sales growth because we are expecting some, but we’re trying to be realistic given the economic conditions. And we still think that we have more ability to drive efficiencies in our business. Robert Willoughby – Banc of America: The $23 million charge in the quarter, the restructuring charge, what – was there any intangible write-off?

Stanley Bergman

Management

No, there was no intangible write-off in the $23 million. It was all a combination. The bulk of it was really termination benefits, severance and other termination benefits for the people that were terminated. There was also some lease runoff with some of the facilities closed. That was the bulk of all of it. If you look at our loss on discontinued operations, however, the bulk of that loss was an intangible write-off. Robert Willoughby – Banc of America: That was the business that came from where?

Stanley Bergman

Management

It was a small business that we made in acquisition as part of a larger acquisition that included a wholesale ultrasound business. I think the acquisition was completed one to two years ago. And, again, since we’re not really in the wholesale business, we felt that it was better to get out of that business and we kept the retail part of the business, the retail to the end use of the physician’s space. And because the purchase price accounting required a portion of the intangibles to the allocated to both pieces of the business, there was a write-off of the piece that we did dispose of. Robert Willoughby – Banc of America: Okay. Thank you.

Stanley Bergman

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Chris Arndt with Select Equity Group. Chris Arndt – Select Equity Group: I was wondering if you’ll provide a little bit more color on the equipment sales. And in particular, Stanley, you mentioned that shift-down in pricings to the lowest price chairs in light and, yet, stronger D4D equipment sales; but I was curious as to what do you expect will be the net impact of this? And what have you seen so far in the US and in Europe in terms of your expectation for equipment overall? Is this down 5%, down 10%, or consistent with the fourth quarter?

Stanley Bergman

Management

I think, as we’ve mentioned, we believe that, at least as best we can tell at this moment, that 2009 will likely be consistent with the fourth quarter. I think we also had a pretty good 2007 fourth quarter, so the comparables are quite high; so, it’s more or less consistent. We see the pricing coming down. The unit price is considering to come down for chairs, units, lights and the 3D x-ray and other kinds of x-ray products. On the upside, we do see E4D going up because E4d really is a product that enables the practitioner to reduce expenses in the practice. So, it’s hard to go beyond that. As far as Europe is concerned, I think we may have a slight uptake from the fourth quarter in terms of local currency internal growth as we see equipment in Germany move into the second and third quarter, but we’re talking about basis points, 20, 30 basis points either way, I think, at least from a planning point of view. We’re planning on sales the way Steven described and managing our expenses. Anything positive on the sales side will be god overall. Chris Arndt – Select Equity Group: Yes. I’m surprised that there is as much basic equipment sales as there have been and I was worried that some of that might be due to planning to remodel a practice, which took place in the middle of last year when things were okay, and as we go forward, that will not – those types of sales won’t take place.

Stanley Bergman

Management

There are a number of puts and takes here. One of the, I suppose, encouraging things is that a number of dentist because of the impact of the markets on their time and plan of staying in practice a little longer, which means that they had probably not planned on refurbishing their office, so we’re seeing some of that. I think it’s prudent for us to be managing expenses and anything on the plus side promises a positive surprise. Chris Arndt – Select Equity Group: Okay. Thanks, Stanley.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Randall Stanicky with Goldman Sachs. Alex Becker – Goldman Sachs: Hi, it’s Alex Becker for Randall. Just a couple of quick follow-ups. On guidance, Steven, I think you mentioned that there’s no assumption of improvement in the economic activity from the four Q-levels in your outlook. If there is a meaningful deterioration in the economic conditions from the four Q-levels, would that be captured in the low end of guidance?

Steven Paladino

Management

Well, it’s really difficult to answer that because when you say a meaningful deterioration, if there is – I don’t know what that exactly means, but if the economy and our markets worsen, again, that’s not really built into our guidance. We’re expecting the economy to not improve but certainly not worsen by any significant amount. Slight worsening, of course, I think, within our range, will probably be okay, but more than slight, I think we’d have to take another look at things. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be any areas to mitigate because if that did occur, we would be looking at our expense structure again. But again, that’s not our current plans. Alex Becker – Goldman Sachs: Okay, that helps. And just – are you providing any broad guidance around what operating cash flow would like in ’09?

Stanley Bergman

Management

Well, yes, we’re still consistent with – we believe our operating cash flow will exceed our net income. I think that was really – if you look at our operating cash flow for 2008, it was very strong, so we do expect to see continued strong operating cash flow going forward, but we didn’t give more specific than that. Alex Becker – Goldman Sachs: Okay. That helped. Thank you.

Stanley Bergman

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

We have time for one more question and that final question will come from the line of Valerie Brown with Alliance Bernstein. Valerie Brown – Alliance Bernstein: Hi. My question relates to the fiscal stimulus plan that was passed. My understanding is that there is an extension of enhanced small business expensing, which would allow small business owners to fully depreciate new equipment purchases in the first year. Do you think that this could potentially benefit your business? Is it something that you’ve explored and are your customers even aware of this?

Steven Paladino

Management

Yes. You’re correct that there was an extension of – it’s called Section 179, accelerated depreciation. And just to give you the full picture, that law allowed in 2008 to expense for qualified small businesses, which our customers generally are, to expense the first $250,000 of CapEx major in the year and it was scheduled to go down by about half of that, so about $125,000 and the stimulus plan left it at the full $250,000. So, we think that’s a good thing because we think that, certainly, our field sales people are well-educated on the tax benefits and return on investment, and they share that with our customers. And I think good Henry Schein customers certainly understand not only the clinical benefits of buying equipment but the financial and return on investment benefits, including tax benefits. So, I think it’s a positive, but we should be careful that it’s an incremental positive. It’s not something that’s going to be a huge benefit for anyone.

Stanley Bergman

Management

So, that concludes our call for today. I’m sorry that we ran over a little bit, but there was just a lot we wanted to talk about. Thank you for your interest. As I think you can tell by the tone of our discussions today that we remain very optimistic about the business in terms of market share growth, in terms of our expense management and cash flow, and we’re going to be very conservative in managing business through this economically challenging time. So, thank you very much. If you have any questions, please feel free to call Steve Paladino, our CFO, at 631-843-5915 or Susan Vassallo at 631-843-5562. Thank you very much and we’ll be back again, I think, in about 60 days.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may all disconnect.