Good morning and thank you for calling the Polo Ralph Lauren’s fourth quarter fiscal 2009 earnings conference call. As a reminder today’s conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions) Now for opening remarks and introductions, I will turn the call over to Mr. James Hurley. Please go ahead sir.

Good morning and thank you for joining us on Polo Ralph Lauren’s fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2009 conference call. The agenda for the call today includes Roger Farah, our President and Chief Operating Officer, who will give you an overview of the year and comment on broader strategic initiatives, and then Tracey Travis our Chief Financial Officer will provide operational and financial highlights from the fourth quarter and full year in addition to reviewing some expectations for fiscal 2010. After that we will open up the call for your questions which we ask that you limit to one per caller. As you know we’ll be making some forward-looking comments today, including our financial outlook. The principal risks that could cause our results to differ materially from our current expectations are detailed in our SEC filings. Today’s discussion also includes non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between reported GAAP and adjusted non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release, a copy of which is available on our investor website and the SEC website. And now I’d like to turn the call over to Roger.

Thank you Jim and good morning everyone. We are pleased to be reporting strong financial results today. Our fiscal 2009 revenues rose 3% and our adjusted earnings per diluted share increased 12%. These results were in fact stronger than our initial expectation for fiscal 2009 which we articulated in November of 2007, when the world was clearly in a much different state. We achieved these results even as we absorbed dilution related to the acquisition of our children’s wear and golf apparel license in Japan, and as we continued to make significant investment in long term initiatives and as global economic challenges intensified to unprecedented levels in the back half of the year. Our sales and margins have held up remarkably well across channels and geographies as we gained market share around the world and took definitive action to protect our profitability. We also ended fiscal 2009 in strong financial condition, with an excellent balance sheet characterized by more than $800 million in cash as well as managed inventories appropriately. I believe our fourth quarter and full year results demonstrate that we are navigating well through tremendous uncertainty. We were able to do this as a result of the strategic diversity of our operating model, the power of our brand portfolio, the desirability of our products, and the high level of operational control we have over our businesses. Fiscal 2009 was really a year of two halves for us. In the first half of the year, we were prepared for weaker consumer demand trends thanks to the proactive measures we have taken to ship less product across our various channels of distribution after the first signs of a consumer slowdown that emerged in late 2007. As a result of our actions our sales and margin trends in the first half…

Thank you Roger and good morning everyone. First I would like to briefly discuss the impairment and restructuring charges that we incurred during the fourth quarter. Then I will highlight for you the drivers of our fourth quarter sales and earnings per share performance. My commentary regarding our fourth quarter results will focus on the adjusted results that exclude the financial impact of the impairment and restructuring charges we incurred during both the current and prior year periods. You can find the reconciliation tables that bridge our reported and adjusted results in the supplemental financial information we provided in this morning’s press release. I’ll end my prepared remarks with our outlook for fiscal 2010. So beginning with the fourth quarter charges, the $48 million asset impairment charge we incurred during the fourth quarter was associated with the net carrying value of store related assets. It is largely a function of the economic environment and the impact it has had on current and expected sales trends at some of the company’s directly operated retail stores primarily in the United States. We also incurred a $21 million charge related to company wide restructuring efforts that were undertaken to better align our expenses with the slowdown in consumer spending. The restructuring charge was primarily related to the headcount reductions Roger mentioned earlier, but it also included certain costs associated with a small number of store closings. The combined impact of these impairment and restructuring charges on our fourth quarter diluted earnings per share was $0.42 and inclusive of some charges incurred in the second quarter of fiscal 2009. The full year impact of impairment and restructuring charges was $0.49. Now let me move on to the overview of the fourth quarter’s financial results which again will be discussed on an adjusted basis and…

Absolutely. Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Omar Saad - Credit Suisse.

Congratulations on providing upside in a tough environment.

Thanks.

Roger wanted to dig in a little bit more. It sounds like some of the activities that you’re doing with the restructuring and closing some stores and you’re maybe thinking a little bit differently about the U.S. business. Can you expand on the 500 people, you know, what kind of responsibilities are you eliminating in the internal infrastructure here in the U.S.? And am I thinking about that properly in terms of you’re kind of looking at kind of reallocating resources to the regions where you think there’s growth?

No, Omar, I think you’re thinking about it exactly right. We are clearly very excited about the opportunity to develop our business in Asia, Southeast Asia particularly with China being the lead country has been a part of the world that we’ve managed through a licensee for many, many years, and at the end of this calendar year, January 1, we’ll get it back. We want to try to hit the ground running as best we can so we are putting a complete organization on the ground there as we speak, putting in the infrastructure technology to run that business, making the buys effective for January, February and March as we speak. And we expect to have a, you know, smooth transition of that. Over the long term, you know, we think China particularly and the rest of Southeast Asia will be an enormous growth opportunity for the company. So we are managing our resources here domestically, where at least in the near term business looks more challenging. We’ve consolidated, asked people to stretch their responsibilities and eliminated jobs really throughout the domestic operation at all levels in an effort to free up resources to invest in Southeast Asia and other parts of our growth strategy. So it’s a very conscious effort to pull resources out of one part of our business and put them somewhere else.

And then in terms of what some of the things that you’re doing on the ground here, it sounds like you closed some stores. Are there plans for further store closures? Is there anything on the horizon for Club Monaco and the domestic arena?

Yes. Omar we closed six stores. So in the scheme of our portfolio it’s not really significant. And as I think you know we’ve continued to close stores over the years either as leases expired or markets changed. So we don’t anticipate any major store closing activity. Obviously the downturn in the business, late September on, has been very different than our experience over the last six, seven, eight years. How long that lasts is anybody’s guess, so as leases come up for renewals we will certainly look to analyze whether we want to go forward or renegotiate or whatever the decisions will be. But I don’t think the six stores were a meaningful number in the scheme of things.

And then the store impairments? You know the test that you do to test for that. What kind of stores are those? Are we talking about the outlets or are we talking about the full price or the domestic? Is it international?

They were all full price stores, Omar. And it was a mixture between Club Monaco and Rugby and some of our Ralph Lauren stores. So.

Domestic?

Yes.

Primarily domestic.

They were primarily domestic.

Omar, we’re going to have to move on to the next question.

Your next question comes from Lizabeth Dunn - Thomas Weisel Partners.

Let me add my congratulations on navigating in a difficult environment.

Thank you Liz.

Can you address your relationship with Macy’s? There’s been a lot of chatter about potential reductions in that business. And how should we think about that in the context of your wholesale department store, you know, your wholesale domestic business overall?

Yes, well our relationship is intimate. We have strategized with Macy’s on a very, very close level. We are one of their key vendors to partner many of their initiatives over the last year. I think the centralization and the My Macy’s efforts are really going to make an extraordinary difference in how Macy’s runs their business on a national business, and we are fully lined up and aggressively supporting that. Recently came out of a strategy meeting with Terry and his team last week, and Jackie and all of her key presidents are actively engaged in maximizing the business there whether it’s men’s, women’s, kids or any of the other businesses. So, you know, we’re excited about it. We’re in close partnership. We have aggressive plans to launch new product with them including the Olympics coming up and they will be our key partner. So we’ve got a lot of initiatives going on with Macy’s and have married our organizational structure up with some of the changes they’ve made to better support them. We’re encouraged by their steps in what we’re doing to partner growth initiatives. So good things are happening there.

Your next question comes from Robert Drbul - Barclays Capital.

Roger can you talk a little bit about, you know, as you look to the rest of this year the trends in sort of your high end, black label, purple label type businesses and you know as a percentage, you know, what they were last year and sort of how you would envision them being in fiscal 2010?

Yes, I can’t give you the percentage, Robert, but I would say you know we talked about in the script that those businesses are down, whether they’re in our own retail stores or in our wholesale distribution. Interesting in this environment unlike a lot of other downturns that I’ve experienced over the last 35 years, the high end customer seems to be the one most affected. And that really started, you know, late September even though you know ’07 and ’08 up until that weren’t buoyant, but starting in you know the last part of September as the banks began to become front and center, the high end customer really around the world has pulled back, been more selective in their shopping and clearly is looking to buy at a discount. I think the over inventoried environment this fall certainly allowed them to buy at a greatly reduced price. I think that’s moderating somewhat for this spring, and then hopefully by next fall inventories and demand will be in alignment and full price selling will begin to strengthen. But clearly those businesses are down for us as they are for really everybody else in that business. And we don’t expect that to change in the next 12 months.

Your next question comes from Robert Ohmes – BAS-ML.

Just a few quick questions. I wanted to get a clarification on the wholesale guidance for the first quarter deemed down double digit after being up 3% in the fourth quarter. Is that all just the anniversaring of the Japanese, you know, children and golf business or is there a U.S. or European wholesale trend change there? And then the other follow up question.

That’s a one by one. You know the guidance that we’ve given in the first quarter and as you know we have visibility at this point for about six to eight months out in wholesale is a combination of domestic order contraction with most major brands as retailers have bought and planned for receipt flow in a much more conservative way. It’s clearly an attempt to not have the inventory overhang that plagued the industry and I think we’ve partnered with them to make sure that you know what we produce is what they want. And that’s baked into the guidance. I think it also assumes a more conservative constant currency order file in Europe as well as some negative exchange rate impact that we are expecting in the first quarter. So it’s really a combination of all three plus the lapping of the first nine months of American Living shipments last year, where we were really filling the stores and filling the racks and now we’re shipping more on a trend basis. So those are really the major, you know, pieces of the wholesale guidance.

And the Japanese children’s wear and golf license acquisition occurred in August of last year, so that’s when we will be lapping that.

Your next question comes from Kate McShane – Citigroup. Kate McShane – Citigroup: I’m trying to better understand your gross margins and the differences we saw sequentially. In the third quarter you had a slight margin improvement during a very difficult promotional environment whereas this quarter of course margins contracted because of decline in wholesale and retail margins. So can you help us understand the difference between the two quarters? And then how should we think about the allocation of your cost savings throughout the year? In what quarter or half will we see the biggest benefit?

Well I’ll talk about the margins and let Tracey talk about the expenses. You know if you remember it seems like a long time ago, this is January, February and March. So you know we sit here at the end of May and we’re talking about the margins for the post-Christmas period. And I think the largest issue was really one of retail margins to clear out the, you know, the disappointing October, November, December sales. And so I would say that was the major impact on the margin compared to the prior quarter which is also a very strong wholesale quarter. So part of it’s mix. Part of it’s the actions that were required to clear out the post-Christmas retail inventories. We do expect, you know, margins going forward, you know, to reflect the environment but I don’t think you’ll see what happened in the fourth quarter again.

In terms of the impact of the restructuring initiatives, you know, those actions were taken at the end of the year so those actions, you know, will impact, you know, the full calendar year, you know relatively equally, you know, and from a calendarization standpoint. Having said that, you know, we have also called out that we will be investing in Southeast Asia. So we will have an investment impact and we haven’t called out what that is, but that will be ramping up during the year. So you’ll see a smaller impact of that in the first quarter, a bigger impact of that in the second quarter, a bigger impact of that in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter will be a larger impact of that but you’ll also see the benefit of the sales benefit as we take over the license and the wholesale revenues associated with that. So it’ll be a bit difficult to calibrate. That’s why we’ve just tried to give you some color around the quarter in terms of what our revenue and expense guidance is at least for the first quarter and we’ll try to give you some perspective. But it will be a difficult year for us to try to guide you through with the currency movement, the investment that we’re making in Southeast Asia and just the general economic environment both here in the U.S. as well as in Europe.

Your next question comes from David Glick - Buckingham Research.

Roger I was wondering if you could give us an update on the progress you’re making in the women’s business at wholesale in the U.S.? And that business, you know, got tougher before the economy turned down and, you know, there’s been a pretty wide gap in the performance relative to men’s. I’m just wondering how much progress you’ve made in closing that gap and how you see the prospects for 2010 for the women’s business.

Yes, that’s a good question, David. We have seen a softening of women’s trends really across channels and across price points now for most of the last year or so. And that’s whether it’s Ralph Lauren or Club Monaco or any of the brands we have with really the exception of Chaps. We’ve continued to enjoy really tremendous growth in all merchandise categories with [Cole’s] and Chaps and the women’s business continues to trend well there. I think the fundamental issue is that, you know, the career business has turned very soft and it’s a much more casual cycle. And because of that I think the woman has an easier time putting together a less expensive outfit to go to work in and she’s more comfortable in a casual outfit that she can refreshen with just a nice top or some accessories. So I think the career business being soft is affecting all of our women’s businesses as it is really the whole industry. I think what you’ll find is strength in things like dresses. I think you’ll find it in tops. But there isn’t the suiting business, the career business that Lauren and other businesses, you know, enjoyed in the past. I think it will come back but right now it’s in that cycle. So we are focused, you know, very hard and to your question the domestic wholesale business where Lauren is the dominant brand, you know, on that side of the business whether it’s store expansion or key item focus, that will escort that business going forward and we’ll work to manage the career side until that returns.

Your next question comes from Jeffrey Klinefelter - Piper Jaffray.

Congratulations everyone on the great performance here in the quarter. My question is really on the pricing trends and product margin dynamics across your major global regions. Could you give us a sense for as you, you know, pursue your expansion in Europe and Asia what are constant currency pricing differences with U.S. in your sportswear categories? And how are your margins impacted by your hedging strategies for cost of goods?

Well you know I think you’re all familiar with the fact that we do not employ a constant pricing across the globe. We price appropriate to the marketplace whether that’s Europe or different countries in Europe, the United States or Asia. So you know the actual cost of goods since we globally manufacture everything is constant and then we, you know, price according to the marketplace conditions. So that brings with it, you know, a level of complexity in terms of currency fluctuations that when we translate it back to the U.S. balance sheet, you know, provides some of the interesting forecasting challenges we have. We have not lowered our prices on comparable items as we’ve heard and seen others do. We have very broad choices in merchandise offerings whether it’s in a brand or between brands so that our customers can assort product by category and price point to match their trends. We also are doing that in our own retail stores whether it’s a sorting by brand or price point within our brands, we have very full lines that range from opening price to very high prices. And I think our customers are adjusting on a worldwide basis as they see fit. And it’s consistent with what we’re doing in our own stores as we see fit. Clearly customer traffic is down, but the average unit sale is down too. So the customer is price sensitive in certain categories and we’re adjusting accordingly. We do, you know, feel excited about the integration of our Japanese organization in terms of manufacturing so they are now part of our global standard. So all of the major regions around the world are running through our integrated worldwide manufacturing group, which has really done a brilliant job at managing the complexity of this. We ship today into 78 countries and manufacture in 45, so the challenges of raw materials to a manufactured country and from there to a country of sale and then translating that all back to the U.S. balance sheet makes for a pretty complicated puzzle. But so far so good.

Your next question comes from Adrianne Shapira - Goldman Sachs.

I had two questions really. The first related to the factory performance. Just wondering any, you know, the decline there and down 8.8, given the fact that it does seem like the inventory clean up is happening and it doesn’t sound as if the aggressive promotions out there would hurt off price, we’ve definitely seen some pick up in outlet and off price. So maybe some color as to why that division is still declining. And then the second follow up I can ask after on expenses.

Right. The factory performance quite frankly just to remind everybody was in fact impacted by the shift in Easter. We do get a significant change when Easter falls from March to April and I think that’s a not insignificant part of decline. Our quarter, January, February, March is different from what most retailers have now reported which include the Easter shift. So I think there will be some pick up in that trend in the first quarter we report. Otherwise the other major issue in our factory stores is really the tourist destinations which Tracey talked about. We have significant volume in what has been historically strong tourist locations and we are seeing the fall off in that traffic as well as in the Ralph Lauren stores. So those are probably the two major pieces of the factory performance. What was your second question? The?

I’m sorry. Adrianne if you’d like to ask your second question please hit star one again to reenter the queue.

I’m sorry. Let’s keep moving Operator.

Your next question comes from Chi Lee - Morgan Stanley.

Just Roger can you elaborate a little bit more on what the major merchandising opportunities are within the Southeast Asia operation? Is it similar to Japan where the assortments are very limited currently?

Yes, I would say the Southeast Asia business has really been built on the back of men’s blue label and so we believe that there are opportunities in the women’s areas across all brands. There are definitely opportunities in kids and denim, and also the most glaring would be the accessory business. Whether it’s Japan, whether it’s China or whether it’s any of the Southeast Asia countries we think all of those categories but particularly accessories represents unusual opportunity for us. Most of our licensed territories has had historically been built on men’s blue label so this is not totally dissimilar to Japan or any of the other Asian countries.

Your next question comes from Jennifer Black - Jennifer Black & Associates. Jennifer Black - Jennifer Black & Associates: Good morning and let me add my congratulations as well.

Thanks Jennifer. Jennifer Black - Jennifer Black & Associates: I wondered Roger how you see the fashion world? I know you talked about the missy category on the negative side. Are there any positive call outs? And then I wondered if you could elaborate a little bit more on accessories. You’ve done a great job domestically. Are there more opportunities domestically?

Yes, well let’s talk about the accessories because we are very excited. If you start with the shoe business which we acquired several years ago back from Reebok we’ve seen very strong growth whether it’s at the collection price point or in the Lauren price point. And that’s been primarily domestic but we’re now beginning to push that out into an international business opportunity. We then brought back in small leather goods and belts and actually belts is one of the better trends in the fashion business to your first question. And that now is being integrated into the overall accessory strategies over the last year or two, and our efforts in the handbag business which have been tremendously successful with the Riki and other high end products. We will be looking to launch a Lauren price point consistent with our female apparel business, our female accessory and footwear businesses in the fall of 2010. So we continue to invest and build talent and capacity and manufacturing strength in those categories. And while they may be soft on a global basis they are still enormous categories that, you know, are owed, you know, tremendous volume to us. So we have a lot of investment going into that and we have high expectations going forward. In terms of the overall fashion world, you know, my only reaction is that unique interesting product that’s differentiated continues to sell. And I think the customer is looking for a reason to shop. I think the mood has stabilized from what was sort of a panicked customer in September through maybe the end of February or March. I think as things seem to be stabilizing there was certainly a sense that consumer sentiment yesterday is trending up a little bit. So I think for the better customer it’s less about whether they have the money to buy or not. I think it’s an attitude. And I think as the attitude brightens there will be a return to those products and brands that have a credibility and obviously we hope to be one of those. So I think at this point we thank you all for your interest and look forward to an update in August on how the fiscal ’10 year is unfolding. Thanks.

This does conclude today’s conference call. Thank you again for your participation.