Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Henry Schein First Quarter Conference Call. [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.

Thank you, operator, and my thanks to each of you for joining us to discuss Henry Schein's first quarter results. With me this morning are Stanley Bergman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein; and Steven Paladino, 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 filings. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, May 8, 2012. 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 please 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 this call. With that said, I would like to turn the call over to Stanley Bergman.

Good morning and thank you, Susan. And thank you, everyone for joining us. Before I begin to discuss the quarter, let me just note that last night the Fortune rankings, Fortune 500 rankings were issued, and Henry Schein placed 303 in the 2012 Fortune 500 Ranking of America's Largest Corporations. We are very pleased by this recognition of our ability to record steady growth even during challenging economic times. Our steady growth in -- position on the ranking is reflective of the wonderful work that our team of over 15,000 Team Schein Members around the world has undertaken in the past 16 years as a public company. Today, we are also pleased to be reporting overall sales growth of 7.8%. This is the first quarter that we are presenting net sales results for our global customer-centric business units and each of our global Dental, Animal Health, Medical and Technology and Value-Added Services units reported growth in local currency in mid single digits or better. So I think with the new way in which we're reporting our sales with these new global verticals, it'll give our shareholders a far better ability to understand the performance of the company and align the sales reporting and the profitability reporting of the company with our strategic plan. Based on the strength of our first quarter financial results and our continued confidence in our outlook for the rest of the year, we are increasing EPS guidance -- or our EPS guidance range for 2012. Reflecting this outlook, our Board of Directors recently voted to authorize the repurchase of up to additional $200 million shares of Henry Schein common stock. Earlier this year, as discussed during our last quarterly call, we are continuing to optimize our cost structure and improve profitability. We look forward to the future with more efficient organization; the organization will be far more focused and efficient at using our resources and in that context, even have a sharper global view of our customers and their evolving needs. In a moment, I'll provide some commentary on each of our business units. Again, thank you to our 15-plus-thousand team Schein members around the world who are producing outstanding results for our shareholders quarter-upon-quarter. But before I go into further details and provide commentary, let me ask Steve Paladino, our CFO, to provide commentary on the first quarter financial results.

Okay, thank you, Stan, and good morning to everyone. I am also very pleased to be reporting strong financial results for the first quarter of 2012. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that our 2012 first quarter results include restructuring costs of $11.8 million pretax or $0.09 per diluted share. We announced this restructuring on our last quarterly conference call and Exhibit B to this morning's earnings news release reconciles our GAAP to non-GAAP earnings and EPS from continuing operations. Turning to our financial performance. Our net sales for the quarter ended March 31, 2012 were $2.1 billion, reflecting a 7.8% increase compared with the first quarter of 2011. This consists of 8.4% growth in local currencies and a 0.6% decline related to foreign currency exchange. In local currencies, our internally generated sales were up 7.8% and the acquisition growth was 0.6%. You can see the details of our sales growth that are contained also in Exhibit A in our earnings news release. Let me point out that the comparison to the prior year first quarter was favorably impacted because the first quarter of 2012 did not include the December holiday week, whereas that particular holiday week was included in the first quarter of 2011. So this made for a somewhat easier sales growth comparison in the first quarter of 2012. If we adjust for that sales growth for that impact, our worldwide internally generated sales growth for the first quarter was 5.6% in local currencies, and that compares to the 7.8% I just mentioned. This impact was favorable on a worldwide consolidated basis on all of our sales categories, except for Dental equipment. This is because the last calendar week of the year is an exceptionally strong week for Dental equipment sales. This strong week was included…

Thank you very much, Steven. I'd like to review the first quarter results from our business units that served the Dental, Animal Health and Medical practices on a global basis, as well as providing some commentary on our Global Technology and Value-Added Services business units. These 4 business units provide distinct organizational focus for reaching and serving each of our practitioner segments and are charged with implementing our 2012 to 2014 strategic plan, the plan that ends January -- December 31, 2014. And we do so with the benefits of a global perspective, strategy and operations, as well as global product and services offerings and global best practices. So let's take a look at the global Dental business first, which as Steven noted, was impacted by a number of factors relating to the holiday week of 2011, in fact, the way the calendar works and then the mild weather, which generally was favorable but did negatively impact our Medical business in the U.S. Suffice it to say though that apart from these impacts, we believe that we continue to gain market share in all of our business units. And as a further positive note, heading into the second quarter, I would like to mention that the North American Dental equipment backlog, as of now, was significantly higher than a year ago. So in understanding the business -- the performance of the business, I think it's very important to understand the impact of the calendar and some of the other variances and reasons for variances that Steven pointed out. We remain quite positive about the dental market in the United States. The traffic is -- seems to be stable to slightly growing. Consumables seem to be on the positive side and that looks to be holding, and equipment remains quite steady,…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Glen Santangelo with Credit Suisse. Glen J. Santangelo - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Stan, I just wanted to follow-up with you on some comments you just made. You basically said like not everything is working in every market, and it's not perfect, but you showed pretty solid organic growth trends across all your businesses, across all your geographies, really, and I'm kind of curious as to Europe is particularly surprising given what we hear from the macro commentary. I'm surprised that your International business is growing faster than your North American business. And so I'm wondering if you can comment on that. Do you think if it's more share gains or is maybe the market over there maybe a little bit better than we all think?

Very good question, Glen. So I think one has to peel the onion a bit. Yes, let's deal with the challenges to start with. Italy, Spain, Portugal, the markets are not that good. We are gaining market share, but there's some challenges. Germany is on the positive side. We continue to gain market share, but the market overall is okay as well. The U.K. is challenged, although we are doing quite well in the U.K. We're working with some of the larger groups. I think we've adapted quite well to some of the concerns relative to the change in reimbursement. The Benelux countries are doing okay. France, at least from a Schein point-of-view, is doing okay. We, of course, are guarded and trying to figure out what the election -- the impact of the election will have on our business. And of course, our business is primarily a dental business, although we have an interest in a nonconsolidated Animal Health business. That's a nice business, we do not consolidate it. And it's a very small investment, but a decent-sized business. Australia and New Zealand, I think there are -- it is a lumpy market, but overall, the economy is healthy. I think just like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, did a little bit better during the recessionary period and both markets are quite solid. So in general, the comments I gave you are not specifically related to this quarter, but in general, giving you a feel. Of course, in North America the U.S. seems to be doing better. There are weeks that the economy, at least from our point-of-view, business is very good and there may be a week where we say, is there a challenge? But overall, I think our team is quite bullish, the pipeline for equipment, although there's no guarantee that we WILL actually install this equipment in the quarter, or uninstall it, seems to be solid, and so I think that’s sort of a bit of a view around the world. I think the dental market is okay around the world, the Animal Health market certainly seems fine, and medical is a very small business for us outside of the U.S., although we are doing okay and maybe 2 years ago, we're not doing so well, but now we are. Glen J. Santangelo - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Hey Stan, maybe if I could just ask one quick follow-up on the equipment side, I mean, given the strong organic trends and it sounds like most of the markets are generally doing okay. What do you make of the equipment number continuing to lag? And what do you think's causing that, and you just sort of commented you think your pipeline on equipment looks good, and so would you expect those trends to reverse here as fiscal '12 unfolds?

Well, first of all, I think Steven was quite clear on the swing between the fourth quarter and the first quarter as it relates to the most productive week in the year. So and Steven can take you through that in specifics so I think the quarter was probably, if you adjust for this, but again, this is very hard to get the precise number, was a positive quarter and that was on the heels of a very, very strong previous year. So I think the equipment business is okay. We perhaps are a little bit more optimistic, but don't want to give predictions for the next quarter. But again, we're what, one month into the next quarter? So I think the trend you saw in the last, what, 8 quarters in equipment is kind of continuing. Dentists feel that they should invest in their practice, and they're doing that. Financing doesn't seem to be difficult, it's there, and the cost is very low and the traffic seems to be getting a little better. So we're not at 2006, and '05 levels, but we're definitely part of seeing a trend here that continued I don't know the exact quarter, but probably 8, maybe Steven knows or remembers, 8, 9, 10 quarters ago.

Yes, Glen, I would just echo that. I think if you look at that North American equipment, our North American Dental team really did an extraordinary job in promoting all of the year end tax benefits for buying equipment and we really had an outstanding Q4 that, to some extent pulled some sales from Q1. I think we certainly believe that the adjusted 1.5% equipment sales growth that we reported for Q1 for North American Dental equipment sales, we expect it to grow that sales growth. I don't want to give specific guidance on it, but we do expect it to grow during the year. So we feel like equipment sales was more of a timing impact with the strong Q4, and you will see improvement as the year progresses.

Your next question comes from Robert Jones with Goldman Sachs.

Just actually wanted to focus on Animal Health a little bit. Clearly much stronger results there in the quarter than what we've seen recently and certainly what we were looking for. It sounds maybe a little bit of the strength helped by flea and tick, but maybe taking that out, could you guys maybe just comment about how we should be thinking about the growth of the core business in Animal Health? And is maybe some of this just pent-up demand from a generally weak economy the last several quarters?

Without getting into micro, but it's very actually hard to get to specific trends, there are all sorts of indices one can look at, but I think when you take a look at this market in general, you have to understand how agency sales switch between GAAP sales, where the sale is fully recognized and agency sale, you have to look at that. You have to understand the large animal versus the companion animal information, and there's very little information available as to the performance of others in the marketplace on a bifurcated basis. You then have to take a look at price impact, and there have been some very nice launches in the field, to mention the Trifexis, Comfortis situation so one has to understand all of these. Having said that, the market seems to be growing. I don't think it went down as much as some people reported, and it may not be booming as much as others are thinking today. But it is a market that is growing in the 100s of basis points, and it's a good market, and from a Henry Schein point-of-view, we believe we're gaining market share. We believe that our software acquisition, the expansion of products that we're offering to veterinarians, the value-added side and -- is doing well. I think from a Henry Schein point-of-view, you have to remember that in 2010, our sales force was inwardly focused during the integration period. Some of that went into 2011, but as the year continued, and even going into the first quarter, we think we are in a good shape -- not good, outstanding shape from a sales organization point-of-view and that's helping us gain market share. So there's many puts and takes here, and I don't think we can give you a one-sentence answer on this.

No, that's helpful. And then I guess just a quick follow up around Animal Health, and specifically the acquisition of AUV announced in the quarter. It sounds like that acquisition is going to be slightly dilutive to 2012. I was wondering if that's still the case, just relative to the updated guidance that you gave today. I don't believe that was included before. And then, I guess longer-term around Animal Health and relative to this acquisition, I think you said it was about a 1% operating margin. Could you maybe just talk about the operating margin profile of the vet business in light of this acquisition? Or maybe timing that you expect to get those margins closer to current vet operating margins?

Sure, so yes, a couple of questions there. So first our guidance that we issued today includes the AUV acquisition, which will be slightly dilutive for the balance of the year, and we think it's $0.01 or $0.02, not something significant, slightly dilutive. A big factor for that is the professional and onetime fees needed to close the acquisition, which is driving some of that dilution and really, not much synergies achieved. Because remember, the deal is not closed yet; it's expected to close by, let's say end of Q2, maybe early Q3, at the latest. So there's not really a lot of synergies that we can achieve going forward in a 6-month period. Longer term, we believe that, that 1% operating margin has potential to get up significantly higher, mid single-digit range over a number of years. So it's not a one-year activity. And last I want to point out, because there were, we did talk about the purchase price, which was $38 million, and we -- there were estimates out there for significantly higher. Some people had estimates out there equal to onetime sales, which would have been close to $300 million. So we paid because -- we paid a price, which we felt was a fair price, but because the business is only 1% operating margin today. But again we think that the inclusion of some of our purchasing synergies and global expertise in distribution and things like that, we have good opportunity to raise operating margin. So we feel good with the acquisition. And it's a healthy size from a revenue -- just under $300 million in revenue. So overall, the main reason why Animal Health all-in margins are lower, I think we talked about this before, is because of the percentage of pharmaceuticals, which carry a lower gross and operating margin, and it’s critical to carry. Obviously, the pharmaceuticals are a big part of what veterinarians dispense and offer to pet owners. So again, we feel good about the acquisition and the opportunities, but I just will caution that it will take us a little bit of time to realize the synergies.

Your next question comes from Brandon Couillard with Jefferies. S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: Steve, was there an acquisition in the North American Dental unit in the period? And then does your revised outlook contemplate any incremental share repurchases due the balance of 2012?

So there was really, trying to just check. I think there was the tail end of an acquisition in Dental but it was very tiny. Just trying to check which one it was. Let me answer the second question first as I get that information from the -- the guidance really does not assume any significant amount of stock buyback. We don't want the guidance to get ahead of the stock buyback because if, for some reason, we wind up buying less than our expectations, we don't want to have the guidance at risk. So really, we think that there's a little bit baked in, but the bulk of it is not baked into our guidance. As far as the acquisition growth, the primary acquisition in global Dental was the Sogim acquisition in France, but there was in the U.S. a small, a very small acquisition that we didn't announce on the Dental side, so yes there was a little bit of acquisition activity in the global Dental piece. S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: And then secondly, what is your revised EPS outlook factor for FX headwinds? And I guess if you could be more specific around the euro-U.S. dollar rate, it’d be helpful.

Sure. We're still being a little bit conservative in our guidance on FX rates. We have utilized in our guidance a lower exchange rate specifically for the Euro, which is the primary currency that impacts us, so we're using a lower rate than the current $1.30, $1.02 exchange rate that we're at, to be a little bit conservative there, and given that we're not sure exactly which way it's going to go, and hard to predict, there's a little bit of conservatism still built into our FX rate and our guidance.

Your next question comes from Steven Valiquette with UBS.

Just wanted to make sure I heard a couple of numbers right. It’s clearly, a lot of moving parts this quarter, so when you guys mentioned there was a 10% growth in internal Dental consumables and 6% growth in internal dental equipment, I wasn't clear if whether that was the global sales or international sales. So I just want to try to confirm that first.

Okay, yes, so both of those numbers, the 10% local internal growth were for the international Dental merchandise, and the 6% was the international Dental equipment.

Okay, so that’s international. Okay so then do you happen to have the global numbers, then? Global breakdown between global Dental consumables and equipment internal.

Yes. So let me give you -- the reported numbers global Dental merchandise growth, this is again local internal, is 8.2% and global Dental equipment minus 0.2%, and that translates to overall local internal on a combined basis of merch and equipment of 6.2%. And again, just to highlight again the dental equipment sales were negatively impacted by this last week of the year, and that minus 0.2% becomes plus 3.6% on a global basis when you adjust for that.

Okay. And I think some of the other questions kind of touched on this, but just generally speaking, does it seem like consumables growth should be outpacing equipment for the rest of this year? Or just I guess any additional general thoughts on the consumables versus equipment growth within Dental for the rest of the year.

Well, remember, consumable growth had significant tail winds because of this calendar week issue, whereas the opposite was true on equipment. So when you normalize for that, again the worldwide global Dental consumable merchandise comes down a bit to 4.7%, and that's clearly, we think, gaining market share. If the market is growing in the 2% or 3% range, that's probably a bullish estimate of what the combined market is. So we're growing at close to double that on an adjusted basis. Typically, the merchandise sales as people are feeling more optimistic and patient traffic continues to be improving to steady, is where you first see a benefit and then as the consumable sales continue to do well, people become more bullish on equipment. So equipment generally takes a little bit longer to catch up to the market improvements than the consumables.

Your next question comes from Robert Willoughby with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch.

Steve, the organic trends look good. Congrats on that. They're ahead of where we thought they'd be, but we're still looking at the capital deployment side of your business model here. It looks like the deals added, I think you broke out 0.6% growth to revenues are about $12 million, and I’m looking at here minority interest line item and track only about $2 million, so if I look at all-in deal spending of about $211 million, looks like you generated maybe $3 million or so in incremental contribution. Is that the best use of your capital? I would think a share repurchase of size and magnitude would get you more.

Well, you know, we can offline, Bob; I don't think your math is accurate on using that minority interest, but offline we can go through that. As far as your general question on capital deployment, we feel like the balance sheet and the cash flow is strong enough that we can do a very sizable stock buyback annually, and again, our goal is $200 million to $300 million per year on a continuous basis, so it's not a one-time shot. We want to see that share count shrink continuously over time. But you can't buy back all your shares and get to prosperity that way. So we do feel that using capital to grow businesses and you've got to be careful on first-year impact of acquisitions. The way the accounting works with professional fees, per share benefit on acquisition growth is nominal; the second and third year we should get good returns on investments. Our goal is to get double-digit in fact, mid teens pretax return on investment by year 2 or 3. So we feel that, that's a good deployment of strategy, and you have to also realize that as we expand globally, take for example, on the Animal Health side, the benefits to all of the other business units because of supplier relationships and best practices and other factors aren't exclusively shown in the acquisition model. They also are shown in the existing businesses, so we think we should do both.

Okay, all right, that's helpful. And just a question. Did you break out a benefit from the leap year at all for the businesses?

The quarter had the same number of weeks. There is no benefit. We have said consistently is that 2012 has one less week versus 2011, so that's all baked into our full year guidance. It's not equivalent to, on a EPS basis, you know exactly 1/52 of a year. It's a little bit less than that because it's a slower week for consumables that drives it. But that we’ve talked about a couple of times, if that's helpful.

Yes, I was thinking the extra day in February, but that's fine.

Okay, so no, we didn't really, we didn't give any data on that. And again, because we're on the same number of weeks -- for us, we don't actually have an extra day for leap year. We have the same number of weeks, 13 weeks every quarter. It's not the same as a calendar month end.

Your next question comes from Jeff Johnson with Robert Baird. Jeffrey D. Johnson - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Steve, you know what, you just touched on it, but I just want to, my inbox got flooded with about 20 e-mails as you were going through the timing issues in your prepared remarks. Just want to confirm, no extra selling week this quarter; it was purely timing of a soft consumables quarter last year in the first quarter that gets dropped out this quarter and that's what helped kind of the higher growth rates on the consumable side.

Yes, so again, just to be very clear for everyone on the call, and you have it exactly right, same number of weeks, same number of days in Q1 this year versus last year, but all of our adjusted sales growth were reflecting that last year's Q1 included the holiday week, the Christmas/ New Year's week, which is on consumables, on everything but Dental Equipment, a soft week. And what we broke out is that because of that easy comparable last year, that our sales growth was favorable because of that. And just to resummarize, the reported local internal growth on a worldwide basis was 7.8%. That's reported-to-reported, but the adjusted, when factoring in that favorable comparability in Q1, was 5.6%. So it's about 2 percentage points that it helped us during the quarter. And we wanted to be as transparent as possible and take people through that, because even though it was a very strong sales growth quarter, part of it was related to this. Jeffrey D. Johnson - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Yes, fair enough. And just on the margin side, it sounds like AUV, at least my math, may be at 20 basis point headwind operating margins, once that deal closes, the company-wide margin for 4 quarters then. But you do 53 basis points this quarter. Maybe you've got a little bit timing benefit as well. But how do you think about margins developing over the rest of this year? A good quarter this quarter. Can some of the expansion continue over the next 3?

I would be cautious. Our goal, we were at the high end of our goal for the quarter, which is the 50 basis points. I think that was driven in part because of very strong internal sales growth. So we still expect margin expansion on a full year basis, but maybe not quite to the same level that we experienced in Q1. Jeffrey D. Johnson - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: And last question, just why was working capital such a big use of cash this quarter that drove operating cash flow negative?

It was really 2 areas, trade accounts receivable, which we had very strong cash collections at the year-end for Q4. Again the timing of our year-end, which was December 31, in 2011, a lot of people for tax reasons, I think, paid at the end of the year in order to get the tax deduction if they're on a cash basis. So we think it was primarily timing on the working capital, both on the trade receivables and the trade payables, where we took advantage of cash discounts. It's just the timing of it. Overall, free cash flow and operating cash flow, we're still expecting to be very strong for the full year.

Your next question comes from Lisa Gill with JPMorgan. Michael R. Minchak - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: It's actually Mike Minchak in for Lisa this morning. First, just with respect to the updated 2012 guidance, you took the range up by roughly the amount of the beat in the first quarter relative to consensus. Can you talk about what drove the strength in the first quarter versus your internal expectations? And I know you had mentioned the weather benefit, but was there anything else that positively impacted the first quarter that you don't see -- expect to see a continuing benefit of, over the course of the year?

Well, it's a difficult question because it's not just the weather or the easy comparable on some of the sales categories. We had absolutely a very strong internal sales growth, despite all of those other factors that provided some tailwind across the board. We still think that the markets Stanley talked about, just a little bit, the markets still have some uncertainty. So we're trying to be conservative in our overall guidance I talked about earlier; foreign exchange that we're trying to be conservative. And you know, but we feel like things, certainly since last conference call and 2 conference calls ago, we’re feeling like our markets are continuing to improve gradually, and the ones that really aren't improving, maybe some of the Mediterranean countries, that they're at least stabilizing in our market. So we feel bullish, and we want to have guidance out there that we don't have to change on the downside, should some of these uncertainties materialize. Michael R. Minchak - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Understood. And then maybe just to drill down a little bit on the equipment side, I was wondering if you could provide any incremental color or breakdown on the trends, both within high-tech and basic equipment in the quarter? Is one growing faster than the other? And then maybe if you can comment at all on E4D?

Sure. Well, high-tech and specifically, E4D had very -- had a very strong quarter for Q1, but we also saw improving growth in traditional equipment so it wasn't just related to the high-tech, but high-tech was stronger than traditional for us. And the strongest within high-tech was the E4D CAD/CAM business.

Your next question comes from Larry Marsh with Barclays.

This is Elliot Feldman filling in for Larry. Just a quick question on the Medical business. A bit of a sequential slowdown in organic growth but obviously, following a pretty good growth in 2011. Just wondering if you could provide any updates also for what you're seeing around broader utilization patient traffic trends, I mean, discuss about that a little bit and perhaps, maybe more importantly, the competitive environment in the space. I know you got some pretty nice market share gains last year, so any updated thoughts on that would be great.

Yes, I think again, we commented and Steven commented in, I think quite depth here, you need to take into account these sales of diagnostic products in the quarter. There was a significant dip because of the mild season, particularly relating to flu and that kind of problem. So we believe the 3.4% internal growth in local currencies for North American Medical sales would have been approximately 6%, somewhere around that, hard to tell, if not adversely impacted by the mild winter weather. So overall, I think this is in line with the kind of sales we've shown, the growth we've shown for a while now, for many quarters. Maybe it's a little bit, slightly better from, I can't recall, Steven, what it was last quarter.

It wasn't slightly better, but it was comparable.

Comparable. So I mean we've been showing this mid single-digit growth now for a while, hard to tell again what's the market, the exact market growth rate is because there's little data available. We believe we increased sales to our larger group practices by something like 20% in North America. And we had some strong pharmaceutical sales, specifically to the larger practices, so all of this contributed to our sales in North America, and we believe, as we have, I think indicated and shown for a while now, that we are increasing market share. So I can't give you more specifics than that. But I think it would be wrong to characterize our sales as anything but growing market share, and that the market is a solid market. It's changing significantly and, I think it was about 3 years ago we, or maybe a little longer that, when we created our Health Care Services group to focus on the larger practices and the new kinds of entities emerging. And this group has done very, very well and we continue to grow market share in the newer entities and the larger entities. So the Medical business is growing. Of course, there are some challenges with margins, but we have to manage through that.

Okay, that's helpful. And Steve, I know I may be a little bit too early in asking this. I know it's only May but just around flu, given some of the changes to the contractual agreements you guys have announced this year, coming off a pretty weak flu season, any early expectations you guys can provide us for that business, later this year we can – might be able to see in the back half?

It's still really early in the season and because of the mild winter, we believe that the pre-book activity, people haven't really mentally turned to thinking about buying flu vaccine for the upcoming season. Expectations are basically to sell a similar amount of doses as we sold last year, which was about 11.5 million doses. There's really not any reason at this point in any data points to have a different opinion than that. Our new contract, we think, provides us the opportunity for better profitability, as well as the age indications on the new manufacturer are lower, so that's helpful to some practitioners that are serving younger patients. But it's still very early on, really, to have any better intelligence in that market.

We only have time for one more question and your question comes from Jonathan Block with SunTrust.

Maybe just 2 quick ones. The first is on the Animal Health side. Several weeks ago, one of the manufacturers announced their intention to have at least one of their distributors go ahead and be able to become sort of a generalist, selling products of some of their competitors, and so maybe just your thoughts on IDEX’s announcement and how you view that relationship going forward?

Yes, first of all, we view our relationship with IDEX to be a very good one. I think our value-add service model is a good one. That, I think, fits in very well with their strategy. We are both committed to advancing the operating efficiency of practices, helping them run a better practice, so that they can provide better clinical care. Obviously, the announcement by IDEX is a new one. We are in dialogue with them; we're evaluating, and I think we need to understand more of what this means at this stage. And so I would say that's -- we are a very good customer of IDEX and the relationship between the 2 companies, it's very good. We see global opportunity, actually, in expanding our relationship with IDEX so, and I think the services that our practice solutions business can offer to IDEX and to others out there, I might add, is something rather unique. And so we are committed to advancing our relationship with IDEX, but can't comment on any specific economics much there.

Fair enough. And then last one, Stanley, earlier in the call, you gave a lot of great color on international markets, how things are playing out. On just big picture, can you speak to maybe where you're seeing some more resiliency? In other words, again, you gave color by market, but when you look to sort of Vet versus either Dental, does one stand out more than other, showing a bit more resiliency in some particular markets?

That's a good question. I think actually on average, both the Dental market, as a global vertical and the Animal Health market on a global vertical basis are in much better shape than we were in fourth quarter 2008 and of course, 2009. We started seeing positive trends in 2010, which continued in '11. I would say if I look at what's really directly in front of us, I would be bullish, but I think one has to remember that there's a wider -- there are wider macro trends out there, and we have to run our business very conservatively in case we experience macro bumps along the way. But having said that, I think both markets at the second, looking out, very short-term, look to be okay, globally. I mean, we covered all the specifics by country, but I think the global Dental market is, at this point in time, looking short-term, is much more positive that it's been in a while. I think the same is on the Animal Health side, but again, one has to be very, very cautious in this environment, and I think everybody on this call is aware that the economy looks to be like it's doing a little bit better, but none of us would be surprised if there were negative bumps along the way. So, and we have to deliver on our commitments. So we are optimistic, but very cautious. So thank you, everyone for participating in the call. Thank you for the good questions. Of course, Stephen is available should anyone have any questions at (631) 843-5915. Susan Vassallo is -- who heads our communications, can also be reached at 5562. And again, as noted, I think the tone is that we're feeling very good about the state of the company,…

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for participating in Henry Schein's First Quarter Conference Call. You may now disconnect.