Good morning, my name is Regina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the H.J. Heinz Company fiscal year 2008 third quarter earnings conference call. This call is being recorded at the request of H.J. Heinz Company. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. I would now like to turn the call over to Meg Nollen, Vice President Investor Relations. Ms. Nollen, you may begin your conference.

Thank you Regina and good morning, I’d like to welcome everyone to our conference call and webcast. Copies of the slides used in today’s presentation are available on our website at Heinz.com. Joining me today is Art Winkleblack, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Ed McMenamin, Senior Vice President Finance and Corporate Controller. Today’s question and answer session has been password protected. Any investor or analyst who would like to pose a question and who does not yet have the password, please email Lori Varady in Investor Relations at lori.varady@us.hjheinz.com. Please be advised that any caller entering the Q&A session under false pretenses will be immediately disconnected. Before we begin with our prepared remarks, let’s refer to the forward looking statement currently displayed. This is also available in this morning’s earnings release and in our most recent SEC filings. To summarize, during our presentation we may make predictive statements about our business that are intended to clarify our results for your understanding. We ask you to refer to our August 1st and October 31st 2007 10Q’s and our May 2nd 2007 form 10K which lists some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our predictions. Heinz undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by securities laws. We may also use non GAAP financial measures in our presentation as the company believes such measures allow for consistent period to period comparison of the business. And as directly comparable GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of these non GAAP measures are available in the company’s earnings release and in the slides accompanying this presentation, which are available on our website, again at Heinz.com. So with the formalities out of the way, let me turn the call over to Art Winkleblack to discuss these great results. Art.

Thanks Meg and good morning everyone. I’m pleased to report that Heinz sustained its excellent sales, profit and cash flow momentum in the third quarter of fiscal 2008. We generated very strong sales growth of 14%, driven by broad based organic growth of more than 8.5%. Operating income grew 8% while investing an additional 16% in consumer marketing and while overcoming very high commodity cost inflation. Our EPS was $0.68, was up 3%, despite a significant year over year increase in the tax rate. And operating free cash flow more than doubled during the quarter, putting us basically in line with the cash flow we generated through the first nine months of last year. Overall, Q3 was another very strong quarter for the company. Our sales growth continues to be paced by our top 15 brands which increased by 17% in the quarter. This includes 6 brands that grew by 20% or more and the global Heinz brand which grew by almost 15%, 9% on an organic basis. Importantly, every one of these top brands posted positive sales gains in the quarter. Looking at our results by category, we posted strong double digit increases in each of our three core categories, our ketchup and sauces and meals and snacks categories each rose by almost 14% while infant nutrition led the way growing by 17%. We’re very pleased that all of our global categories are healthy and growing at a very brisk pace. The growth in the infant nutrition business reflects strong results around the globe, with excellent momentum in Italy, India, Latin America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and China. Heinz is capitalizing on the intersection of two very powerful dynamics, one our fastest growing global food categories and the burgeoning middle classes in emerging markets. Heinz is leveraging these dynamics…

Thanks Art and good morning everyone. We are very pleased with our strong top line momentum, the returns from increased investments in marketing and innovation and our ability to sustain strong operating income growth. As Art mentioned, we drove excellent results for the quarter with sales up almost 14%, operating income up 8% and EPS up 3% to $0.68, overcoming the 560 basis points increase in the [satch] rate. You can see that we continued to refocus our marketing investment, pulling an additional 70 basis points out of trade spending and redeploying it to consumer marketing, up another 16% this quarter. Gross profit dollars were up 10% while gross margin was down 130 basis points as we incurred significant commodity cost increases. Our strong top line growth has been the main driver of our 8% increase in operating income. Organic sales were up 8.6% this quarter and with 60% of our operations outside of the US, our diversified global portfolio has enabled us to benefit from foreign exchange to further enhance our growth. Now let’s take a deeper look at the income statement. Gross profit increased 10% despite significant commodity cost pressure, powered by strong sales, continued focus on productivity improvements and favorable foreign exchange. As I mentioned before, marketing support was up 16%, an even higher rate than our strong top line growth while SG&A decreased 50 basis points as a percentage of sales. Below operating income, net expenses rose $6 million in the quarter with net interest expense up $13 million, partially offset by gains on foreign currency contracts. The 8% growth in net profit before taxes translated to $219 million of net income, consistent with last year. The higher effective tax rate, 31.6%, versus 26% last year had about a $0.06 impact on EPS for the quarter.…

Thanks Ed. Before we take your questions I’d like to make a few comments regarding our outlook for the balance of the year. We expect to finish the year well ahead of the original projections that were part of the superior value and growth plan communicated back in June of 2006. We now forecast our sales to grow by at least 10% for the year and we have a shot at achieving $10 billion in sales for the first time in the company’s history. In doing so we expect to invest approximately 15% more in consumer marketing than we did last year and over the 07-08 time period we anticipate exceeding our two year target of increasing marketing spending by $100 million. In thinking about our marketing spending in Q4 and remember that we are overlapping a 44% increase in consumer marketing in Q4 of last year. We believe that operating income for the full year will be up a very strong 8-9%, even after the impact of commodity inflation, double digit increases in consumer marketing and R&D, the spending associated with SAP and our task forces to strengthen global capabilities. We expect EPS to grow by 9-10% versus last year which would put us in the $2.60-$2.62 range for the full year in line with our pre earnings release announcement. Keep in mind that this forecast factors in an increase in the tax rate which we expect to be 31% [audio interrupt] slightly better for the full year. Finally, we expect to have another strong finish to the year on cash flow in line with our trends in prior years. At $825 million, operating free cash flow will be about 8.3% of sales for the year. And in general, we’re looking to deliver on these full year targets and invest for a strong future going forward. As we look forward to fiscal 09 and beyond, we’re bullish on the outlook for Heinz. We believe we have demonstrated that we have the brands, the people and the capabilities to drive strong growth. We plan to share the final full year results with you on May 29th at our earnings release and will discuss our plans going forward at our investor conference in New York that day as well. Now with that, we will be happy to take your questions.

At this time I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question will be from the line of David Driscoll of Citi Investment Research. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Thanks a lot, good morning everyone. Well first off congratulations on a good quarter and a great start to the year. Art I’d like to ask you about margins and pricing. So certainly the earnings is coming out where we’d like to see it but the margins of course have declined something about 80 basis points in the quarter. Can you talk to us a little bit about the level of pricing and the level of productivity, AKA the offset that you would have to commodity inflation and where do you see these numbers trending going forward over the next couple of quarters? Should we see a continued ramp in pricing?

Yeah I think what you’ve seen David is that we’re quite successfully getting pricing through the markets. It’s never an easy situation but I think we and the rest of our peers are certainly facing some very, very high commodity costs and as we sit down with our customers and talk through it we are successfully getting price through. You’re seeing that pricing has ramped up over the last seven quarters or so as I mentioned. We would expect that pricing would continue to ramp up as required to as it relates to the commodity costs. So this is very much commodity cost driven and as I mentioned, what we’re trying to do is drive for absolute dollar profit growth both in terms of gross profit and operating income as opposed to being overly concerned with the margins in the short term. Given the pressures of commodities that we have seen, we think that the best long term answer for both top line and bottom line growth is to price to almost cover commodities but not, certainly not go past that which would be required in order to hold the margin up. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Understand, one question on marketing in the emerging market. This has really been a tremendous growth story for the company. Can you give us some outline as to what your marketing plans have been there? How much has marketing increased in those [audio interrupt] that?

You know I think in general we’ve been increasing marketing at a higher rate in our emerging markets and in fact in many of our emerging markets, the percent of sales is higher than some of our other markets as well. So, we’re investing in those markets to drive growth. You’ve seen we’ve got a very successful track record and we very much like those markets given the strong profitability and strong cash flow generation capabilities that they have in addition to the top line growth we’re getting. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: And so your forecast would have no sign of letup in the very strong sales growth generation from those emerging markets?

That’s correct and we’ll tell you more about the projections going forward in our May conference but we feel very good about our prospects for growth in those markets. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Great, thanks for all the comments.

Your next question will be from the line of Chris Growe of Stifel Nicolaus. Chris Growe – Stifel Nicolaus: Good morning Art.

Hey good morning, welcome back. Chris Growe – Stifel Nicolaus: Thank you, thank you. I just have two questions for you, the first one was, you had outlined a cost savings program that technically ends at the end of 08 here. I presume there will be more to come on that front but can we be somewhat confident you’re going to have a good bit of cost savings coming through as a way of blunting the input cost inflation?

Yeah, absolutely Chris. As you know we set forth pretty specific goals back in June of 2006 as part of the spirit, value and growth plan. We are tracking ahead of all those productivity measures. So we feel very good about the track record over the last two years. As we go forward we’re looking to increase the pace of that productivity based on the task forces we have in place. I think Bill has talked to you and I’ve talked to you historically about the supply chain task force that we have in place and some of the work on global processes and systems along with SAP that we’ve got going. So, we’ve got a number of global initiatives underway to you know continue and maintain and strengthen our productivity initiatives. Chris Growe – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay and I assume we’ll hear more about that in May I presume?

That’s right. Chris Growe – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay and then second question was just, relative to the US soup service division and you had mentioned some weak traffic and I was surprised to see on a year over year basis at least pricing down. Volume growth certainly picked up which is encouraging but it would seem like there’s some real pricing required for that division. Is that ahead and what led to that weaker pricing in this quarter?

We had a pretty active promotional calendar within the quarter and I think you saw that we drove some pretty nice volume there. We also had a bit of a mix change. You saw strong desert performance along with that bundled or complete meal solution that I talked about. You saw strong soup performance as well. You know the good news is our ketchup continues to perform well also. But you know it’s not an easy pricing environment in the food service industry right now given the economy. Chris Growe – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, great, thanks a lot.

Your next question is from the line of Todd Duvick of Bank of America. Todd Duvick – Bank of America: Yes, good morning, got just a couple of real brief questions. One has to do with kind of the capital structure. Your performance has been very strong over the last couple years and I’m just wanting to know in terms of your capital structure, are there leverage metrics that you’re managing to and how are you looking at things like share repurchases and acquisitions going forward.

Yeah, one of the key metrics that we follow is net debt to EBITDA and we look to make progress on that. We have made progress over history even with the fact that we have one of the highest dividend yields or payout ratios in the industry and we’ve shared our cash with investors you know as appropriate. In fact this year we’re heading toward a share repurchase of $500 million. That’s pretty consistent with the prior year and I think might have even been higher in past years. So we have you know I think managed the balance sheet very carefully. I’ll probably reserve comment on the go forward capital structure and we’ll unveil that in May, the May discussion that we have. But we understand how important dividends are to our investors and we look to drive an appropriately, positioned capital structure in order to optimize shareholder return. Todd Duvick – Bank of America: Okay and just one other follow up question. With respect to debt specifically you’ve got a $300 million note that I believe is coming due next month and I would assume that you’re going to refinance that either with commercial paper and then maybe look at the capital markets at some point?

Yeah I think that’s pretty well but we’ve got adequate cash to handle that and we’ve certainly got access to the commercial paper market but we could be looking at financing somewhere later on in the year. Todd Duvick – Bank of America: Okay very good, thank you.

Your next question will be from the line of Terry Bivens of Bear Stearns. Terry Bivens – Bear Stearns: Good morning, can you guys hear me? Good morning all, a few questions Art, first of all, you singled out the Italian baby food business in the remarks to a great extent, can you give us a brief update on how that business is performing?

Yeah Terry, Italy is doing quite well. We’re doing I think very well in the biscuit arena and in a number of products in a number of channels. I would say the battle ground remains in the jarred baby food arena where it’s still a very tough and competitive market with [Numico] there. So you know we posted a strong performance for the quarter. We like where the business is trending, that will be interesting to see now that [Denome] has acquired [Numico] but that changes in that market but we are moving ahead on very strong marketing. We’ve got products in the specialty arena that are doing well and some of milk products are doing well as well. But you know the main competitive battle ground appears to be in the jarred area and we continue to innovate to take it to be a consumer battle. Terry Bivens – Bear Stearns: Down at CAGNY, Conagra mentioned I think what was interpreted as maybe backing off a little bit of the very strong motion in frozen, Healthy Choice specifically. Have you guys seen any evidence of that as yet?

Yeah, you know Dave Moran would be probably better to comment on it but I think that we haven’t seen maybe quite the same degree of promotional depth on pressure in the markets but you know it remains a great category. The category has grown, we continue to grow share, we’re very pleased with the results there and our team continues to innovate strongly to drive the market. Terry Bivens – Bear Stearns: Okay and one last thing, I think this kind of gets back to what Todd was asking but you know, as the performance continues to do very well, for whatever reason you know food stocks haven’t performed especially well lately. Is there, do you think investors should look to any particular Board pressure coming for a higher rate of share repurchase?

I wouldn’t say so necessarily Terry. I think we balance lots of factors as we think through the approach to our capital structure. One as you know, we very much like being an investment grade company. We will manage to that. And so you know we will give you a better feeling for the balance of share repurchase and dividends as we go forward but we’ll always be keeping in mind the concept of investment grade credit rating. And in terms of food stocks, you know the good news is that Heinz has been leading the industry if you look at a number of our, the timeframes, one, three, five, ten years, I think The Wall Street Journal came out with an article yesterday that showed Heinz performance over a lot of different timeframes and the Heinz stock has performed quite well within the industry. Terry Bivens – Bear Stearns: Okay, thanks very much.

Your next question will be from the line of Alexia Howard at Sanford Bernstein. Alexia Howard – Sanford Bernstein: Hello there. Great, a couple of quick question, firstly on marketing. There’s obviously been a step up in marketing as a percent of sales over the last couple of years. Where do you, given the percentages are now around about 3.5, 3.7% of sales, is it [step up] but it’s still a little bit lower than the rest of the peer group. Obviously you have a significant proportion of food service which obviously needs a lot less marketing behind it. But how do you think about what the path forward from here is in terms of stepping up the marketing spending?

Yeah I think you know the beauty of the Heinz portfolio now that we’ve done the hard work of pruning the portfolio over the last number of years is that we have a very focused portfolio, top 15 brands represent about 70% of our sales. And so our spending can be quite focused. As you say, we have increased marketing significantly, we would look to continue to increase marketing going forward but only to the extent that we have the ideas and the people to effectively spend the money and you’ve seen where we spent the money we’ve gotten very good returns. We do anticipate continuing to step up marketing going forward, we will talk further about that in May but you know it’s always behind our key brands and it’s behind great ideas. Alexia Howard – Sanford Bernstein: Okay great and one other quick one. The European margin were obviously down this quarter and I think there was a comment in the press release that part of that was increased manufacturing costs in the frozen business over there. Is that likely to persist? Is that something that’s likely to with us for some time or was that from one off a factor?

Well I think there was a little bit of you know, a little bit of manufacturing cost, probably more unfavorable than maybe some of the other quarters. We do anticipate continuing high commodity cost increases there so that’ll continue to be something we manage. But with Scott O’Hara and his team, they have done I think an exceptional job of accelerating the growth momentum at the top line across all the markets and that really is the game that we’re very excited about, healthy and nutrition, convenience, a lot of good strong innovation. We see that pipeline very full and continuing into next year. So we, while the cost pressure will certainly be there, we believe we’ve got the growth and the productivity initiatives to grow the bottom line quite well. Alexia Howard – Sanford Bernstein: Thank you very much.

Your next question will be from the line of Eric Serotta of Merrill Lynch. Eric Serotta – Merrill Lynch: Good morning. You guys have shown some pretty nice SG&A leverage or SG&A ex marketing leverage this year and over the past few quarters. I’m just wondering if you could give us a bit of an update on how much leverage is left to be realize, how low can you go on non marketing SG&A as a percent of sales? A lot has changed since mid 06 and I’m sure you’ll address this more in May but could you give us a little bit of a sneak peek now given the investments behind the task forces and the like?

Yeah, over time I think we’ve got room for further productivity improvement over time. You know the reality is we have a very global organization that has administrative pods and things like that in lots of places and so as we think about going forward I think there are a number of productivity initiatives we can get after. It will take some money to get there, we’ve got a number of task forces ongoing and I think one of the key things that we are looking forward to doing is the continuing rollout of SAP which will give us better visibility and the ability to get very productive and very efficient in our back office operations. So you know the task forces are hard at work in determining how big is the prize in that arena and we’ll continue driving down that path. So we’ve also got some good initiatives in the distribution arena to offset some of the fuel cost upcharges that we’ve got as well. So, anyway, as you look at it I think we’re excited about it, we’re looking to grow SG&A obviously at a slower rate than our top line and so we should continue to get leverage. Eric Serotta – Merrill Lynch: Great and then a quick follow up on a different subject on commodities. Last week at CAGNY some companies who are on sort of midyear fiscal years or [unintelligible] fiscal years, they did some commentary regarding what they were looking for in terms of overall commodity inflation for calendar 08 or at least their coverage on hedge-able commodities for the calendar year. Could you give us an update on that?

Yeah I think we’re just finalizing the annual operating plan for next fiscal year, as you know that starts on May 1 so you know we’re in that process, we want to share that with our Board before we share it much more broadly but what I will say is we do not anticipate any reduction in the rate of growth on commodities. We certainly hope the commodities would be better than that but we’re not counting on it. We’re still seeing continued commodity cost inflation. We’re confident we’ve got it covered through pricing, productivity, volume growth, et cetera. But we do anticipate it to continue and as always we’ve got some of it covered looking forward where we can do that. Eric Serotta – Merrill Lynch: Okay, care to give any rough percentages on that at this point?

You know, not at this point Eric [overlay]. Eric Serotta – Merrill Lynch: [Overlay] was going to try to, I’ll pass it on.

Sorry not to be more thorough but I do really want to finish up the annual plan and then we’ll be very clear and open with you as we go forward. Eric Serotta – Merrill Lynch: Great, thanks a lot Art.

Your next question will be from the line of Ann Gurkin at Davenport. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Couple of things, can you give us what you’ve imbedded in your 08 outlook for oil prices and then 09, hello?

Yeah, hi Ann, yeah you know in terms of oil prices, we here again, we don’t anticipate much of a change in that. We’d love to think that it would come down but we’re certainly not going to count on it. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: So you have $100 oil in your 08-09 forecast right now?

That’s roughly probably about right. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Okay and then can you just review prospects for Russia over the next 12-18 months?

Yeah, we’re quite excited about business in Russia. The Heinz brand in particular is doing extremely well so that growth is ahead of our plan expectations. Infant nutrition is doing quite well. You know we’re focusing the portfolio, we’re building our marketing spending, we’ve got a leading market share position in ketchup in the two major cities of Moscow and St. Pete and we’re looking to expand that further. We’ve got a new strong leader there and he’s off to a great start and we’re just really excited about the business and the team there. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Great, thank you.

Your next question will be from the line of Eric Katzman of Deutsche Bank. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Hi, good morning everybody. I guess Art my first question has to do with foreign currency. Did you say how much contribution that made to both EBIT and to the bottom line?

It’s in the, I think it’s separated out in the press release in terms of the top line, it’s about 5, 5.3% for the quarter. That would be roughly right at OI, Eric and as we think about it, the impact of foreign exchange has been positive and that’s a good thing and it’s powered by our strong global portfolio so we like that and we think we’re well positioned there. You know, having said that I think the commodity headwind was probably three to four times that level of impact going to opposite direction. So it’s helped but you know it’s certainly not offsetting the commodity inflation. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: So the 5% OI contribution, is it fair to just kind of drop that down to the EPS line or?

Well if you want to drop the commodity costs down to the bottom line at four times that, you know I don’t know how you’d want to look at it, but the way we look at it is we are managing all the good things and the bad things to drive very strong top line and very strong bottom line. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Okay and then on a separate topic, maybe I think following up on Eric Serotta’s line of questioning, in terms of the input cost environment. I mean if I remember correctly, historically when you have let’s say high cost ketchup or high cost potatoes that’s actually been beneficial to your business because it’s limited the ability for private label to actually get raw material to compete with you. What, how does, is inflation more of an energy, packaging, transport type of thing or is it more raw material related and how does your kind of input cost basket relate to that?

Yeah I think we’re seeing the increased cost across the board you know in terms of packaging materials, in terms of raw materials, agricultural products, all those costs are up. You know with the cost of fuel and the bio-fuel thing, et cetera, et cetera. So you know all of those costs are up. I think given the brand strength that we have and the strong position that we have in the market, you know we are in a great position to weather through that storm, probably in a better position than folks that have the number three or four or five brand in a particular category. So it’s, the cost inflation is real, it’s across the board but I think we are well positioned to handle it. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Okay and then the last question, I’ll pass it on and maybe this is more appropriate for Bill, but is, I mean the company has obviously grown in the last few years as a percentage coming from outside the US, the growth in developing markets is doing very well in driving the business along with good US results for that matter but I’m just kind of wondering, is Bill, I mean is he still, in terms of the responsibilities, is he still Chairman, CEO, President, you have no COO, is that right?

That’s correct Eric, absolutely. Chairman, President and CEO and driving some great results. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Well maybe it’s a, it just seems to me that if there’s one risk out there it’s that there’s, as the business becomes you know more global and more complex and more reliant upon growth in these outer markets that there needs to be more, I don’t know, kind of delegation or whatever it is because you know it just seems it’s hard for with that kind of complexity, you know for something not to slip or come up unexpected. So I don’t know, maybe I’m just, maybe it’s a topic to discuss at the next meeting but it seems to me that if there’s one risk that’s out there, that could be it.

I think we’re in very good shape on that Eric. The reality is our Board takes that responsibility very seriously, we take it very seriously and I think we’ve got extremely strong talent and as I’ve mentioned I’m just very pleased with the talent and the team that we have in place. We’ve got a very good bench and we’ve got strong leaders in each one of our four key markets. They’re very seasoned leaders and so I you know, I just view it as we’re in a great position and you know on Bill’s leadership, this organization has come a long, long way in the past few years, as you know. We’re in a good place and we feel confident about the future. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Okay, I’ll pass it on.

Hey Eric, it’s Meg, I just wanted to let you know, talent has become quite a competitive advantage for Heinz and we continue to build that out. So both with Chris Mormonth and Mike Milan and their teams, there’s a lot of strength and Bill is very involved but everyone’s, it’s a very strong team. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Well I know the numbers obviously speak to that over the last two years but it just, you know I think maybe other than Wrigley you’re probably the most global company that most US analysts follow and yet you know and I know you’ve kind of sent out the various, I forget what you call them, but various lines of response of these that are a little bit broader that is just seems to me that it’s, that there’s maybe a, there’s more need for more direct lines of responsibility in between the operating heads and the below and Bill.

Yeah, I appreciate the point, we feel like we’re in a very good spot on that and we’ve got great talent with very clear accountability. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Alright, thank you.

Your next question will be from the line of Bob Cummings of [Sheils] & Company. Bob Cummings – [Sheils] & Company: Hi everybody. Following up on the question of foreign exchange, as a US based company reporting in US dollars with very substantial international businesses, obviously gives a nice boost to your numbers, I’m just wondering what your strategy is in managing net benefits of earnings, on other words, are you able to reinvest some of those funds in increased marketing as a result of the foreign exchange benefit or is it simply just flowing through to the bottom line? You know as a US company you might have advantages over companies that are reporting in say Deutsche Marks or other currencies.

Yeah, no I understand your point Bob and I think to your point we are investing heavily back in the business. We, as you know, we’ll increase marketing spending by more than $100 million over a two year timeframe. We’re growing R&D at double digit rates. We are investing behind our global task forces to you know to really gain true leverage of our scale and so you know I think we are managing all the levers appropriately to optimize for the short and long term here and that’s the key as we’re looking to, as we’ve ramped up the top line growth rate, we’re very pleased with that and we’re looking to continue that and so the investment in the business I think is a big part of that. And you know the great part about the Heinz portfolio is about 60% of our sales outside the US is that we have nice and very strong and solid profitable positions in a number of those fast growing markets. So, set aside currency, those markets I would certainly say are going to be growing at a lot faster rate than many of the developed markets around the world. Bob Cummings – [Sheils] & Company: Great, thank you.

Your next question will be from the line of Robert Moskow of Credit Suisse. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: A couple of questions, one is a follow up to Eric Katzman’s which I thought was a good one. Will SAP, you mentioned that it’s going in administrative pods I think you’ve called it, will SAP globally help you at headquarters in Pittsburg consolidate information faster and on similar terms so you can make decisions better? And then the second question is on you know your ability to take pricing in Europe I would imagine depends a lot on what private label is doing and I have no visibility on what private label is doing in Europe, so can you tell me, is that really what’s happening? I seen it’s happened here in the US with private label taking pricing, you mentioned competition is taking pricing, is that what’s happening in Europe and in the UK?

Yeah let me take the first question first Rob. In terms of the decision making, SAP absolutely will be a benefit there. As you know, you know the decision making, a lot of it is very well pushed down into the markets, we empower our managing directors in the businesses to make decisions but it certainly will help us with internal benchmarking and understanding the businesses and understanding the trends on a real time basis to have SAP. You know we just completed very successfully the SAP rollout in Poland, we finished our frozen business, most of the frozen business just very recently, that’s gone without a hitch so we’re pleased with that. We’re continuing to rollout SAP further in Europe next year, so we’re excited about that. The prospects not only from the systems side of it but from the process discipline side of it, because that’s the key, as you get the processes right, then you put SAP in to automate those processes. Turning to pricing, in Europe yeah we are getting pricing. We have not seen growth, any disproportionate growth in private label, the reality is that they have the same kind of pricing pressure as we do if not more and so you’ve seen quite a bit of pricing there and so I think probably similar to what a lot of our peers said at CAGNY, we’re not seeing any great resurgence or anything in private label at this point. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: Does your team give you updates on price gaps to private label in Europe so you can see whether you’re maintaining the right gap?

Yeah, I mean as you would imagine, we manage and stay very attuned and close to the markets and understand the key issues so it’s market by market but you know to the earlier conversation, we do not dictate policy from Pittsburg, the managing directors manage their businesses. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: Thank you very much.

Sorry, I was just going to add in there for you, same formula in Europe that we’ve got going on in North America and really throughout the company which is one of innovation and value add so as we’re pricing, we’re also differentiating to the consumer and so they’re willing to pay for that.

Yeah, that is a key point because over time the pricing and any price gap that you have will only be justified by your ability to bring great ideas and bring innovation and strong brands and so I think Meg’s right, that has been a key for our success and we expect to continue that way.

We’ve got time for a couple more.

Your next question will be from Pablo Zuanic of J.P. Morgan. Pablo Zuanic – J.P. Morgan: Very quick here but just on the marketing spending front, okay you know it’s 3.6% of sales but it’s obviously [unintelligible] results, where do you think there’s room to increase that more [unintelligible], I mean is Europe below the company average and North America above? I mean in the third quarter was the spending more loaded in Europe than North America, that would help just to have an idea of where marketing may go.

You know I think we’re looking to invest in marketing everywhere and again behind good ideas. A lot of our innovation this year has come in Europe. You’re seeing strong volume growth there as a result so we have increased marketing spending probably more in Europe this year than any of our other divisions and but you know having said that behind great ideas in every one of our segments, we would certainly look to increase the marketing investment. And we talked about emerging markets being a key target for us in that regard as well. Pablo Zuanic – J.P. Morgan: Okay and just a quick follow up on emerging markets and maybe we’ll hear some more from investor day but you know when I hear companies talk about China and other markets, sometimes they talk about products they sell there where they have a very small market share in a very fragmented market, so the potential is there but they are a very fragmented market. I understand that [unintelligible] Poland and other markets you have robust market share but could you very briefly on just give us an idea about in emerging markets you know the type of penetration you have. Is it fair to say that it’s a very fragmented market or you have really very robust share in some of those markets?

Well I think we’ve got quite robust shares, I mean if you look at infant nutrition, we’re the number one player in the cereal category, looking to get bigger in some of the other categories of infant nutrition there. Our long fong frozen business is probably the number on player there as well. Now the good news is to your point, it is still quite a fragmented market and that we view as spelling opportunity. There’s just opportunity to grow not only with the category but I think to gain share over time as well. So we’re in a good spot and as I’ve mentioned before, we’re profitable, economic profit positive, cash flow positive and so these are businesses we’re investing in and they are generated a nice return for shareholders.

On your marketing question I mean Europe is spending more than North American segment, but North America, if you recall, last year Europe increased its spending throughout the year. This year the increase is more pronounced in North America than it is in Europe. Pablo Zuanic – J.P. Morgan: Alright, thanks and just one last one for Art, the 31% tax rate guidance, is that just for the fourth quarter or is that also for 09?

No that’s for our full year this year, the roughly 31% is for this year. We’ll talk further about the tax rate for 09 and beyond next year. But you know, I wouldn’t worry about that, we view our growth prospects as very strong at the EPS line, so we don’t view tax as something that’s going to be a problem. Pablo Zuanic – J.P. Morgan: Alright, thank you.

Yeah we can work on this one offline, but if you just look at the math from the prior quarters, the tax rate in the fourth quarter will be higher.

Probably in the 33-34% range. Pablo Zuanic – J.P. Morgan: Alright, thank you.

Your final question will be from the line of Andrew Lazar of Lehman Brothers. Andrew Lazar – Lehman Brothers: Good morning. Just two quick ones, one, trade spend efficiency continues to be very solid and as you saw in this quarter as well. How do we want to think about the opportunity left there as we go into 09 and beyond? Is that still sort of going to be, I mean if there was something you were doing but is there a lot more left there and is it more Europe or North American based? And then second would be, volumes have still been quite strong even this quarter with the pricing, but sequentially in North America and Europe they did come down as pricing ramped up relative to the second quarter. I’m just curious what the level of confidence is as you continue to price from here and sort of the volume picture as you go forward.

Yeah, in terms of trade spending as you know we’ve made just great progress in trade spending over the past few years and we continue to make it this year. So I think they’ll be less progress to make there over time. Having said that, you know the effectiveness and the efficiency of trade spending is one of the key challenges of any consumer products business so we will continue to focus on that, we’ll continue to improve our process capabilities, our talent that is looking at it and our systems. So it will continue to be a focus for us in terms of reducing trade spending as a percent of gross sales I would say it’s you know probably less of a reduction going forward certainly but it’ll continue to be a major focus for us mainly from an effectiveness standpoint and trying to grow volume and the top line you know and optimize that. In terms of looking forward, as you saw we’ve taken pricing, we need to take pricing in this commodity environment and at this point we are balancing organic sales growth. The combination of volume and price and so you know you saw that our volume grew in Q3 more than 5% which we’re very pleased with. You know going forward we’ll continue to balance between those two, the pricing and volume lever and I’m not sure I’d get real specific on quantification at this point but we feel good about where we are coming out for the full year, we’re setting up nicely for next year and we’ll fill you in more in May. Andrew Lazar – Lehman Brothers: Thank you.

And there are no further questions at this time, I will turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Okay, great, thanks, let me just make a couple of closing comments. Thanks for your interest in Heinz, in closing we’re delivering on our commitments and believe that we’re poised to sustain strong momentum into FY09. We’ll continue to follow our winning formula of consumer validated innovations, supported by effective marketing, increased capabilities and productivity, which are all made possible by our great people. We’ll have more to share with you as we’ve said on the call here in May and here’s Meg with just a couple final pieces of information.

Thanks Art, as many of you know we lost our venue for our March 19th meeting that we talked about previously and given the Easter holidays and Spring Break season, yearend timing became a problem, so as a result we’ve reverted to our year end schedule, we sent the data out recently, hosting our analyst date on May 29. It will be at the Sofitel Hotel in New York, but in the meantime we’re planning an aggressive calendar of marketing between now and then and hope to see many of you soon. So with that, have a great day and we look forward to seeing you in May if not sooner.

Thank you for participating in today’s H.J. Heinz Company conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 10:30 AM Eastern time today, through 11:59 PM Eastern time on Tuesday, March 4, 2008. The conference ID number for the replay is 34301126. Again, the conference ID number for the replay is 34301126. The number to dial for the replay is 1-800-642-1687 or 706-645-9291. Thank you, you may now disconnect.