Hello everyone and thank you for joining us on this morning’s call. I would just like to remind you that on this morning’s call management may reiterate forward-looking statements made in today’s release. In accordance with the Safe Harbor provisions of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 I would like to call your attention to the risks and uncertainties related to these statements which are more fully discussed in the press release and the company’s filings with the SEC. These risk and uncertainties include but are not necessarily limited to uncertainties affecting retail generally, the consumer confidence in demand for order repair, risks related to leverage and debt services including sensitivity to fluctuations of interest rates, dependence on and competition within the primary markets in which the company stores are located and the need for and costs associated with store renovations and other capital expenditures. The company undertakes no obligation to release publically any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may not be relevant events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. The inclusion of any statement within this call does not constitute an admission by Monroe or any other person that the events and circumstances [inaudible] are material. Joining us for today’s call from management are Rob Gross, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Cathy D’Amico, Chief Financial Officer. With these formalities out of the way I would like to turn the call over to Rob Gross.

Thank you for joining us on today’s call. We are pleased that you are with us to discuss our second quarter 2009 performance. After reviewing our quarterly performance, I’ll provide you with an update on our business as well as our outlook for the third quarter and full year 2009. I’ll then turn the call over to Cathy D’Amico, our Chief Financial Officer who will provide additional details on our financial results. We are pleased at our results for the quarter were at the high end of our anticipated ranges for both comparable store sales growth and earnings per share. We are encouraged by the positive momentum that our business has sustained over the past seven months and are especially satisfied with our performance in light of the challenging economic environment. We are also pleased to have been included in Forbes Magazine America’s 200 Best Small Companies again in 2008 as we have for four out of the past five years. Now, I’d like to review the highlights from the second quarter. Quarterly comparable store sales grew 4.5% at the high end of our estimated range of 3% to 5%. We generated a total sales increase of 7% achieving $119.9 million in sales compared to $112 million in sales for the prior year’s second quarter. Comparable store sales for our ProCare stores increased 6.6% for the second quarter. Net income for the second quarter was $7.7 million and earnings per share were $0.38 compared with $0.29 for the second quarter of last year, a 31% increase. Our performance continues to be driven in large part by our solid reputation as a quality service provider and our strong relationships with our customer base who return to us regularly for value added services. As we said before, these relationships are one of…

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: One question, Rob your same store sales are up 5% year-to-date, October same store sales running plus 4% but your guidance is only 3% to 4% for the year. Are you anticipating a deceleration in trends even with easing year-over-year comparisons? Or, are you just trying to be conservative? I’m just trying to gage you here a little bit.

Well, I guess the answer Tony would be I hope we’re being conservative but with what’s going on in the marketplace and the consumer leading in to Christmas, some other macro things going on we felt we got a good seven months under our belt. If things continue as they currently are great for us and our shareholders but we didn’t want to do anything to get too far ahead of ourselves and thought being conservative in this environment would be prudent. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: When you look at what you’ve done on the gross margin side and still been able to keep the cost side in check, is that something that going forward the next few quarters and even in to next year we should think that there’s no reason to believe that gross margin improvement isn’t sustainable?

Certainly for the upcoming two quarters the gross margin improvement is sustainable. What we would hope would occur for 2010 then starting in April is with some of the commodity costs coming down the cost to us for oil, tires and steel come down and that might be the next tranche of margin improvement going in to next year. But, certainly we would expect to see about 100 basis points gross margin improvement year-over-year for the next two quarters and that’s incorporated in to our numbers. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: One of the things that, ProCare the first quarter of same store sales up over 8%, this quarter nicely a solid 6.6%. I’m just wondering when you look at the sustainability here in ProCare you talk about increasing sales volumes, reducing costs and improving margins. Can you maybe talk to each of those three aspects and kind of tell us where you think you are in this stage of the game? And, where is the most opportunity yet to come on the ProCare side of things?

The most opportunity going forward is getting the sales volumes up to pre-bankruptcy levels and we’ve just started that process. A piece of that is continuing to invest in advertising in those markets which we couldn’t until we replaced a lot of the people and got the stores operating effectively because the last thing you want to do is drive more traffic if your stores aren’t delivering the right experience to the customers. I think we have the right people in the stores, they are executing well. I think we have the staffing correct which Cathy mentioned, 180 basis points in improvement in the gross margin, a lot of that being from staffing and now it’s just a matter of ramping it up and the expectation as we said all along, once we fix it is that these stores should operate like Greenfield stores with higher comp store sales going forward over the next three years than the chain as a whole. I think we saw that in Q1 with ProCare up 8% comp versus the company up 5.6%. I think you saw it in Q2 with ProCare up 6.6% comps versus the company up 4.5% and even in October, ProCare being up 9% versus the company being up 4%. That spread is continuing in light of the fact that half of the ProCare stores are in Ohio which is not the most buoyant geographic area we have. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: When you look at where ProCare – I know you talked about being below where they were when you acquired them. How far below are they from a core Monroe store at this point?

The ProCare stores when we acquired them were running between $625,000 and $650,000 in sales. The average Monroe store runs $525,000 to $550,000. ProCare is on the way to getting to a sales level of the average Monroe store still with the opportunity we believe because of the good real estate and now that the operations are fixed and now that we can start advertising and bringing back customers on a chain that was running -30 comps to get to that $600,000 to $650,000 level again. Then obviously, we get a lot occupancy level, continued labor productivity level and you should see the margins start approaching Monroe’s margin long term. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: It sounds like there’s a multiyear tailwind here with what’s going on at ProCare.

Well, we screwed it up for two years so hopefully there will be a multiyear tailwind. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: One other question here with respect to the Black Gold and the outperformance. How much outperformance is there right now with a Black Gold store versus a non Black Gold store?

Especially on the tire units, the Black Gold stores are running up 5% in tire units versus a service non Black Gold stores running up .3%. The sales are about a 7 point differential with comp tire sales being up 10% in Black Gold versus 3% comp for the non Black Gold tire stores. Overall comps are up slightly more than 1%.

Our next question comes from Scott Stember – Sidoti & Company, LLC. Scott Stember – Sidoti & Company, LLC: Can you maybe touch on the advertising? Obviously you’ve seen some success in the last couple of quarters. What was advertising expense as a percentage of sales this quarter versus last quarter? And, are we expecting to see any increase in advertising levels going forward?

3.8 this quarter percent of sales. Remember we said what we expect for the full year is last year our advertising ran 3.3% of sales. This year we expected it to come in at 3.7% of sales. You should see the same level of advertising expenditures in our Q3, that would be October, November and December and then we will access the consumer and the marketplace for January, February and March. As you know obviously, January and February are two of our weakest months of the year and we just want to make sure while we continue to strive to grab market share which we successfully have, we want to make sure the return on investment in Q4 is there. So, you certainly won’t see an increase in advertising in Q4 above the run rate that we will have for the first nine months of this fiscal year. You might see a decrease if we decide to hold back on some of the additional programs we put in to place the first nine months of the year depending on whether we think there is value and what the marketplace is doing. Scott Stember – Sidoti & Company, LLC: Just heading in to the back half of the year I know there’s been a lot of concern across the board about the holiday shopping season coming up and how deferred purchases could get again. What was the experience again last year at this time heading in to the holiday season for you guys?

Well, last year November we were up 3.3%, December we were up .9%, January we were up 2.25. So certainly not difficult comps and if you recall last year was not the most robust holiday season. That being said, you tell me what December and January are going to bring. The good news for us is we’re starting off a low base and those are the two least important months for us. But, certainly our guidance incorporates a certain amount of caution and hopefully things will work out better but at this juncture I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. I’m so far happy with the year and certainly happy that October sales are up and I would hope November is a good month for us just based on it being a very big tire month. From a sales mix perspective we have more stores selling tires and doing a better job of selling them. Scott Stember – Sidoti & Company, LLC: Maybe just touch on the store closures this quarter. Do you have a full year guidance that you’ve given before? And, what stores in what markets have been closed?

You know, usually the way we close stores are one of two factors, is it’s a poor performing store that the lease is running out so we use that as an opportunity with very low right offs to get out of it. Or, it’s a store that a Walgreens or a CVS is attracted to because, as you know we own 190 of our real estate locations and while the store might be doing okay say making $50,000 a year, operating profit, one of those guys will come in and offer us an $800,000 or $1 million gain and a return on assets it’s just too good to pass up. You’ll see some of those sales going on. You’ll see closures when we have an opportunity to get out of an underperforming store. I think we’ve closed 11 stores so far this year, that’s a little bit more than normal but remember, as we mentioned with everything we were doing with the company whether its capital expenditures and the outlay for them or an opportunity to cut costs and our team pulling a million out of SG&A we would certainly look going in to an continued weak market to get rid of any potential losers we have to sure up our business to move forward. Scott Stember – Sidoti & Company, LLC: The last question is on capital expenditures, I know a couple of years ago we were talking about a distribution upgrade or a warehouse upgrade and it was pushed off. Is that something that is going to happen this year or are you basically just trying to monitor the economy?

It will not happen this year. We will certainly monitor it going in to next year and when we report on our 2010 capital budget depending on market conditions and the number of stores we add through acquisition we will either do it or not do it. But, I would say if we’re going to add 30 to 50 stores you’re probably not going to see it in the 2010 capital budget. If that number starts approaching 100 stores we’re going to need to do it.

Our next question comes from Cid Wilson – Kevin Dann & Partners. Cid Wilson – Kevin Dann & Partners: Cathy, can you repeat one more time, I didn’t write down fast enough what the cash flow numbers were, cash flow from operations and cap ex? Catherine D’Amico : Cash flow from operations was about $31 million for the first half and in just Q2 it was about $11 million. Then, cap ex was $7.3 million for the first six months, Q2 was $3.7 million. Cid Wilson – Kevin Dann & Partners: Do you have depreciation and amortization for the quarter? Catherine D’Amico : Yes, the six months was $10 million and the quarter was $4.9 million. Cid Wilson – Kevin Dann & Partners: Then one question regarding just some of the efficiencies that [inaudible] and particularly with the ProCare stores, can you tell us a little more about exactly – maybe go in to a little more color in terms of some of the shifts in the labor that you’re able to do there and where you are going to capture the efficiencies there compared to the rest of the Monroe chain? Catherine D’Amico : Well, on the technician labor the biggest gain in gross margin of the 180 basis points by far was the improvement in technician labor. Basically as the op guys are improving sales they’re also right sizing the crew. So, in other words if you’ve got five guys in the shop and they’re producing $1,000 a day in sales, that was last year say and now this year we’re producing $1,006 and we’ve only got four guys in the shop it’s just more productive. There’s a certain minimum guarantee you have to pay the technicians in the form of a minimum wage which you have as someone [inaudible] in. Our guys have done a good job of keeping the best guys, there’s [inaudible] manager turnover as well, plus they’re improving sales so you can see where the productivity per man hour is improving and that’s really been the biggest gain in the ProCare stores as well as reductions in out buys as the next item where we’ve seen some significant improvements. Stocking levels are better at those stores. We know better what they’re selling. And, the guys are doing a better job of transferring parts with neighboring Monroe and Mr. Tire stores to reduce their out buys. So, it’s an evolution understanding how Monroe operates and our field management has done a good job of making those improvements in the stores. The other piece would be some leverage on occupancy which is in cost of sales also. So, as sales improve rents the same, you’re going to see an improvement in margin.

Our next question comes from John Lawrence – Morgan, Keegan & Company, Inc. John Lawrence – Morgan, Keegan & Company, Inc.: Rob, would you just to clarify Cathy’s last comments on the out buys, was most of that out buy performance on ProCare or was there some of that across the chain?

No, obviously it’s across the chain. Certainly, ProCare has the most upside so it skews there but remember, as we’re talking about these improvements and especially 140 basis point margin improvement, ProCare again is less than 10% sales. So even if the margin is improving dramatically, its less than 10% of the overall company sales total. We’re not talking leaps and bounds and it’s nice improvement, it’s nice that it’s accretive this year and that the Delta between what we did last year and this year is a positive but it’s not that big number. John Lawrence – Morgan, Keegan & Company, Inc.: Just to follow that one step, the increase in the inventory to reduce the out buys just comes from the information and the data from the customer base?

Sure. Obviously, we talk a lot about our systems helping our advertising and our logistics and certainly the fact that everyone of our stores has a seven closest stores inventory and has a shop truck and can go back and forth to pick up parts. All those things benefit us and from a merchandising perspective we’re constantly striving to get smarter and do a better job making sure we’re in stock and I think we see some of the benefits of our efforts chain wide certainly not just in the ProCare stores. John Lawrence – Morgan, Keegan & Company, Inc.: Secondly, on the growth plan, you’ve talked over the last several quarters about the strategy of talking to the competitors that are struggling in this environment. Has anything changed in the last 60 days in this environment with credit, etc. as you talk acquisitions?

As Cathy mentioned, nothing on our front so we got I guess currently $87 million up from $85 million of availability three weeks ago so we continue to generate cash flow. That money is available to us locked and loaded and we intend on using it over the next two to three months. As far as if you’re asking do some of the sellers, are they getting more concerned that their credit is drying up, not so much as they’re highly worried about what’s going to happen with corporate tax rates or capital gains tax rates and I think that’s really what’s putting people over the edge to allow us to get to the point where we’re comfortable that we can announce one of these things and close it this quarter or the beginning of January depending on seller’s tax preferences.

Our next question comes from Gerard E. Heffernan – Lord Abbett & Co. Gerard E. Heffernan – Lord Abbett & Co.: To go off of that last question in regards to acquisitions, given your response that the targets, the owners of these other businesses are more concerned about cap gains situations, tax situations, is that to say that most of those businesses are not in a working capital need position that short term financing or inventory spend financing is not a real big part of their business and would not be a pressure point for them to get out?

Some of them are, I was probably more referring to the ones we’re currently working on and close to. So, what you’re saying is true for a number of them and those obviously would be ones that are performing worse. I think what we’re seeing across the board in these guys that we’re looking at is comps are weaker, earnings are weaker, they’re getting more realistic on the price but from a cash flow perspective if you’re looking at a 20 or 40 or 60 store chain, on average these guys would own anywhere from 25% to 50% of the real estate. So, they’re not burdening the company with a full mortgage or a full rent load so from a cash flow perspective, not breaking out the real estate separately, their business is still generating cash flow. If a financial advisor would break down the real estate piece and say look, “You could be earning this on your real estate and your business is not making a lot of money at all, why don’t you sell the business and just collect a check on your real estate and your return on investment would be significantly higher.” I think a lot of these guys would be better served. I think as changes in taxes are coming, them and their advisors are more focused that their real estate ownership is supporting the deterioration of their business. Gerard E. Heffernan – Lord Abbett & Co.: In regards to acquisitions, the last couple of weeks has shaken up a lot of people, a lot of management and boards have gone in to bunker mentality. Can you give us a feeling to what the mindset of your board is in regards to making acquisitions at this time? Are they not feeling this same pressure to just sit tight and horde cash?

No, I don’t think – I can certainly speak for myself and I believe the board in that we view this as a unique opportunity to grow the business at an accelerated pace. Our cash flow is great and getting better. We do not have a lot of debt. We do not have any credit risk with our banks. O Our borrowing rates are cheap and over the next year or two or however long some of the difficulties continue, and again, let’s not forget the 18 months before today were not that robust either, I think the board feels that if $460 million of sales, being a low cost operator with the ability to get three times bigger and not leave our current footprint which is a very low risk growth strategy that it would be imprudent not to grow the business during what is a obviously very attractive time for this company to grow. Gerard E. Heffernan – Lord Abbett & Co.: The next question I have is in regards to store manager turnover. You really haven’t talked about this in a while, it was always kind of a strong point of your operation. Can you tell us what the situation is with your store managers? What are turnover levels? And, I imagine the ability to win market share that the capabilities of these guys are even more important today?

Certainly, one of the things that benefits us is a bad economy and difficulty means people are less likely to switch jobs and there’s less opportunities. On the fact that we are outperforming, a lot of the marketplace makes us a stable place to work where we focus on 401K plans and healthcare benefits that a lot of others can’t offer quite as well, that helps us. Certainly offering stock options to the top 25% of our store managers keeps the turnover as our best performing store managers at about the 15% level which is significantly better than both our average and the industry’s average and I think that continues to help us move forward. But, I think in a tough environment it’s obvious in the markets we serve we have the number one or number two market share. We are the only guy that’s growing. We’re a good place to work if you’re married and want to take care of your family and those are the exact kind of guys that we’re looking for to build our company and certainly that same group has been instrumental in our out performance over the years. Gerard E. Heffernan – Lord Abbett & Co.: In regards to the car dealerships really starting to struggle right now at least per the results of the public car dealership companies, is this putting you guys in a position to obtain talent from their service base?

We go back and forth with them. If someone wants more of a family atmosphere with some flexibility in hours they will come from a car dealership to us. We will also have a tendency to lose that 25, 26 year old single guy that’s a very good mechanic that he can go to a car dealership and make more money working there. So, on the labor front it goes back and forth and we haven’t seen any major shift in that. Gerard E. Heffernan – Lord Abbett & Co.: In regards to the advertising, I know that a previous questioner hit this topic but just you’ve always been very pragmatic about advertising. It’s not just something you do and throw money at, you’ve always talked as to hey you know what it’s not just advertising it’s the type advertising, it’s where you do it and how you go about it. What are you learning in that regard? What is working? What is not working? Anything new that you’ve hit upon that you believe is going to help you towards targeting your advertising in different or newer markets going forward?

Well certainly obviously we took the best of the best when we started testing last fall and put the programs together for this year. I mean, the difficult thing that anyone in advertising will tell you is, “I’m spending the money, 50% of its working, I’ve just got to figure out which 50%.” So, we continue to fine tune. I think we are much further ahead of the game with our years of experience in direct mail we know that radio in markets where we can buy it inexpensively works very well. We are sure the Internet has helped us build a base but it’s difficult to breakdown as to sales. We will do anything as we assess the third quarter and leading in to our programs and leading in to our programs of next year. We are certainly happy with the market share gains, we’re certainly happy with maintaining traffic at basically breakeven for the first six months of this year when we know units and traffic at all of our competitors is down and we will spend time really digging in and fine tuning what we are doing. I certainly think the easy efficiency is the guys are doing a much better job getting email addresses and with that being said, every time we then send a coupon or a flyer, or a promotion to a customer via email it’s $0.01 versus $0.40 and that become very efficient for us going forward and we would expect to make continued efforts on that front.

Our last question comes from Jamie Wyland – Wyland Management. Jamie Wyland – Wyland Management: Just one question, obviously store operations are great but driving same store traffic is the greatest opportunity moving forward, how much of that do you expect to come from new customer growth? And, do you expect to get it from the dealers that are having trouble or from other aftermarket service places? Where is the opportunity going to be the greatest for you?

Yes and yes. We would expect to gain traffic from the dealers strictly because there’s a lot of consolidation going on. They’re significantly higher priced than we are today and with the consolidation they are going to be significantly less convenient than they’ve been. That being said, they’re not selling new cars so we would expect them to be, as they have been, more aggressive on the service front. But, it is much more likely that a dealer customer is going to trade down from their $500 Lexus brake job to a $350 Monroe Lexus brake job than it is a Monroe customer is going to trade down from a full do it for me $25 oil change which includes free tire rotation and checking out your vehicle fully to a $17 do it yourself oil change with private label oil. So, us being in the middle we’re not losing much to the do it yourselfers in this environment and we’re picking up from the dealer network. As far as from a competitive standpoint obviously we’re gaining share. I mean, traffic gains will not be great for us, our market share gains will be versus the competition and if you look at in general us running flat or plus two or minus two traffic is probably anywhere from two to five points better than anyone else we’re competing with. We can see it in the comps, we can see it in the price increases that our customers are agreeing to pay to us because with the additional prices they’re paying us they view that they are getting more value whether it is the free tire rotation, whether it is the brakes forever program. Customers are coming back to us and we would expect those market share gains as well as the price increases implemented to stick with the hope that as costs of goods go down that becomes margin expansion for us. But, we are never going to be a plus five traffic company. The opportunities for us are to stay diligent, run the advertising programs to maintain or slightly improve our traffic where other people are giving it up and then generate whether through price increases or next year cost of goods improvement the gross margin improvement. The growth in the business then gets us leverage in the SG&A and you put those things together and over the next three to five years we start making our move from a 9.5% to 10% EBIT margin company to a 12% to 13% EBIT margin company.

I will now turn the call back over to Rob Gross for any closing remarks.

We continue to work hard in a tough environment to improve our business. Certainly we like what we see in the last seven months. We’re not taking anything for granted, it’s still a tough environment out there and we will continue to challenge ourselves and our stores to do better for the customer and continue to move the company forward over the near term and set ourselves up for what we would hope to be a nice 2010. Thank you for your support and we’ll talk to you soon.

Ladies and gentlemen that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T executive teleconferencing.