Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the First Quarter 2008 Huntsman Corporation Earnings Conference Call. My name is Eric. I'll be your coordinator for today. And at this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. I will now like to turn your presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. John Heskett. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator and good morning to everyone. My name is John Heskett. I am the Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations for Huntsman Corporation. Welcome to Huntsman's investor conference call for the first quarter 2008. Joining us on the call today are Peter Huntsman, our President and CEO; Kimo Esplin, our Executive Vice President and CFO. A recorded playback of this call will be available until midnight May 16th, 2008. The recorded playback maybe accessed from the U.S. by dialing 1-888-286-8010 and from outside the U.S. by dialing 1-617-801-6888. The access code for both dial-in numbers is 65230565. A recording of this call may also be accessed through our website. Before we begin the discussion of our earnings, I would like to say a few words about forward-looking statements. Statements made during this conference call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Such statements are considered to be predictions or expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially based on a number of factors including but not limited to, the consummation and timing of our proposed merger with Hexion, future global economic conditions, changes in the price of our raw materials and the energy we consume in our production processes, access to capital markets, industry production capacity and operating rates, supply demand balance for our products and that of computing products, pricing pressures, technological developments, changes in government regulations, geopolitical events and other risk factors. Please refer to our most recent 10-K and our other public filings for more complete discussion of the factors applicable to our company and our announced plans to merge with Hexion. Before I walk through a summary of earnings, I would like briefly outline the format for today's call. I'll briefly summarize the…

Thanks, John. Let me update you on the status of our merger with Hexion. As a reminder, on July 12th, 2007 we entered into an agreement with Hexion Specialty Chemicals, wherein they will acquire all the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of Huntsman for $28 per share. Including the assumption of debt, this value is the transaction for Huntsman at approximately $10.6 billion. The Board of Directors of Huntsman unanimously approved the merger agreement on the recommendation of a transaction committee comprised entirely of independent directors. Subsequently, on October 16th, at a special meeting, the stockholders of the company voted to approve the merger. On January 25, 2008 we announced that Hexion had notified us that it intended to exercise its right as provided under the terms of the merger agreement to extend the termination date by 90 days from April 5th to July 4th, 2008. On April 5th, this extension took place and the termination date is now July 4th, 2008. Beginning on April 6th, the cash price per share to be paid by Hexion will increase at the rate of 8% per annum, that's inclusive of any dividends paid from April 6th, 2008. The closing of the transaction is not subject to financing condition and Hexion has secured financing commitments from Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse to provide for all necessary funding. The terms of these financing commitments have not been made public, but in connection with the April extension, Hexion indicated that the financing commitments were still in place. The transaction is subject to various other conditions including U.S. and European Union and other foreign competition law approvals and other customary closing conditions. Together with Hexion, we are working to satisfy all closing conditions including the required regulatory approvals. The process to secure these approvals…

Thank you very much, Kimo. Thank you everybody for taking the time to join us this morning. With the adjusted EBITDA from the continuing operations of $188 million, first quarter represents another good quarter for us and was achieved despite rising raw materials and energy cost and the continued weakness of the U.S. dollar. Just to give you some perspective, prices of most of our raw materials were up not only year-over-year, but also sequentially. By the way... by way of example, the two key benchmarks; crude oil and natural gas, were up 69% and 18% respectively as compared to the first quarter of 2007. As you know, prices have continued to escalate into the second quarter and currently are well above where they were in the first quarter. As I mentioned, the continued decline in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to the primary European currencies has also impacted our results. This has been partially... particularly apparent in certain of our businesses like Advanced Materials, textile effects and Pigments where the majority of our manufacturing and overhead base sits in Europe. As I mentioned in our earnings release this morning, as would be expected in a transaction of this nature, we've also seen an impact on our customers, suppliers and employees from the uncertainty and duration related to this pending merger with Hexion. There were however some very positive trends in our business. Selling prices were up across the board in every division. These obviously differ by product and region, but we have been successful in increasing our prices in the face of inflation, in raw materials and cost. We continue to see forward momentum in selling prices as we move into the second quarter. Also volumes generally continue to be stable and growing, which is certainly a…

Thank you, Peter. And operator, that concludes our call for today and thank you everyone for joining. Operator: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes our presentation. You may now disconnect and have a good day.