Joseph Stegmayer
Management
Thank you, [Gwen]. Welcome everyone. We reported the results of the third quarter ended December 31st 2008, yesterday and they were posted on our Web site cavco.com, and of course widely available on other public domains. The figures that Dan will give in a moment represent our poorest performance for any quarter in nearly six years as a public company. We are certainly disappointed with the results. We believe that we’ve always prepared our company to expect the unexpected. We think that we are nimble and that we can quickly adjust to market demands and changing environments and we feel our product line is very competitive and our distribution base is good. Still there’s only so much a team can do when faced with the unimaginable events in the economy that we have witnessed and the resulting freefall in consumer confidence. In Arizona, for the three month period ended in November, the latest period for which industry statistics are available, industry-wide shipments of factory-built homes were down 33% from the prior year period, which was at that time the lowest shipment level in some 15 years. For California, the shipments were down 45%; these states represent our two largest markets. In Texas, our third biggest market, shipments faired is better; however, they were still 13% less than the previous year period. Even for those buyers who do not lack confidence, consumer financing is a big challenge. Those that can qualify often face long lead times to get approved and to close their loan, and a new and significant development occurred during the quarter, and that was the announcement by Textron Financial Corporation, one of the major providers of home inventory lending to retailers and developers, that they intend to cease lending operations by the end of next month. While there are other sources of lending for the distribution chain, this exit is expected to adversely affect the ability of some retailers to buy homes for resale, which could have a negative impact on the industry as a whole. We’ll discuss this more later during the call. And before Dan reviews the numbers, I wanted to state that our people have done an extraordinary job steering the company through the myriad of problems we all face. They’ve been steadfast in their commitment to customers, and to the company. We’ve had to make some very difficult decisions, including reducing our team via attrition and some lay-offs. We have consolidated or eliminated some positions to bring operating expense more in line with current business levels, and while further adjustments maybe necessary depending on the economic environment, we have and we will continue to affect these changes without compromising our ability to custom design homes, to introduce new models, to support our retailers, and to service our home buyers. Dan, please review the numbers, if you would.