Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Big 5 Sporting Goods fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2007 sales results and guidance update prerecorded conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Mills with ICR. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. As a reminder, this call is being recorded as of January 10, 2008. And while the call will remain available until 11:59 pm Eastern on January 17, 2008, the call will not be updated after it is recorded. The following is the Safe Harbor statement in regards to today prerecorded call. Except for statements of historical fact, any remarks that we make about our future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results in current and future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. These risks and uncertainties include those more fully described in our annual report on Form 10 K for fiscal 2006, our quarterly report on Form 10 Q for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 and other filings with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these factors or to publicly announce results of any revisions to any of the forward looking statements made during this call that reflect future results, events or developments. On the call today representing Big 5 is Mr. Steve Miller, Chairman and CEO. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Miller. Thanks, John. Today I review our sales for the fourth quarter of 2007 as well as update earnings guidance for the fourth quarter and full year of 2007. To begin, we are disappointed to report fourth quarter sales below our plan. Same store sales were down 4.7% for the fourth quarter, with product margins down approximately 35 basis points. This was by far our weakest quarterly comp store sales performance since 1995. Given the soft results, we felt it was appropriate to provide additional color to our press release by means of this prerecorded call. As a reminder, beginning in 1996 we achieved 45 consecutive quarters of comp store sales growth until our narrow miss in the second quarter of 2007. We comped slightly positive in Q3 and we certainly were looking for better results than we achieved during Q4. We expected going into the fourth quarter that the consumer environment would be less than robust, particularly in the areas most effected by housing related issues such as California, Nevada, and Arizona; and that we would have difficultly comping against roller shoe business from the prior year. Although we have been able to manage through the difficult business conditions in many of our markets during the first nine months of the year, these factors had a more dramatic impact than we had anticipated during the holiday season. Now I will provide some specific details related to the fourth quarter. First, I should report that during the fourth quarter we opened ten new stores including our first store in Oklahoma. We also opened two stores each in Colorado, Utah and Idaho and one store each in Washington, Oregon and California. This resulted in a total of 20 net new stores in fiscal 2007 right on target with our plan and we ended the year with 363 stores. For the fourth quarter, net sales were $232.1 million versus $234.5 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006. Same store sales declined 4.7% for the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year. For the fiscal 2007 full year, net sales increased $21.5 million or 2.5% to $898.3 million from $876.8 million for the fiscal 2006 full year. Same store sales declined 1.0% for the full year 2007. In the fourth quarter, and particularly over the holiday period, like many other retailers we found the overall consumer environment to be extremely challenging. Both our average ticket and traffic were down to the low single digit range with a more significant decline in traffic than average ticket. In reviewing the quarter on a monthly basis, for the first few weeks of October sales were flat and then turned negative, partially resulting from unseasonably warm weather and wild fires in some of our markets and remained challenging until Thanksgiving. We comped positively on Black Friday and then sales turned extremely soft and remained significantly down until the weekend before Christmas. Last minute shopping trends improved, and our after Christmas sales were solid, helped by favorable winter weather conditions in most of our markets. In terms of product categories, by far the most significant impact on sales was the deterioration in the performance of the roller shoe product category over the prior year. This roller shoe business had built up very positively over the past few years, but the drop off occurred very rapidly during the back half of 2007. We expected that the category would comp negatively for the holidays, but roller shoe sales turned out to be even worse than anticipated. This one category impacted our comp store sales results by approximately 210 basis points. In other words, if one were to exclude roller shoes, our comp store sales for the quarter would have been down 2.6% rather than 4.7%. Additionally, competitive price pressures on this category essentially forced us to cut prices, which also hurt our product margins. If you factor out the decline of the roller shoe business, our product margins would have been down approximately 5 basis points for the quarter compared to the overall 35 basis point decline. Outside of rollers shoes, we generally maintained our product margins. We have what we believed was a very strong promotional plan in place for the holiday period, and for the most part we stayed with our original plan as we felt that additional ad expense and price slashing would not likely benefit the bottom line, given the very difficult consumer environment. Unfortunately, we did not have enough positive performing products to overcome the macroeconomic head winds to offset the particular softness in roller shoes. Our winter product sales were hindered by a lack of winter weather in many of our markets until late in the quarter, and certain other categories that we thought would be holiday standouts for us did not meet expectations. We did have strength in certain product areas including exercise and game categories. Our footwear business, excluding roller shoes, comped positively in the low single digits for the quarter. Our weaker performing categories apart from roller shoes included winter products, general apparel, basketball and golf. Given the softness in sales, our year end inventory levels were higher than anticipated. For the most part, we feel the additional inventory is good inventory and doesn carry an expiration date. We are making the appropriate adjustments and we believe that we can work our overall inventories down towards more normal levels during the first quarter. Apart from the impact of the roller shoe category, we do not expect the process of rightsizing our inventory to meaningfully impact future margins. However, we do expect our sales and margins to continue to be impacted by the roller shoe category during 2008, particularly during the first two quarters. Now I would like to touch on our updated guidance. Based on the sales results and other factors I previously discussed for the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter, we now expect to realize earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.25 to $0.28. For the fiscal 2007 full year, we expect to realize earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.22 to $1.25. We believe that the primary issue in our 2007 performance was the challenging macroeconomic environment. Throughout our history of over 50 years, we have experienced and managed through very soft consumer spending environments before. We have one of the most experienced management teams in our industry, and while we unfortunately can dictate the overall consumer climate, we do continue to focus on areas that we can influence, including enhancing our merchandise offering and promotional plan, as well as controlling expenses. We look forward to stronger results as the consumer spending environment improves. Thank you for your interest. As a reminder, we expect to issue our earnings results for the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter and full year as well as provide guidance for fiscal 2008 by the first week of March. Operator, this concludes our call. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. All other use is prohibited. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HERE IS A TEXTUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE APPLICABLE COMPANY'S CONFERENCE CALL, CONFERENCE PRESENTATION OR OTHER AUDIO PRESENTATION, AND WHILE EFFORTS ARE MADE TO PROVIDE AN ACCURATE TRANSCRIPTION, THERE MAY BE MATERIAL ERRORS, OMISSIONS, OR INACCURACIES IN THE REPORTING OF THE SUBSTANCE OF THE AUDIO PRESENTATIONS. IN NO WAY DOES SEEKING ALPHA ASSUME ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY INVESTMENT OR OTHER DECISIONS MADE BASED UPON THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THIS WEB SITE OR IN ANY TRANSCRIPT. 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Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Reflect Silver Blue Glow ,Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Game Royalblue Wolf Grey Men Nike Free Run 3.0 Chrome Yellow Reflect Silver Platinum White Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Gym Red Reflective Silver Pro Platinum Nike Free 3.0 Light Bone Reflective Silver Iguana Green Men Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Dark Grey Electric Green Wolf Grey Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Game Royalblue Wolf Grey Golden Goose Francy Cranberry Men Nike Free 3.0 Soar Blue Pure Platinum Reflective Silver Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Gym Red Reflective Silver Pro Platinum Amid the hopeful mood of the elections in Venezuela, talented designer and creator of the AVH brand, Andrea Vivas Hidalgo, did her artistic bit by conceiving the "Walking Towards Democracy"campaign in which she featured the "Caracas" model of her Mun D collection. These campaign representatives were able to vote comfortably in the original and unique creations of Andrea. AVH, which started almost accidentally when Andrea decorated a pair of her mom's slippers, is making its debut in the market this season with five shoe collections: "Flor," "Tierra," "Mar," "Symbolo" and "Mun D." "Caracas" set foot in New Orleans on the feet of the Venezuelan voters for a free and democratic nation. Recently she won "Publicist of the Year" by WITA. But as long. Tips for moving houseplants from outdoors to indoorsMany gardeners keep their houseplants outside during the summer and move them inside for the winter. Typically this is a good strategy but with moving plants in during the winter the plants. Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Reflect Silver Blue Glow,Matt Mead to run the Wyoming Department of Education. Crandall, whose appointment is subject to confirmation by the state Senate, takes over a department embroiled in controversy, including the removal of its previous administrator state schools Superintendent Cindy Hill earlier this year by a new state law. Hill is challenging the constitutionality of the change in court. "And they have a lot of similar ideas and some big thinking and to be able to walk into an organization like that and be a part of it is a thrill of a lifetime." Crandall had already announced he was retiring from his state Senate seat mid term to pursue his "dream job" of leading a school system. On Wednesday he said he would "step away" from his two companies: CN Resources and Crandall Corporate Dieticians in Mesa, Ariz. Crandall previously chaired Arizona's Senate and House education committees and was the school board president for the state's largest school district in Mesa. "Richard impressed me with his strong background in education policy and innovation," Mead said in a media release issued late Wednesday afternoon. "His work with the Digital Learning Commission, a national panel established by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has given him special insight into classroom instruction and uses of technology," Mead added. Crandall was one of three finalists chosen by the state Board of Education for the job. The others were Tony Apostle, retired superintendent of public schools in Puyallup, Wash., and Norman Ridder, superintendent of public schools in Springfield, Mo. During a public meeting of the finalists last month, Crandall said he was focused on technology and would not shy from wholesale changes that incorporate technology and other innovative learning methods in the classroom. He said he was most passionate about personalized learning that customizes lessons to the needs of individual students. As director of the education department, Crandall will supervise about 150 employees and an annual budget of about $1 billion. Crandall said late Wednesday that he will fly to Cheyenne on Friday to meet with the governor and other state officials. "It's a dream job. It's going to be a treat," Crandall said. "Wyoming has this incredible infrastructure that I think they want to see what they can do." The state Board of Education and the governor's office talked about finding ways to support teachers with technology, he said. "They're excited to be education innovators," he said. "The state of Wyoming is poised to do great things."
Online Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Reflect Silver Blue Glow,Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Reflect Silver Blue Glow Pranks are known as practical mischievous tricks or jokes played on a person, basically to make the person laugh. The term practical means that a joke or gag includes someone doing some physical activity, such as putting a roller skate in the corridor for someone. Mainly, these pranks or practical jokes are lighthearted and are focused on making the victim feel foolish. So, put time and effort into planning your pranks well. Set the scene and be flexible with your plans. However, these tricks may also include cruelty sometimes. Pranks are just another way of having fun. Generally, whenever we talk about fun, something happening, such as a cool party, outing or a hang out with friends, hits our mind. The time when we are with our closest friends, we try to be a prankster and pull off some pranks on other people around. It's always fun watching the priceless looks on the face of the victim, however, it must always be kept in mind that these pranks do not hurt the person in any way and the victim is able to recover from that minor embarrassment in a few minutes. So, prior to picking up any trick, just make sure that you take care of the following things: must select the right victim, as there are people who might get emotionally disturbed or take it to their heart. It's advisable to pick a person who is joyful and can handle a little embarrassment. Never ever try a prank on a person with no sense of humor. to put yourself in the shoes of the victim before your plan any pranks on them. Always choose a trick that is lighthearted and funny. It should not hurt the sentiments of anyone. trick must not include hurting anyone physically. There are thousands of ways to play tricks on someone. You can choose any tricks, such as a funny costume, exploding cigars, stinks bombs or some catchy bumper stickers. Although these pranks annoy some people, these are always a hit among friends. By taking care of certain things, you can be known as a star prankster among your bunch of people. By keeping a list of the most funny pranks, a person can easily become a hit at any party. So, prepare a trick that will be liked by all. There are various books available online and offline from where you can find some really hilarious pranks and might get to know something even better than you had planned. So, for the upcoming party, select a funny costume and pull off a nice prank on someone and have fun! Men Nike Free Run 3.0 V4 Wolf Grey Reflect Silver Blue Glow Black History month has come and gone. Seems it gets shorter for me each year even though this was a Leap Year. Last month, we tackled a topic that stirred up a lot of conversation and discussion regarding the gap in computer usage between black students and white students. One favorite testimony absolutely brought tears to my eyes and has inspired me to work even harder on conveying my thoughts on this month's topic. "Thanks for the information and the stories. thank again " Did you know that it has been documented that there is a 36% gap in participation in kindergarten orientation/class visitation programs between schools serving low minority populations and schools serving high minority populations? Source: NCES analysis So basically, the data suggests that when there is an opportunity to visit the school at the beginning of the school year for a munchkin, our minority parents are not as visible when minorities are the majority population. Why would this be the case? In past discussions with friends and colleagues it has been argued that the teachers are unwilling to stay late and parents in high minority populations must work to keep a roof over their heads. It is assumed that in low minority populations, there may be a stay at home parent or a managerial parent who has more flexibility to be at the school during the day. Many say that teachers will not stay at the school beyond the work day for a variety of reasons and a Saturday event would be unheard of scheduling. There is a need to probe the situation because at the end of the day, a munchkin's well being in school is potentially put at risk. Why? Self esteem is such an easy thing to build and destroy during those early years starting school. In order to strike that balance we have decided that we needed to dedicate a spot in the house for a school calendar to be posted or readily available for everyone in the house to see each day. We try to proactively talk to our munchkins about how they feel about us attending or not attending different events. Then we try to really assess what impact this has on her being able to enjoy learning. For example, we all went on both of her fall field trips. One was a trip to a pumpkin patch and the other was a trip to the Jamestown Settlement. We reflect upon what sacrifice it took to make those experiences possible and how we have to work hard together in order to be able to do it again in the future. We stay in prayer to ask for guidance on what we need to do to be there for her in the event of a school activity and alas we have a schedule conflict. It is hard to stay involved, but perhaps you may remember as a child how important it was for someone in your family to come out and cheer you on at times. So even if a parent is unable to make the event, the next best thing is to substitute with an aunt, uncle, cousin or family friend. The more the merrier. Sometimes it is those after school activities that can be the glue to keep a child's passionate flame burning for school. This month, why not call the kids in your immediate and extended family to see if there are upcoming events or activities in which they would like to participate? Spring break is coming up. Perhaps this is a good time to help out a family member in seeing a different part of the country. My sister has invited the girls to Detroit so we will most likely bare the cold and enjoy the visit. So the bottom line to this month's discussion is to see if we can better understand what active participation by parents in the school truly means to the child. That can only happen with a face to face discussion. When it matters, then perhaps we can make it a higher priority to be there for him or her. This series is intended to be a work in progress. What I am doing as an individual, and what others are doing as well. Together we can learn some new things and reinforce some things we already knew. What do you think? Can we work together? Joan E. Gosier is CEO of HBCU kidz, Inc. HBCU kidz, Inc. is a private and family owned company that promotes family heritage, education and our nation's 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities through a collection of high quality gift selections.
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