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Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (AAP)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 18, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Advance Auto Parts fourth quarter 2009 conference call. Before we begin, Joshua Moore, Director, Planning & Performance Management and Investor Relations will make a brief statement concerning forward-looking statements that will be made on this call.

Joshua Moore

Management

Good morning and thank you for joining us on today's call. I would like to remind you that our comments today contain forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause the results to differ materially. The most important of these risks as well as a reconciliation of any non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on the call with the corresponding GAAP measures are described in our earnings release and our SEC filings. These can be found on our website at www.advanceautoparts.com. The company intends these forward-looking statements to speak only as of the time of this conference call and does not undertake to update or revise them as more information becomes available. I’d like to remind you that our fiscal 2009 results include the impact of store divestitures and our fiscal 2008 fourth quarter and full year results include the impact of both a 53rd week and a non-cash inventory adjustment resulting from a change in inventory management approach. Results on this call will be on a 12-week and 52-week comparable operating basis as that provides a more transparent and relevant year-over-year comparison. We have provided both GAAP and comparable financial results in our press release. For planning purposes, our first quarter earnings release is scheduled for Wednesday, May 19th, 2010, after market close, and our quarterly conference call is scheduled for the morning of Thursday, May 20th, 2010. To be notified of the dates of future earnings reports, you can sign up through the Investor Relations section on our website. Finally, a replay of this call will be available on our website for one year. Now, let me turn the call over to Darren Jackson, our CEO. Darren?

Darren Jackson

Management

Thanks, Joshua. Good morning everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter conference call. First, I would like to begin by thanking our 49,000 team members for their hard work during the fourth quarter and fiscal 2009 year. Their contributions have produced many accomplishments this year both financially and strategically. Since we begin our journey to turnaround and transform our company, there has been several quarters which the financial results significantly outpaced our strategic results. However, during the fourth quarter our strategic results outpaced our financial results. Overall, we had many strategic successes in the quarter, but quite frankly our fourth quarter performance did not meet our financial expectations. As an organization we don’t measure success by the results of one quarter. However, our organization will never be satisfied with underperformance. We believe that the fourth quarter performance more of a short-term setback than a long-term trend. That said, both our strategic and financial results for fiscal 2009 were very encouraging. Results can mean different things to different people, our results include improvement and customer satisfaction, team member engagement increased average to our sales growth, and double digit gains in both our operating income and economic profit. These results translated into return on invested capital of 15.1%, which is up 110 basis points over last year. Collectively our balance between long-term and short-term improvements reinforced our positive outlook for 2010 and beyond. Fiscal 2009 and it’s the turnaround phase of our Advance Auto Parts' strategic plan. Over the past few years our focus has been on setting clear strategic direction for advance throughout the four key strategies, closing material capability gaps and accelerating our top line growth. Simply put, we focused on reigniting our core values of our team, inspire, serve and grow to deliver legendary customer service. To this then we…

Jim Wade

Management

Thank you, Darren and good morning. I would also like to thank our team for a successful year in 2009. I'll start my comments by reviewing our total sales growth and then talking about our progress with our commercial acceleration and DIY transformation strategy. Our total comp sales growth for the fourth quarter was 2.4% compared to 3% during the same quarter last year. We are not satisfied with our overall fourth quarter sales results. However, we did again achieve an increase in both customer transactions and average transaction size and our sales growth rate was close to two times the market growth during the quarter, which has positioned us well for a successful 2010. Looking at our commercial performance, our total comp sales increase was 9.5% and for advance stores our comp increase was 10.2%, which represented our eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. When adjusted for the calendar change from last year, our total commercial comp sales increased to 11.3%. This increase was on top of the 13.7% comp sales increase including AI and a 14.5% comp increase for Advance Stores during the fourth quarter last year. As a result of our comp sales growth our commercial sales mix as a percent of total sales increased to 32% towards our goal of 50% of total sales overtime. We continue to gain significant market share in commercial during the fourth quarter and even with accelerated growth our market share in the $40 billion commercial market is less than 5%. Our team knows we have a lot of room for continued growth. Our commercial gross profit rate also continues to improve driven by the increased mix in part sales and better merchandizing and operational capabilities. Since we are at the end of our year, I want to take a moment…

Kevin Freeland

Management

Thanks, Jim, and good morning. I would also like to thank the team for their hard work during the fourth quarter in 2009. I will take a minute to highlight a few of the accomplishments during the quarter and year as well as update you on our initiatives to strengthen our gross profit rates and improve our inventory availability. During the fourth quarter, our gross profit rate increased 78 basis points versus the fourth quarter last year. This increase was on top of 140 basis point increase during the same comparable period last year. For the year our gross profit rate increased 149 basis points to 48.9%. During the quarter our improvement was driven by increases in both front room and back room categories resulting from the rollout of our price room, price optimization strategies, strengthening our merchandising capabilities and the impact of our rapidly growing law enforcing capabilities. For the year we made significant progress increasing our availability through the net addition of six PDQs or part delivered quickly warehouses and 80 hub stores. We also upgraded inventories in nearly 1500 stores and we are able to re-assort the vast majority of our planograms using our new custom mix tool. Through the course of the year, we have substantially disposed of the slow moving inventory identified in fourth quarter of last year. Aggressive management of slow moving inventory in 2009 resulted in no material inventory write-offs this year. Major enhancements in inventory management processes led to improve DIY and DIFM availability and a decrease of over $16 million in owned inventory. The 9% decrease in owned inventory year-over-year combined with the 149 basis point improvement in gross margins contribute heavily to the 110 basis point improvement in return on invested capital. Our adjusted accounts payable to inventory ratio of…

Mike Norona

Management

Thanks, Kevin and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by thanking all of our talented and dedicated team members for the financial progress we made in 2009. I plan to cover the following topics with you this morning. One, provide some financial highlights of our 2009 fourth quarter performance. Two, put our fourth quarter results into context with our 2009 full year performance and the turnaround. And three, provide you with our annual financial outlook for 2010. Before I comment on our results, I would like to remind you that 2009 includes the impact of store divestitures and our 2008 fourth quarter and full year results include the impact of both the 53rd week and a non-cash inventory adjustment resulting from a change in inventory management approach. The 53rd week increased diluted EPS by $0.10 while the non-cash inventory adjustments decreased EPS by $0.25. I will speak of our 2009 results on a 12-week and 52-week comparable operating basis as that provides a more transparent and relevant comparison to 2008 results. We have provided GAAP financials as well as comparable operating results in our press release. Turning to our fourth quarter, earnings per diluted share of $0.36 include $0.03 related to store divestitures. Excluding the impact of store divestitures, earnings per share were $0.39 versus $0.41 last year and analyst consensus estimates of $0.46. For all 2009, our earnings per share increased 14% on top of the 16% increase in EPS last year excluding the $0.17 impact of store divestitures. We shared our third quarter call that our fourth quarter would be a more challenging because we are up against stronger comparisons to last year. While this was the case, we are disappointed that we did not meet our internal expectations for our fourth quarter top-line and bottom-line…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Our first question today is from Anthony Cristello. You may ask your question and please state your company name. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: Thanks. Good morning. BB&T Capital Markets. Good morning, guys.

Darren Jackson

Management

Good morning, Tony.

Kevin Freeland

Management

Good morning, Tony. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: Darren there were a few references made this morning about being disappointed in the fourth quarter financial performance, and I am just curious from your standpoint what disappoints you most of the fourth quarter and relative to what your expectations were?

Darren Jackson

Management

Tony, I would say it’s a couple of things. I would say we are thrilled with our commercial progress. That being said, we probably finished a couple of points lower than what we would like to in terms of comp store sales. On the DIY side, naturally, we want to see positive comps in the fourth quarter and we didn’t see them. Now that being said, I would tell you that when I look at what was going on in the market you saw something interesting in the overall market trend, the DIY based on our NPD data says the fourth quarter was about the weakest year-over-year growth that we have seen all year. So, maybe I shouldn’t be as disappointed, but we did see some contraction in that business, albeit still positive, it was probably the weakest, it was the weakest of the four quarters on an overall market basis, and I am sure that’s a piece of it but, you know what, a piece of it, as we think about it, was we can always execute a little bit better. Commercial on the other hand strengthened in the fourth quarter sequentially on an overall market basis, and I think we probably should have participated in that a little bit more. That being said we had a lot and I can't emphasize, and as part of my worrying in this job, we had a lot going on in terms of training in the field, working with our commercial sales team, and I bet, we distracted them a little bit. And I think, as I said, I think more about a short-term setback in terms of things that we were doing versus a long-term trend because as I said in my comments too, we felt good particularly about period one January as we came into the quarter and saw a life come back in both of those businesses. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: So, when you look then at the guidance that you have given in – in what happened in the fourth quarter, is there any issue of the initiatives you talked about being maybe having some a lot going on? Is there the risk that you still have a lot going on that would prevent you from maybe meeting your expectations or perhaps creating some further disappointment relative to where this guidance is that you have given for the full year?

Darren Jackson

Management

Well, here is what I would say to this is that, we wouldn’t give guidance that we weren’t confident in. Is it a guarantee? Nothing is guaranteed. But I would say when I am confident about it is we have taken some time out. Jim talked about it in his comments particularly in the fourth quarter here again in the first part of the year right there energy is going into things that are field facing. So we are in the process of bringing our teams new tools and whenever we are touching the broader 49,000 in terms of better ways to schedule our labor as opposed to just controlling, and that doesn’t mean we are going to overspend our labor, but we are giving our teams new tools as we did last year to better see gaps in their coverage on the floor. We are viewing, well I think we touched – we touched every district last year and what we call our gas for the training process and this is just – you know you can take many different clues, I think for the first time, and at least a quarter is what we saw are simple things like our units for transaction even in DIY go up in the fourth quarter, our attachment rates increased 300 basis points in the fourth quarter. We had some inflation, deflation pressure but what I look for are the things that we are putting energy into that need to translate into the field, are those going to make a difference? And I think we are seeing some encouraging results whether it’d be in our proof of concepts and our commercial operations, Jim talked about it in terms of, how do we make sure the teams have the tools to get the…

Darren Jackson

Management

I want to make sure I understood that. Anthony Cristello – BB&T Capital Markets: Basically, it still seems like you are spending even though it's decelerating to some degree, you are still spending mid-single digit growth in SG&A, is what I think Mike kind of guided to as a result of initiatives underway. And what I am wondering is the level of initiatives in such has not yet peaked. And so the ability to get the full benefit that may seems more weighted to the second half of the year.

Darren Jackson

Management

Yes, I would say a way to frame that and think about it, Tony, and tell me if this doesn’t answer your question is that, you are going to have two things going on in the first part of the year. One, we’ll finish the annualization because we didn’t add every commercial sales person on the first day of last year, and we’ll feel the ways of the annualization of our sales force who feel the annualization of, we put our retail merchandizing system into operation in the third quarter sales force dotcom. So you are going to have some annualization that will be felt more in the first half, we will do some more commercial waves in the first half of the year. In the second half of the year, what we're spending time working on it is that, how do you give the organization time to absorb it. We’ve recognized last year and a lot of our customer data says, we created extraordinary demand in terms of new customers and even growing our business with existing commercial customers, but unfortunately we gave away a lot of business because we didn’t hold on to them, net it was still a 14 comp, it could have been double that if our operation side of the business. And it's not a criticism of our team members but it's a recognition that we have to get out into the field and make sure those teams are supported not just in growing demand but being able to sustain those customer relationships going forward. So I would think about this year that the first half and Mike said this will experience some annualization, it will experience another wave of commercial growth. As we’re going through the second half for the year, if we’re going through the entire year but it will be more – emphasis is that how we allow the organization to work that change and be effective with it. So the back half of the year is, as Mike alluded to, is we’re – it's not just the third and fourth quarter, I’d say second, third and fourth quarter, we would expect to see a larger portion of those benefits falling through.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Gregory Melich; you may ask your question and please state your company name. Mr. Melich, please check your mute button. We’ll move on to the next question, Matthew Fassler, you may ask your question and please state your company name. Matthew Fassler – Goldman Sachs: Goldman Sachs and good morning. Thanks so much for taking my call. My first question, based on your sales color and on the guidance that Mike just gave about the SG&A spending up mid single digit per store on the year. The implication to get to your numbers would be gross margin up substantially again in 2010 over 2009, something in the neighborhood of 100 basis points or more. I want to assure that my arithmetic is right on that, and then if so, if you could just recap the drivers if they are any different or if they are changing of composition of gross margin improvement of that magnitude?

Kevin Freeland

Management

Matt, this is Kevin Freeland. Essentially the numbers that we looked at in the quarter of the year and what we’re looking to in terms of 2010, is if you look at the 2008 and 2009 combine, we picked up 220 basis points for the year over that three-year period of time, and 218 basis points in fourth quarter for the two years back to back. We don’t believe that the margin rate for 2010 will be in that league, but will be a substantial improvement at least if my map is directionally correct that we are expecting that. What’s underneath that is a very rapid expansion of our global sourcing capabilities and impact on margin. Last year, we drove a lot of incremental margin by optimizing the prices in the front room, and that work will move to the back room next year, and continuing improvements in the category management and the merchandising capabilities. We also spent a lot of time last year and put a lot of investments in making sure that our prices were competitive and that was actually a drag on the 149 basis points that we picked up. That work is done, and essentially we are at the level with the market that we desire and that should not be a headwind for us in 2010. Matthew Fassler – Goldman Sachs: Got it. My second question relates to SG&A, and you discussed leverage without investments and then or deleveraged without investments or leverage points without investments and the leverage with investments. Should we interpret that, I mean, in any way that investments are viewed as damned, more discretionary this year than last year or are you simply doing that, so that we understand what happens when the investments are checked on?

Kevin Freeland

Management

I think it’s the second math. I want to be really clear; the investments we make continue to be strategic based, primarily in areas of commercial. I think Jim mentioned in his comment that we are one-third through our commercial changes, so that’s big part of our incremental investments next year that we are going to see. And then the other is going back to margins, and things like global sourcing our dotcom capability. So, just a frame to think about it we’ve just come out of turnaround phase that we have had the highest piece of our investments spend in growth as we invested through capability and strategy and is now a lot of those costs become part of our fixed cost base, you would expect our SG&A growth to decelerate.

Jim Wade

Management

Right. Cost base comes with a lot of additional capacity. So we are not a capacity with all of our parts grows, we are not a capacity with our trucks, so part of that matter as you look out is that, and I notice this sometimes kind of a painful but, you end up profiting new parts, growing new truck spend and you’ve got a one way of capacity there that typically we think it should be almost 18 months until they reach that full capacity level. So, we thought of ways to go, but as we said earlier we got trying to think about how do we bring that to our organization more rhythmically and as Mike said in a more decelerated fashion. Matthew Fassler – Goldman Sachs: Got it. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Gregory Melich. You may ask your question, and please state your company name. Gregory Melich – Morgan Stanley: Hopefully you can hear me now?

Darren Jackson

Management

Yes, Greg, we can hear you. Gregory Melich – Morgan Stanley: Excellent. This is Greg Melich with Morgan Stanley. I want to follow-up on the gross margin. I think – and also getting to the commercial roll out, on the gross margin side you said the front room is done, but the more of the back room this year, where is custom mix in that, and if you were to put a percentage of store that’s really been reset where you want it to be, Kevin could you give us an update on that?

Kevin Freeland

Management

Sure. Essential world customs makes up in two fashions that we referred to nearly 1500 custom mix upgrades and that’s literally changing the entire store at that point and secondarily that as we reset each planogram in the stock room, we actually affect all stores for that one planogram. The intersection of those two efforts is similarly all of the stores have been impacted by custom mix by the tail end of the year. Now that said, what we did in terms of upgrades in 2008, we – up the (inaudible) with the custom mix upgrades in 2009, and there is a series of changes as we move into 2010 that – should further fine tune the assortments that we carry in our stores, but I think it would be fair to say that the majority of that benefit was in place by the end of the year. Gregory Melich – Morgan Stanley: Right, so there are still some carry-through this year but that’s not the reasons that gross margin would have – the expansion going forward will be less than it was in the past, is that fair?

Kevin Freeland

Management

I would say it is larger impact would be – we’ve made this statement in the past that the largest opportunity for us in terms of price optimization was in the front room, which is why we started there. Moving to the background, but that’s smaller overall impact for us and that’s been partially offset by the growth in global sourcing. But we’re in a year where we are ramping that up very quickly within that net up of the two is what we are able to accomplish in 2009 is not likely to be repeated at that scale.

Mike Norona

Management

Yes, and Kevin it is also fair to say in custom mix, Greg, we are never done. I mean, right now, I think by example, Charles we’ll do brakes four times this year. Gregory Melich – Morgan Stanley: Okay.

Mike Norona

Management

And last year we did it once. And so I think it’s going to – it’s a building capability for us and it’s kind of a – we sometimes measure it just in terms of 1500, but you can imagine as we are getting smarter and the teams are learning, the way we will use that tool become more effective with each and every quarter and year. Gregory Melich – Morgan Stanley: And are the systems now in place to have that inventory at the store level in Q1 where you look at the cars and you need to trade them. Are we finally there?

Darren Jackson

Management

Essentially the mechanism is even more sophisticated in that, it's looking at numerous factors including the actual sales in the area, things that we can see and the interaction with customers that don’t show up in sales, the vehicles in operation. It’s a relative complex tool and what we are able to then see is how much is the demand actually get satisfied and that is coming up very nicely. Gregory Melich – Morgan Stanley: Great. And then there is follow-up. I think Jim mentioned that a third of the stores now have the additional drivers and it will leverage those benefits as you really improve in 2010. is there a goal now on the number of stores that you think will have the additional drivers and commercial program or, it seems like this year you may add some more but its not going to be near the rate it was, and its more about making sure the ones you rolled work, please put some numbers around that or something?

Jim Wade

Management

Yes, Greg, this is Jim. I think how you are describing is basically right. We in 2009, we finished our eighth consecutive quarter of double digit comps in commercial, and we did investments across roughly a third of our stores with the basic, the parts pros and trucks and drivers. We ramped up significantly our sales force. We had – for the first time we have a data base of our commercial customers in place that are now allowing us to start to leverage that. And over the next few years we'll do all of our commercial stores in terms of those investments. I think right now about 88% of our total stores had commercial, so we will be doing across that group, but at the same time while we are doing that, we are going to be doing the things that Darren talked about earlier that not only helps us create demand but helps us retain that demand at a greater level. So there is going to be lot of work going on inside the store in terms of how we see that order, how we make sure we track it and deliver the right part in the timeframe we promised every time to our customers. We are continuing to do a lot of work, just teaching and training our team how to do at greater level with commercial and the store from the standpoint of General Manager’s responsibilities with those commercial customers and the partnership with the sales force. So it's an ongoing process that this year we’ll continue the investments in stores for parts pros, drivers, trucks, etc. but emphasize to a greater level that operational consistency and the productivity of our sales force to retain customers.

Darren Jackson

Management

You'd expect by the end of the year, we would be at least at 50% of our stores having gone through the way for the upgrade process.

Jim Wade

Management

That’s correct.

Darren Jackson

Management

So that's a way to think about where we are in the journey, and similar to upgrades and custom mix, Greg, I would say with each way we are learning and getting smarter as to where to deploy those trucks, where to deploy those parts pros, how the interaction, and how we’re organized between our sales force and our teams so.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Scott Ciccarelli. You may ask your question and please state your company name. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets: Hey, guys.

Darren Jackson

Management

Hey, Scott. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets: How are you?

Darren Jackson

Management

Good. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets: Two questions. The first is, just a little bit more color on the gross margin performance in the fourth quarter. And what I am trying to figure out is, did we actually see shrink increase in the quarter or were there any change to maybe volume rebate accruals, because it just seems like you guys are experienced about four to five quarters of very strong progress on gross margin line and yet this quarter wasn’t quite what we had – that needs to seen, so I am just trying to figure out if there is anything else going on there?

Mike Norona

Management

Sure, Scott. And again, as I said a moment ago, if you look at the two year gross margin improvement of the whole year, I would pick it up, 71 basis points in '08, 149 in '09, so it's 220 basis points for the combined years. We picked up 218 for the combined years in fourth quarter. It's a 140 in '08 and 78 in '09. So essentially we were exactly where we had expected to be. The composition of the gross margin has literally changed each quarter and we have mentioned this in previous calls, there is a number of initiatives, that we have positives as negatives as we compare year-over-year but if you add it all together in total we essentially we’re on a track in fourth quarter there with little change from where we had been all year. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets: Your gross margins actually came in line with what your expectations had been?

Mike Norona

Management

Yeah, essentially yes. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets:

Mike Norona

Management

We have seen impact, and it’s been a material amount of what we have been focused on as a team and executing nearly 1500 upgrades in the year as, many, many times what it had been two years prior, but we have not in the past disclosed what that impact is other than the fact that the payback on the program is high. If you can imagine this, we upgraded nearly 1,500 stores inventory materially improved availability as is measured by our DIY and commercial customers and dropped total on inventory $60 million. So the payback on that program is considerable. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets: But is there – I don’t know if it’s a group of stores, or best stores or something where conversion rates have moved from X to Y after the inventory customization have been implemented?

Darren Jackson

Management

We have all of those internal numbers but no, we have not disclosed those in the past. Scott Ciccarelli – RBC Capital Markets: Okay. Thanks a lot, guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Kate McShane. You may ask your question and please state your company name. Kate McShane – Citi Investment Research: Hi, good morning. Citi Investment Research.

Michael Norona

Analyst

Hi, Kate. Kate McShane – Citi Investment Research: You had mentioned that this quarter SG&A benefited from lower incentive compensation, and excuse me if I missed this, but did you say when we can expect for this to resume?

Mike Norona

Management

Kate, the incentive compensation to resume? Kate McShane – Citi Investment Research: Yes, for you to go higher.

Mike Norona

Management

So, the reason you saw that is, and I think we’ve shared with you at the beginning of 2009, all of our incentive programs are based on growth, sales growth and profitable growth. And so, our anticipation and our belief and the confidence in our field is that we will able to grow the top line and bottom line and our incentive compensation will grow accordingly. What I also expect is that if we don’t roll as much as we did last year we would expect to see a little bit of leverage on incentive compensation, and if we grow more than we did last year we would expect that number to grow. Kate McShane – Citi Investment Research: Okay, great, that’s helpful, thank you. And then my other question is just on the competitive environment, I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of color on the DIY side, if you have seen any more competition in the pricing environment and in what forms in those competitions coming from the DIY business?

Darren Jackson

Management

I think as we look at commercial pricing through the quarter, I think it was fairly rational pricing across all of the competitors. I think the couple of competitors have increased the amount of exposure that they have done in certain DIY categories, but in order to keep discounts in pricing that just expanded the amount of exposure (inaudible) but I don’t think we have seen any deeper discounting than we’ve seen in previous quarters.

Mike Norona

Management

And Charles, would you say that maybe the one thing we saw in this quarter is, we did see Wal-Mart add – that’s little bit on oil, I want to say act up, be a little louder on oil than we probably have seen in the other three quarters.

Darren Jackson

Management

At least a 130-day period whether they are early exposing through (inaudible) and then the news of that bringing into December when we saw some changing in pricing back to prior levels that they were at. Kate McShane – Citi Investment Research: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Lasser. You may ask your question and please state your company name. Michael Lasser – Barclays Capital: Good morning. Michael Lasser from Barclays Capital. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Within your comp guidance for the year what have you assumed for growth in the market and how might that change if we continue to see a rebound in new car sales?

Darren Jackson

Management

Mike, I would say this is that’s one of the hardest number as we try to track down to say that our best view right now is that we would be surprised in if the overall market trends in 2010 were worse than 2009, and so, I got to say I have been in three different industries and I have never seen anything jump around quarter-to-quarter with such volatility, but this market on a total – total market commercial and DIY together, it seems to up three – in good years it feels like a 4% grower, in bad years it feels like a 2% grower. So, I think you’re probably safe, but when we see the combined market, to be honest that’s what we focus on, 3% is probably a safe bet on year-over-year growth. But here again, we are better operators of the business in short than predictors of the future, but that’s what the historical data would say. We did a little better in '09; we certainly see the characteristics of the industries still being favorable as we go into 2010. Michael Lasser – Barclays Capital: A real quick follow-up. How has the recent performance on the DIY side compared in markets where you have a more densely saturated or concentrated store base versus other markets that are perhaps less saturated, in those areas that it might be more concentrated are you seeing any more of a lift from the recent increase in advertising investments?

Jim Wade

Management

This is Jim. I don’t think from the standpoint of different regions we really don’t talk that specifically, but we don’t see things in general that would be significantly different. I think promotionally, if I understood your question right, we did in the fourth quarter – we thought about the improvements that our team led by Greg Johnson has been making in that area and the fourth quarter, it says it is not a big quarter in terms of advertising impact by any of us, because it’s our volume and typically our most volatile quarter. But what we are seeing is that our customers are responding very favorably to the changes that we made, and we feel good about what we see going into next year in that regard. Michael Lasser – Barclays Capital: Great. Thanks. Best of luck.

Jim Wade

Management

Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Dan Wewer – Raymond James: Thanks. Raymond James. A question on some of the price initiatives, I recognize the strategy is to identify items where demand is relatively pricing elastic and pursue that opportunity but it does appear that once you begin to push pricing into do-it-yourself category, that did coincide with the beginning of some weakness, and you do-it-yourself fails, is there any concern that perhaps – there is two part on the pricing initiative, on the do-it-yourself segment?

Darren Jackson

Management

We certainly don’t believe that but – and again you have to look at the two hands of the whole. Exactly to your point, we have identified items that prices is unimportant or relatively less important to the customer and those are the categories that we have optimized. There are other categories that the customer benchmarks and makes their decisions based on price, and we've been sharper in price last year than we had been in the two preceding years. The net effect of those two is overall prices is up slightly year-over-year. But as we are fine-tuning in this, I think if you look at the multiple year DIY performance, and if you look at the total DIY performance for the company last year, it was a better performance than we have seen in a couple of years and to a certain extent where we had struggled a couple of years back, it was an even a year of largely breaking even. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: I know that, I believe this year in 2010 is when you begin to focus on the back room in pricing initiatives, I’m trying to think what are opportunities given that, now it appears to be getting a little bit more aggressive in pricing, and therefore do you see fewer benefits from pricing optimization on commercial?

Darren Jackson

Management

Well, the work that we referred to of optimizing the prices behind the counter refers to specifically DIY pricing, we have a separate approach that we have for commercial customers, and as you well know that the margin difference is between those two businesses, the commercials accounts have always historically gotten historical prices than what our walk-in customer would achieve. We have not at this point made a material change in the pricing strategies for commercial accounts, and most of what we are seeing at this point has more to do with what the Jim has updated you in terms of the weight process that improvements in the – the growth in that business is better able to serve customers and are not actually price changes or change in price strategy. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: Okay. Great. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This conclude today’s question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to management for any final comments.

Joshua Moore

Management

Thank you, Wendy, and thanks to our audience for participating in our fourth quarter earnings conference call. If you have additional questions, please call me at 952-715-5076. That concludes our call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That concludes our call today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining us.