Welcome to the Gaylord Company’s fourth quarter 2007 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today from Gaylord Entertainment are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Mr. David Kloeppel, Chief Financial Officer. They are also joined by Mr. Mark Fioravanti, Sr. Vice President and Treasurer and Mr. Carter Todd, Sr. Vice President and General Counsel. (Operator Instructions) It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Carter Todd. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning, my name is Carter Todd and I am the General Counsel and Sr. Vice President for Gaylord Entertainment Co. Thank you for joining us today on our fourth quarter and year end 2007 earnings call. You should be aware that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995 including statements among others regarding Gaylord Entertainment’s expected future financial performance. For this purpose any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, words such as believes, anticipates, plans, expects and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors among others set forth in Gaylord Entertainment’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our fourth quarter 2007 earnings release. Thus actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed or projected in the forward-looking statements. Gaylord Entertainment undertakes no obligation to update publically any forward-looking statements whether as the result of new information, future events or otherwise. I’d also like to remind you that in our call today we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures and our reconciliation of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures has been provided as an exhibit to our earnings release and is also available on our website under the Investor Relations section. At this time I’d like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Colin Reed.

Thanks Carter and good morning everyone. Well 2007 was quite a year for the economy and the hospitality sector and it’s amazing to me how much investor sentiment changed as the year unfolded and the financial dysfunction that our country experienced took hold and spread like wildfire. In this same time period the tone of questions from investors and analysts shifted from growth to survival and just like each previous economic downturn that I’ve witnessed over the last 20 years hotel multiples cratered but this time around at a much more rapid rate than I remember seeing in previous cycles. So how do I think about this and how would I describe where we are today as a company and what does the next year or so have in store for us? Now before I get to this, let me be a pain and remind each of you about our differentiated strategy and why this is so important in times like this and why this positions us well for the future. As most of you know, every year we run our system between 75 and 80 occupancy points. About 80% of that occupancy is group business. The vast majority of this group business is booked literally years in advance of the customer’s arrival and as a reminder we have contracts for each group which guarantees both room and food and beverage minimums. Consequently as we go into each fiscal year by and large, our year’s occupancy has already pretty much been determined. Because of the incredible size of our convention centers we book so much more group business than our competitors, thus as we enter any given year we have disproportionately less rooms to fill than typical large box chain hotels that tend to compete with us. So what does…

Thanks Colin. As Colin said 2007 was a busy and exciting year for Gaylord and the successes that we’ve had to date continue to set a good foundation for 2008 and beyond. The work that we’re doing to build and strengthen our brand is in direct response to the stronger demand we continue to see across our network of hotels. Our advanced bookings, the strength of our group business and our ability to command increasingly higher rates certainly represent our customers’ positive response to our unique hospitality offerings. Given the increasing demand we are experiencing for our business we will continue to focus on expanding our network offering additional out-of-room services and driving even higher levels of customer satisfaction all with the design of maximizing profitability for you our shareholders. Now before I provide an overview of the financial performance of each of our hotels I want to address what I expect many of you participating on the call today are eager to better understand. That is, how a potential economic slowdown, particularly a slowdown in consumer spending might affect our business both in the near and long term. Let me describe a few attributes of our business that should frame this discussion and provide some insight into how we are thinking about our expected performance in 2008. First the fundamentals of our business remain strong as Colin said. We entered 2008 with 70% of our room revenues for the year already contracted along with additional minimum guaranteed catering spends. Let me repeat that. We entered 2008 with 70% of our room revenues already on the books. We continue to see average daily rates increase as we book additional room nights proof demand for our properties continues to exceed our available inventory over many patterns and meeting planners are providing…

Thanks David, rather than repeat what we’ve been saying here for about the last 30 minutes, why don’t we just open up the call for questions.

Your first question comes from David Katz - CIBC World Markets

I wanted to sort of address the guidance issue just a little bit and if we could talk about your degree of confidence not that we profess to know what the depth of the recession will be, but what is your degree of confidence that we won’t have to come back and perhaps trim the guidance some more. How do we, help us pencil out particularly that other RevPAR aspect of your business that I think David mentioned is potentially an exposure. How deep a recession have you factored in to this new guidance that you have?

Good morning David, what we have done is we’ve looked back to what happened to the group business in period like 2002, the year right after 911 when people, an event unprecedented in the history of this country okay, and we looked at the group behavior in that business and frankly to remind you and everyone else on the phone, in 2002 our Opryland Hotel had positive RevPAR growth of 4% over the previous year. Whereas the industry was off 2% - 3% right across the board. So we’ve looked at the group behavior historically to the last cataclysmic event and we’re pretty confident the groups are going to turn up and obviously as we pointed out and we point this out every quarter, I know it’s a pain in the neck, but we have contracts for almost 60 points of occupancy we have on the books this year. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is we look at the current trends around transient, we look at the current trends around leisure, we look at what happened in 2002 to the Opryland Hotel and that’s how we built our model and look there’s one other thing that’s going on here. We keep talking about recession and we keep talking about transient business could fall off a cliff, but unlike 2002 the US dollar wasn’t trading at a low point against every single European currency and the reason why I think the big hospitality companies that happen to be positioned in gateway cities like New York are doing well is because tourism is flooding into this country. And we happen to have a hotel in Orlando, we’re opening a hotel in the nation’s capital in Washington and that gives us some degree of comfort. If we thought for a moment that there was risk in our guidance, real risk in our guidance, we would have trimmed it further but what we have been pointing out over the last five years, six years as we’ve been painfully going through this quarter by quarter conference call with all the analysts and the investors is that our business model is a little different to the rest of the industry in the sense that we have so much of our business contracted for and that’s what gives us confidence. David have you anything to add to that?

I would add to that David we obviously knew that 2008 was going to be a significant point of discussion on the conference call and kind of how we feel about 2008 and I would echo Colin’s comments that we’ve done an enormous deep dive of what we have seen historically in terms of cancellations and attrition, what we’ve seen historically in terms of additional group bookings and for one of our hotels, we have data that goes back a significant period of time and for the other two hotels a shorter period of time. But it takes us through some pretty deep recessions and I think we feel very good from a group perspective where we have kind of come out on guidance for 2008. Remember as Colin said, we come into the year with nearly 60 points of occupancy already on our books. If you look at cancellation experience we’ve had over the years there is not a huge amount of variability between a 2002 and a 2006. And if you look at attrition levels there’s not again a huge amount of variability between 2002 and 2006. So we feel comfortable, very comfortable on the group side of the business. And on top of that as we come into this year, we know we have some more favorable characteristics at our existing hotels around availability of attractive patterns that groups would like to book into. Normally when we come into a year and we’re thinking we’re going to run in the high 70s of occupancy most of the stuff we’re trying to fill in is holiday periods or lower demand periods. This year because of the way our booking patterns worked and because of the way our yield system works we have focused on holding back better patterns so as we’ve come into ’08 we’re going to benefit from that because we have some really good high demand periods remaining to be booked this year. So we feel very good about the group business. On the transient side, that’s the piece we don’t have visibility to obviously just like anybody else, but we have made some positive changes in the past two, three, four months in staffing up our transient sales force and sales process and by putting new programs in place to help drive that transient demand, so we feel pretty comfortable with the 4.5% to 7% RevPAR growth. The other I think material thing that Colin I think referenced, but I’ll repeat is, remember we also have a measure of protection with our group business that a lot of other folks don’t. With 80% of our business coming from group business and it’s in contract form if we do see significant attrition we do have a measure of protection on the downside from a profitability perspective so I think we’re confident about RevPAR, I’d say we’re very confident about the CCF.

So just to make sure I, we’re characterizing this right, the guidance that we have today is really using a similar assumption set to post 911 period and you’re degree of confidence in what you have here is very high, right, and it’d be fair to call it a worst-case scenario?

No because you have to tell us what on earth happens to this economy over the next 12 months. It’s not a worst-case scenario because we have no; I mean we really don’t understand frankly what is going to happen to this economy. I mean you can’t even get an economist to agree on this David, but what we have done is we looked to the bookings that we had on the books going into 2002, which were frankly no where near as good as the bookings that we have on the book today and we looked at the group behavior during that period of time and that’s one form of screening. The other form of screening that we do is we look at all of that tentatives and prospects, the contracts that we’ve got out. How much of that is short term? We look at as David said; we look at the patterns of availability. We’ve been spending over the last 12 months; we’ve spent so much time focusing on what we internally we call need-dates. These are the periods of time which historically have always had much lower group occupancy to them and you know we’ve had some very strong success particularly in the short term so I’m not going to use words like this is a worst-case scenario. It is a scenario based upon how we perceive the economy right now and how we perceive the strength of our business. Back in October last year, nobody could perceive or should I say, the middle of last year, nobody could have perceived what happened to the credit markets in this country. Nobody could have perceived that this sub-prime thing was going to spread virally through construction lending and other parts of the banking system. So we have no sense of what, we have opinions, but we don’t know what’s going to happen here but we believe our business is in very good shape right now to weather what comes at us and our systems for managing costs are very, very good.

One more quick one with respect to the share repurchase that is out there now, how did you think about deciding to do that versus let’s say you know leaving your debt levels where they are even trying to, focusing on reducing them, just from the context that there appears to be a fair amount of concern generally in our sector about company’s level of debt at this stage.

Well again, obviously a very good question, but again this is the way in our simplistic minds we think about this. We have a good sense of what our cash flows are going to be this year, we have a good sense of what our cash flows are going to be next year and we don’t need to go back and articulate the answer to your last question about the level of confidence we have in the growth of that cash flows both this year and next year. And then when we step back and we look at the multiples that have been afforded to the hospitality sector over the last 18 years since the last recession and we look at the behavior of the investment community as there is this perception of recession taking place and multiples getting sized down into the eight times forward cash flow, eight and a half, nine times forward cash flow, we think that buying back stock that is trading at you know frankly historically low multiples of what we perceive that cash flow is to be, to be a very good prudent thing. And so our levels of debt are very manageable and our coverage ratios are very manageable and we think this is a good thing to do.

And let’s not forget David that a nearly billion dollar investment that we’ve been making for the past four years comes online this year and that’s something that gives us a significant opportunity to deploy some of that cash that that’s going to generate and return that back to shareholders through a share repurchase and also helps us [de-lever] at the same time. So you know if you look at kind of where we are from an interest coverage perspective we are in a very comfortable position by the end of 2008 and we get more comfortable by the end of 2009 clearly and we have a lot of confidence in what the business is going to do in 2008 and frankly in 2009. So we think it’s the right thing to do.

And the other thing is David Kloeppel and also David Katz, is the way these expansions which is really the next two blocks of capital that we need to spend work will be that through most of this year we will be in the detail design process and therefore we won’t be spending large amounts of capital on these two expansions. God forbid if the world goes crazy here over the next 12 months we will just give consideration to the timing of those expansions. But we’ve got a lot of flexibility in our capital structure here. We don’t have any debt coming due for what three years David?

Yes, 2010.

Thanks very much.

Your next question comes from Bill Crow - Raymond James

Just a couple of questions, three or four questions actually, surrounding the La Cantera resort property. First of all could you kind of talk about the interest of joint venture, potential capital partners in the project as you point out and had discussions? How many people are interested? What is the interest level? That sort of thing.

Really what we don’t want to do is sort of create the perception Bill of a, sort of a public auction here. So put it like this, we’re enthusiastic about the number of people that have raised their hand, that have come to us unsolicited and also we’re enthusiastic about the quality of that basket and so I think we have a bunch of confidentialities out right now and we’re actively working on the most appropriate potential partner. And as we’ve said, the way our agreements work if at the end of the day there isn’t an acceptable deal to us we have the ability to walk from this location with a total, walk away deposit of $10 million plus the costs we’ve spent today which are relatively minor.

But it sounds like just acquiring the asset, on balance sheet in its entirety is not, is no longer really a viable option, is that fair?

Yes, I think that would be a fair comment.

Okay, has there been any interest expressed either by your selves or by the potential partners as to including an existing property within the, with the San Antonio asset?

The answer to that question is we haven’t tried to complicate the San Antonio process with that notion. That notion is a notion that we obviously find attractive anyway and I don’t think the San Antonio debate the issue that you inferred are mutually exclusive.

Okay. And then…

In other words, we don’t do one without the other. But I don’t think we’re going to be complicating putting them together.

Okay, it sounded like maybe you’re slightly more optimistic towards Chula Vista and that getting started, does that have any role in the decision to seek a capital partner in San Antonio, are they related at all?

No, don’t read into that. We are making decent progress with the port authority but we never anticipated not to. I mean these are decent people that share the same goals and aspirations that we have as do the City of Chula Vista. The wrinkle here has been with organized labor and you know we continue to communicate and we’ll see where that leads us but we have very clear views as to how we should ultimately do Chula Vista and we don’t believe it should be a closed shop process here. We’re working through the process but the San Antonio decision has no bearing whatsoever.

Okay and then one final question, the reaction by the street to the San Antonio announcement in part I guess gave you an opportunity to repurchase some stock, does that sway at all your view of growth through acquisition in the future or is that just kind of an isolated event and maybe a big bite given the economy and the balance sheet.

No we absolutely think that the La Cantera deal is a very good deal and you know if we were operating a year ago with unlimited credit and people trying to throw money at quality hotel assets it would have been, we would have done the deal but what happened here was frankly unprecedented. With the mark down in the credit markets and the fact that our stock went from trading at the mid to high 40s to mid 20s just, we said this is crazy, we have to preserve capital and use some of that to buy our stock back. This is an opportunity, a moment in time that we can’t let pass.

Good decision and good call, thanks guys.

Your next question comes from [Kevin Maloda] - Bear Stearns [Kevin Maloda] - Bear Stearns: Hoping you can provide some commentary, some relative commentary by property in terms of RevPAR guidance for ’08, you know where you see the different hotels coming in versus your total hotel RevPAR of 4.5% to 7%?

Sure for ’08, Opryland’s should be toward the higher end of the range on both RevPAR and total RevPAR. Palms should be mid part of the range, mid to high part of the range. Texan should be kind of middle of the range. [Kevin Maloda] - Bear Stearns: Okay appreciate it guys, thank you.

Your next question comes from Will Marks - JMP Securities

Good morning Colin, good morning Dave. I had a few quick questions on San Diego at this point if you were to move forward approximate timing of opening?

Ah, I hate to do this to you Will, you tell me how long the California Coastal Commission is going to take and I’ll give you some good sense and then also whether we’re on side with the unions or off side with them and if we’re off side with them it’s a high probability we’re going hear through the legal process so I honestly its just right now, its one step at a time, one foot in front of the other and as we go through each step we’ll be able to articulate as to what should take place with the next step. I’m sorry to do that to you.

That’s fine, I’ll just pencil in 2020.

I think that if we haven’t been able to do what we need by the end of ’09 we will be, you’ll be hearing about other deals I’m sure before then anyway.

Okay another question, on the revised guidance can you give any indication if that has to do, if 80% of your business is group does the revised guidance assume some cancellations and lower spending or is it all on the transient side?

Well when we kind of bracketed the range of 4.5% to 7% we clearly took into consideration what could happen to group activity and what has happened to group activity in prior periods, prior cycles where we’ve been in the same part of the cycle. So I would say the 4.5% to 7% assumes on the low end of the range that we experience negative affects of the recession on group activity as well as on transient activity.

Okay and then on the group in the past have you seen spending slow considerably, and what should we look at in a slower economy. I guess I can understand the RevPAR but maybe not the total RevPAR?

Its somewhat challenging to compare the outside-the-room piece in ’02 to what it is today because we are a lot better today than we were in ’02. We have a much better internal sales function to sell the outside-the-room activities that we sell. We deliver such a better product than we did in ’02 and we have so much better customer satisfaction than we did in ’02. All that being said the ’02 experience was, we saw a fairly consistent level of outside-the-room spend in ’02 that we had seen in ’01. So 2000 was the peak I would say just from memory in Opryland in terms of outside-the-room spending and it decelerated somewhat into 2001 but 2002 showed those same kinds of levels. Our view for our business today is that, as I said we’re a lot better working with groups today than we were in the past and creating appropriate programs for them than we were in the past. Again on the bottom end of the range we are assuming that group activity will be affected to some extent both inside the room and outside-the-room based on slower economic activity.

Okay and just one final question is most of the, or maybe you can apply it percentage of the outside-the-room spend part of the contract that includes the room rate.

It’s group by group. Some groups have very high outside minimums; some groups have medium outside-the-room minimums. It really is very group specific but I would say the vast majority of groups have contractive, where they contract for banquets and lunches and dinners and organized events, there is always a minimum.

Okay great. Thanks Colin, thanks Dave.

Your next question comes from Nap Overton - Morgan Keegan and Company

A couple of things, first Dave could you share with us what your capital budget is for 2008?

For ’08 I think it’s about $350 million, it’s going to be between about $350 million and $375 million and that depends on how quickly we get through design and when we kick of construction on the expansions. That number I just gave you assumes that we kick off construction late this year but that’s not a necessity to meet the opening dates that we’ve set for our selves for the Texan in late 2010 and Nashville in early 2011. And that also includes the total of the $50 million to $80 million of surprise that we got from our general contractor last month related to Gaylord National.

Okay and so that, about $220 million of that is Gaylord National, is that correct, remaining?

Roughly.

Okay and then secondly [inaudible] in on their survival theme that you said questions had transferred to, quick math I think you had $410 million - $420 million left on your credit facility at the end of the year, $220 million of that will go to the National, finish the National project. If you were to complete the $80 million share repurchase and invest $25 million in equity at La Cantera that would leave you with about $100 million in availability left, is that math correct in the way you think about your liquidity situation?

Not quite because you haven’t factored in any operating cash flow for the year. So it’s more like $200 million.

Okay.

Minor point.

It’s a significant point. Okay and then no rooms are out of service for the Opryland Hotel for ’08, is that correct?

They’re done.

They’re done.

I mean we’re going to be doing five of the big suites over the next 24 months, but we won’t take them all out because we fill them with meeting planners and people with aspirations to stay in big suites but that’s about it, right David?

Right.

And then just one last little point of clarification Dave you said those attrition fees don’t end up in RevPAR, they don’t end up in the total RevPAR numbers either, they’re just not in hotel revenues at all is that correct?

No they show up in other revenues.

Okay.

So they’re part of total RevPAR.

Alright. Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from Jeff Donnelly - Wachovia Securities

David, you’ve always been able to give us a rule of thumb that you’ve got about 60% of occupancy on the books for any forward 12-month period, generally speaking are you able to give us that rule of thumb around how definite you’re actual CCF looks, whether it’s three, six or 12 months forward?

I’m not sure I understand the question.

I guess I’m wondering if at any point in time, I know you guys don’t give quarterly guidance but are you able to look at your next forward quarter for example now looking at your Q2, and say we’ll at least I’ll make X in CCF, and at best I’ll do Y because if you’re bookings are affectively there and they have cancellation fees, I guess I’m thinking that whether it’s three months forward or 12 months forward you probably have some visibility that 80% of your CCF is, pick a number, is somewhat contractual that even if it all didn’t show up, you would still get the fees from it.

Yes I would agree with your logic. I can’t say that I’ve done that analysis and can tell you what that number looks like for the next two or three quarters though.

Okay I’ll be sure to harp on you on that in the future. Colin as it relates to San Antonio I’m just curious, when you guys have discussions with perspective capital partners, private equity partners for an interest in a property, I guess you’re trying to get them to sign on to you’re underwriting it, you know 13, 15 times EBITDA are they in turn broadening that discussion back to you regardless of what your intentions are and instead asking about Gaylord as an entity, its seven to eight times EBITDA.

We obviously don’t go there on calls like this and you know that. We’re not going to have any conversations like that.

I’m just curious if they’re asking.

I mean we’re not even going to comment on that Jeff and you know we can’t. So let’s just leave it at that but remember we keep talking about, the wise analyst community keeps saying we bought this at 15 times but do remember we have 800 acres of some of the finest real estate in the south of the hill country about 10 to 12 miles from the airport so you can look at the cash flows and extrapolate the multiple but there is an incredible investment opportunity and a growth opportunity here.

Just a few last questions, Colin I’ve always thought of your hotels as hosting namely domestic organizations, what if any of your demand comes from actual foreign events or travelers?

You know there’s a lot of, we do a lot of domestic companies that have international presence in operations and you know we, I know next week we have a convention here in Nashville where we’ve got just a lot of foreign folks coming in but we’re not focused right now on international companies conventions coming into US but it’s something that frankly if this dollar continues to trade where it’s trading, we had a Board meeting two days ago and we talked at length because we just brought a new Board member, a lady called Maria [Sastra], who runs Royal Caribbean’s South American operations and we were talking about the whole notion of international tourism into America and how we as a company tap into that. So this is something, you raise a good point it’s something that we’ve really got to get focused on. But to me that’s all upside.

And just two last questions actually on the National, Dave what was CapEx in Q4 excluding National? And when do you receive your subsidies, when does that all play out?

CapEx in Q4 excluding National was about $10 million, actually excuse me $17 million. I did the math wrong. And the subsidy, the first $95 million of bonds are in escrow right now and have been accruing interest for about the last two years and those will be released to us out of escrow when we open. And the [inaudible] which is the $50 million will be issued to us when we open so all $145 million gets issued to us upon opening and we will begin accruing interest and collecting interest on those once we open.

And do they consider that opening to be, what was it late March, March 28?

Yes correct.

Okay, great thank you guys.

Thank you and by the way for the analysts that are on the phone that cover us, we obviously will be sending invites to the opening so you can come see this magnificent hotel, it is quite different. One more question and then we’ll terminate the call and if there are other questions they can contact either David, myself or Mark separately.

We should put a limit on the number of parts to the question because Jeff Donnelly set a new record with six parts to his question.

Most of which we couldn’t answer.

Your final question comes from Chris Woronka - Deutsche Bank Securities

I’ll try to keep to two but no guarantee on the parts, it was just interesting data point that 70% of your room revenue for ’08 is on the books heading into the year, can you tell us roughly what that was last year, is it similar?

It’s a little bit better this year than it was last year.

Okay, and then just related to that, is more of the revenue that you have on the books this year, is more of that contractually protected this year versus say ’02 or even ’06?

Chris repeat that question please. Sorry David and I were having a sidebar conversation.

Sure, is more of that, how much of the revenue is contractually protected right now for ’08, is that similar to what it was in ’02 or ’06 or do you over time, are you getting more of that contractually locked in?

It’s a higher occupancy percentage locked in at the commencement of ’08 than we had at the commencement of ’02 simply because we’re running about ten points higher occupancy in Opryland in ’08 than we ran back in ’02, because of the, just the bookings on the books but it is proportionately higher.

We also have a better, tighter contract than we had in 2002. One of the big things that Carter, our General Counsel, brought to us when we brought him on, but he really brought a focus on those contracts. Our legal department had been outsourced prior to Colin’s and my and Carter’s arrival at the company and consequently contracts weren’t getting quite the attention that they would having someone on staff and so Carter and his team have done a great job of tightening those contracts up, bringing up the levels of protection for our revenue.

And they are for all intents and purposes, 100% consistent.

Okay very good and then final one is if Chula Vista moves forward how should we think about financing just in terms of (a) do you think with where we are in the world that you might look for a partner there and (b) is there any chance that you look for more incentive or maybe less incentive given some of the local economies are, just how should we think about big picture stuff on that, thanks

Good questions, Chris, I think that we’ve consistently said we negotiate a deal on the incentives. The incentive’s really a byproduct of how much local taxes we’re generating. I think it would be one impossible to get more incentive and I think we, as an honorable company, I don’t think we would attempt to do that. The key though is what happens to the financing markets. We’ve got probably a good year of permitting processes here so we’ve got a year to see how these markets emerge. My sense is, is I know that there’s been huge dysfunction here but my sense is some parts of the capital markets will come back and we will determine the best way to finance this thing when this project gets you know, 12 months from now or however long the permitting processes take. But will we seek a partner on it? If that was the solution to the problem at the time, of course.

Okay, very good thanks guys.

All right, I think we’ll terminate the call and as I said a couple of minutes ago, anybody that has any further questions can contact David or me or Mark Fioravanti at the company and thank you for joining us this morning and you know we live in interesting times but our company is well positioned to navigate through this dysfunction. Thank you very much indeed for joining us.