Good day everyone and welcome to the Genesco fourth quarter fiscal year 2009 release conference call. (Operator Instructions) At this time for opening remarks and introductions I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Robert Dennis, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Genesco; please go ahead sir.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter fiscal 2009 conference call. Participating with me on the call today are Hal Pennington our Chairman and James Gulmi, our Chief Financial Officer. As always we will make some forward-looking statements in this call. They reflect our expectations as of today but actual results could be materially different. We refer you to our earnings release and to our recent SEC filings including the 10-Q for the third quarter for some of the factors that could cause differences from our expectations. And for those listening to the replay of this call on the internet, some of these factors can be read on the opening stream. Sales in the fourth quarter were choppy. The early part of the quarter was weak and the weakness continued until a few days before Christmas. Sales then accelerated through early January when they softened dramatically again. All in, we ended with total sales down 3% and comp sales down 5% for the quarter, a bit below our mid January expectation that comps might be down between 1% and 4%. This choppiness has continued into the new fiscal year but so far in a direction that we like. Comps were up 7% for February. Needless to say we hope that this at last represents a sustainable trend but we aren’t planning on it at this point. Given the large swings in the fourth quarter along with all the negative news on the economic front, we are remaining quite cautious about near-term sales. A primary focus for us in the fourth quarter as it progressed was inventory management. We made it a priority to enter the new year with clean inventories given the sales uncertainties. We feel good about the results of that initiative. When we finished…

Thank you Robert, I will now run through the P&L for the quarter starting at the top. Fourth quarter sales decreased 3% to $452 million compared to $467 million last year. Total comp sales decreased 5%. Journeys group sales increased 1% to $230 million and comps were down 2% for the quarter. Hat World group sales rose 1% to $122 million. Comp sales for the quarter decreased 4%. The Underground Station group sales were down 21% to $34 million reflecting a 12% comp decline and a 6% reduction in store count to 180 stores. Johnston & Murphy group sales were down 16% to $46 million. Johnston & Murphy wholesale sales decreased 25% for the quarter. Comp sales for the Johnston & Murphy shops and factory stores were down 17%. Licensed brand sales decreased 6% to $20 million. Now turning to gross margin, total gross margin for Genesco was down slightly to 48.6% compared to 48.8% last year. This was due to higher markdowns in the quarter mostly related to the inventory disciplines that Robert has already mentioned. Journeys gross margin was actually up about 50 basis points in the quarter due primarily to higher initial [markdowns]. Licensed brands gross margin declined 140 basis points primarily due to mix changes and increased product costs. Hat World’s gross margin declined in the quarter primarily due to timing differences on vendor discounts. Johnston & Murphy’s and Underground Station gross margins were lower due to higher markdowns to keep inventory fresh. Now for the restructuring and other line on the P&L, in the current quarter this nets to a small gain, a profit of about $300,000 compared with a loss of $2.9 million last year in the fourth quarter. This year’s amount is made up of asset impairments and store buyout costs totaling $3.5…

Thanks James, in summary we will continue to operate cautiously in these uncertain times with our attention more tilted towards cash and our balance sheet until we feel we have improved visibility and more certainly about our future. In the short-term we believe our positioning is favorable relative to the average mall based retailer. First within our two largest businesses, Journeys and Hat World, we focus on the more affordable ends of the price spectrum with an assortment of brands that are irreplaceable to our customers. Indeed our customers have demonstrated a willingness to pay up for fashion right items as they did with Ugg boots this past season. Also these two businesses focus primarily on teenagers who relative to the average shopper are less effected by declines in 401K values, by dips in real estate values, and by fear of unemployment. Indeed the fall of gas prices is a bigger factor for this demographic. And these teenagers are driven heavily by must have fashion items and brands and are less likely to compromise their look to tough times. Finally our strong balance sheet will allow us to merchandise to levels and manage our assortment in ways that maximize our business potential. Also we like our longer-term prospects. As we said earlier we believe we emerge stronger at the other end of this recession for several reasons. Landlords are much more flexible negotiating rents and the time is perfect given the number of existing leases we get to negotiate in the near-term. Likewise both the economic environment and a slower pace of store openings will allow us to reduce our average construction costs significantly. Finally we expect fallout among competition during these tough times which will allow us to gain share. It is also worth reminding you of the strength and experience of our executive team. This is not new territory for us, our management of inventories over the past 12 months is a testament to our leadership group’s savvy for operating in challenging times. And now we will be happy to take your questions.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: Thanks for all the great information today, and congratulations on a strong start to the year. Couple questions on mall vacancies, if you could address that. We’ve seen the data coming out and accelerating every quarter, given your significant scale nationally across a couple of your chains, could you give us a little update on how you see this impacting traffic in some of those, more B&C type volume malls, can you give us an update on your options with respect to vacancy clauses in some of those leases and just your expectations going forward.

We are keeping a very careful eye on that and about a month ago we launched a program very focused on exactly this situation. We are auditing all of our mall vacancy both anchors and specialty stores and matching it up to what the leases say, which is a big task. You have to go through every lease, every lease is often different but we’re finding great opportunity there. So for example just yesterday we uncovered a mall where the Steve & Barry’s clothes that dropped them below the threshold for both Journeys and Hat World and they go from what their lease rent is down to percentage rent, either 6% or 7% rent. Which is a major reduction for them, and the auditor due in this week or next week so over the next few weeks we’re going to get a lot of visibility what has changed out there and obviously that’s something we’ll have to keep updating as people like Macy’s continue to close anchors. Anchors is where the real opportunity is. So we’re very alert to it and we do have lease language in many situations that gives us relief before the mall becomes a complete disaster. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: What generally speaking is that vacancy rate or does it vary by mall.

It varies by mall and it can happen in a hurry. What the landlord worries about is a domino effect because once they start losing tenants, it can trigger the tenancy language and then store after store can start closing and in the mall that I just cited that seems to be the situation. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: So flipping that around though and saying you get lower rent, how much concern is there that these higher vacancy rates are just simply going to drag down traffic and that may not recover for a long time so do you run into the danger of having issues with potential impairment charges against your own stores because of lower volumes into the foreseeable future.

There’s a possibility of impairment but I think the benefit outweighs that. Just to use this one mall as an example, I was talking to someone who lived near it and its declined to the point where everyone who lives near that mall now goes to another mall where in fact we have a Hat World and we have a Journeys store so it would presumably drive our comps. I’m not sure the closing of a mall means that people spend less money. I think they will spend it in the malls that stay open and stay healthy and since we are just about everywhere with our main chains we would see it in comp on the other side. So if you were to tell me that 50 malls in this country were to close tomorrow, we might have some impairments but net net that would probably be a positive for us because the sales would swing to other stores. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: On malls the hour reductions we’re hearing about, are you seeing that as well or hearing it from your developers.

I saw your note on that, and we’ve checked it out. Westfield has made the move they made. I think we have 55 malls or something like that. Simon made some changes in the northeast but they put a release out, I assume you saw it, that said it was not connected to the economy it was somehow an effort to align the northeast hours with hours elsewhere in the Simon portfolio. We haven’t heard much beyond that yet but there is a logic to it. And we would be a beneficiary as you noted in your note but we really don’t see it as being across the whole mall universe yet. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: On the comps for both Journeys and Hat World but really Journeys, it seems l think you mentioned February up 15% correct.

No, Journeys in February was up 7 or 8, Kidz was up 15. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: The adult chain up 7 or 8, kids up 15, Hat World was also up strong, what—

Journeys the stores Journeys was up 9, the group was up 10. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: So quite strong results obviously for the month and can you shed some light on what it is about this volatility during the month that still has you so cautious as you look forward because that would seem to be such an acceleration of business that it would have to be related to a very strong product trend or a very strong conversion. Why are you concerned about that abruptly changing.

Well there might be a little bit of what we’ve done to drive that because we really focused on inventories in the fourth quarter when we were so soft mid December, we said let’s, we’re presuming its going to get better but we can’t count on it and so we got pretty aggressive with inventories and we ended low so we are getting some nice new receipts in February which are helping drive things. But remember we went through this situation where in the middle of January we were on a roll, had terrific comps in the first two weeks and then business fell off a cliff and we couldn’t even guide the quarter with three weeks to go correctly and so that just leaves us very cautious about how choppy it is out there. I’ve had a glimpse at what people released this morning at retail and it looks like February was a stronger month then January for a lot of other people so part of it was presumably traffic driven. It just doesn’t, it isn’t enough for us to turn around and say here’s a trend that we can rely on for this fiscal year especially given all the negative news that’s out there. Jeffrey Klinefelter – Piper Jaffrey: Was the cadence of the month weakening toward the back half or is it the front half of February.

It was a little choppy but I’m not sure its front or back, it was almost day-to-day or week-to-week.

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Krasic – CL King Scott Krasic – CL King : Skate was really driving Journeys performance last year, you had the benefit of Pac Sun exiting as we anniversary that just from an assortment perspective how do you see athletic playing out, and skate in particular and then are there any other trends that pick up some of that growth in fiscal 2010.

Well skate was very strong for Journeys and we expect it to continue to be strong. There was some tailwind presumably from Pac Sun’s exit. As you know we’ve never been able to quantify that. But we just think that skate is a very strong category for our teen customer and expect to continue to do that. Our vendors are all continue to be innovative and so there is new product out there that is compelling and gives the teen a reason to buy. So it will still be a big part of our business. We should continue to benefit from Pac Sun. Best way I can remember PacSun announced the exit from skate in April, really didn’t execute the exit until some time in the summer. So for roughly the first half of the year up to back to school we should continue to have some help presuming that we are picking up some of that business. In terms of other trends, we don’t see anything that is dramatically changing the mix at Journeys so the team is alert to what’s new and their testing, but you shouldn’t expect any big dramatic turns in terms of what the Journeys assortment looks like. Scott Krasic – CL King : How have the Doc Martin tests been and is that something to expand.

We’re not going to comment on specific brands. Scott Krasic – CL King : Maybe Hat World, you talked about the NFL sideline hats, other then the fashion brands or seem to be continuing to do pretty well, where do you see major league baseball and can you start to compositively there on a sustainable basis do you think.

Well football was a big part of the fourth quarter, it is every year naturally and it had an off year so that created a bit of a drag. The football business is very seasonal and so we’re done and we’re back into a normalized world where baseball takes over and baseball has been very strong as well as the action brands have been and as you saw, Hat World had a very strong February and so we think to your question its already taken hold. Hat World has good momentum and major league baseball just continues to be the hat of choice for people out there, not just for fans but from a fashion standpoint it is the item. Its taken a lot away from our NCA college business, we would love college to be stronger because of the margins but we just can’t entice the customer back into the college business because baseball is the name of the game right now. Scott Krasic – CL King : Sort of in your scenario B, on the guidance, how are you modeling Johnston & Murphy, will that be a profitable business in that situation, how big a delta year over year do you expect the operating income to go there.

Its going to be a tough year for Johnston & Murphy in both scenarios relative to where they had been. The comp assumptions, just assume it’s a very tough year at Johnston & Murphy just because until the banking sector straightens up. A lot of our customers aren’t in the mood to buy so we’re assuming a softer Johnston & Murphy for the year. Scott Krasic – CL King : But a profitable --

Yes, definitely profitable.

Your next question comes from the line of Mitch Kummetz – Robert W. Baird Mitch Kummetz – Robert W. Baird: The outlook for 2010, what does that assume in terms of comps by concept, could you give us a little bit of help there.

I’ll give you in terms of the baseline.

And again as we’ve said in there for the full year we’re down about 1% and if you look at the different concepts, if you look at, I’m just going to do it by group of concepts, Journeys would be essentially flat for the year and Hat World would be down slightly, no it would be up slightly. Underground Station would be low negative for the full year and Johnston & Murphy would be low negative. Mitch Kummetz – Robert W. Baird: You both made the comment that the buying team will be purchasing according to scenario in terms of your outlook, at what point in the year does a decision have to be made in terms of how they’re actually buying, if all of a sudden it would appear that we’re not playing out to scenario one, how far into the year given that I guess the biggest difference in terms of your full year outlook is scenario one versus two in terms of the back half, at what point does a decision have to be made that they are no longer buying the scenario one, they’re buying to some other scenario.

Realistically the big delta here is what’s going to happen at Christmas and so the team is going to have to have those orders placed largely by early to mid summer. And so that’s why realistically as we think about a downside scenario we’re looking at it knowing that we’re going to have to adjust our assortments a little bit. Now with that said Journeys had bought this year for a pretty aggressive fourth quarter and part of the advantage of our size is they get to pull on all sorts of different levers to make adjustments to their inventory which is what they did year. The cancel where they can, they push out to January February stuff that isn’t fully seasonal and then they take some very targeted markdowns and so the result of this year really is a great demonstration of how well Journeys can adjust when late in the game and in this case it was really going into holiday, Thanksgiving in early December, we realized we may not hit the sales numbers that we were hoping for and even at that point, they made a very adequate adjustment and the results speak for themselves. So we’re pretty confident that even if we buy for a presumed uptick in consumer spend in the fourth quarter the adjustments that need to be made if that doesn’t pan out we can make. The other businesses as you know have a lot more carryover merchandise and for them their options are to either get more promotional to move stuff but in many cases to let inventories grow a little bit and handle it on a receipt basis into the spring which is really what for example Johnston & Murphy is doing. Mitch Kummetz – Robert W. Baird: on the rent I think you made the comment, that rent expense was up 4% in Q4, first of all was that accurate and then what would be the basis point impact on SG&A from that increase.

That was right. I did say 4%, what was the basis point, I don’t have that in front of me. But it was by far the most significant driver of the SG&A increase. Mitch Kummetz – Robert W. Baird: How are you, you made a comment about the silver lining to this environment is that you would expect occupancy rates to go down, is some of that baked into your 2010 guidance or at what point would you expect better deals with your landlords to actually have a real impact on your P&L from lower occupancy.

Let me talk about that for a few minutes, if you look at our SG&A over the last few years the major driver if you look at SG&A increasing its percentages to sales, the major driver has been rent. No question about it and that’s been caused by two factors. One is we’ve been opening a lot of stores and we’ve had a lot of renewals, and going forward we’ve, actually we already saw it a little bit in the fourth quarter, that 4% was a lot, but we have been seeing increases greater then that and so there’s a real opportunity going forward to see a moderation in that deleveraging of rent for two factors. One is we’ve slowed down store growth which is important plus we’re already seeing deals, we’re seeing it on new stores and we’re seeing it on renewals. So we do expect to see some rent reductions going forward if for no other reason the slow down of our new store growth. And I think that is going to have an impact on SG&A no question about it.

But in terms of looking at comp stores, the opportunity is to in many cases to go back to the landlord at expiration or renewal and again 45% of our stores in the next three years are in this situation and say look we can’t do business on this basis any more, we need a better deal and especially for Underground, the example we used, the last 10 stores we have turned over have seen a 30% reduction. Now that’s probably at the high end because they’re all down in the B and C malls where our leverage is the greatest. But we think we can really reverse that impact. It just won’t happen all at once because a lot of it happens over time when you get the opportunity.

By the way I said that the, actually I said in my script that the rent was up, square footage growth was 4% but actually the rent was up about the same amount. So it is about equivalent. And to answer your other question, that was about almost 90 basis points. Mitch Kummetz – Robert W. Baird: And then on the Journeys ASPs in the quarter up 1%, you called out Ugg as being a driver of that, could you say how much of an impact Ugg had on that ASP increase, I would assume that ASPs wouldn’t have been up if not for the Ugg business, can you talk a bit about the mix in general and the impact on ASPs in Journeys because I’m guessing that the promotional environment in general for holiday was more difficult and Scott asked about Doc Martins and I’ve heard that skate shoe price points have come up, so can you just talk a bit about mix in general and the impact that you expect that to have on ASPs in Journeys and specifically what the impact of Ugg was in Q4.

I don’t have the specific amount of Uggs, remember we sold a lot of Uggs last year, we sold a lot of Uggs this year. Our merchants will point to a lot of other things going on in the mix in terms of ASPs, great value added occurring with in the skate category both in terms of treatments and in technology that is justifying higher price points. Obviously Crocs has become a lower, a smaller piece of our business and that was sitting at a lower price point but our guys just sense a general trend of the teenager shifting their mix preference away from some of the lowest priced categories and so they will point to a lot of things other then Uggs that gives them reasonable confidence that this is a trend. It isn’t just Uggs driven.

One other thing, on the comps on Johnston & Murphy, I said it was low single-digits, really more like mid single-digits, a negative for Johnston & Murphy.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Svezia – Susquehanna Financial Chris Svezia – Susquehanna Financial: You talked about the occupancy costs on SG&A but if you moved to scenario B on your guidance is there any other levers you can pull on or is, or you just going to see incremental deleverage on that line. Robert Dennis No, you’re just going to see incremental deleverage, its too short a timeframe to do anything else. It is just a reflection of sales and everything and when you lose your sales line, all the bad things that follow behind that is what drives down the earnings. So its really as simple as that.

We’ve talked before about our small stores and the number of people you need to have in a store and sales come down you still have to have one or two people in the store so you really can’t do much from a staffing standpoint other then reduce your number of hours. Not a lot of flexibility, that’s why comps are so important. Chris Svezia – Susquehanna Financial: And you normally leverage on a three to four comp, [inaudible] some of those occupancy benefits come along.

That’s what we’ve been estimating, three to four, hopefully with the rent coming down maybe we can begin to reduce that sum going forward but right now that’s the number that we’ve been using.

Your next question comes from the line of Jillian Caruthers – Johnson Rice & Company Jillian Caruthers – Johnson Rice & Company: Could you talk about the possibility, I know Hat World is such a large player and surpasses its closest competitor but I know you mentioned a small acquisition this past quarter, it seems though it’s a little bit different arena, just if you could talk about what’s out there and what other opportunities you see for growth in Hat World.

Well there are still regional players out there in that hat space that we would have our eye on as a way of growing our business but to be honest every year that ticks by makes those acquisitions less likely because at this point we’ve been pursuing a scenario of essentially going into their malls either going on top of them or replacing them. So we have more and more have been making headway on an organic basis so from Hat World’s standpoint I would set your expectations more for continued store growth as the way that we continue to grow the core business at Hat World rather then any really bigger acquisitions. Jillian Caruthers – Johnson Rice & Company: And the acquisition you made in the quarter, is that basically kind of, I know you quantified it as a dealer of selling products to high school teams, is that kind of a new format or new vehicle of growth.

It is and its an area that we like, we think that the team dealer business is consolidating and so this is our first step into it. We like the company and the people had, we’ve known them for a long time, the Hat World guys have. So we see it as another good avenue of growth that’s the licensed merchandise business which is what Hat World’s in and so its very tangential to what they already and we’re very excited about the growth prospects. Jillian Caruthers – Johnson Rice & Company: In the fourth quarter I know gift cards typically play a pretty strong part at Journeys and some of the other divisions how did that trend versus last year.

I don’t know, I don’t have the gift card information handy here. We can follow up with you on that.

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Stumphouzer – Sterne Agee Ken Stumphouzer – Sterne Agee : As far as inventory goes in the subsequent year I think you said that you believed it to be a generator of cash, I was just wondering if you could kind of give us an idea of where, how far down on a per square foot basis we could potentially see inventory under the baseline scenario and then secondly on the [bare] case.

Let me just say, we didn’t say that inventory was going to be a generator of cash. Inventory will be up. And so it probably be up, I can’t answer your question how far we can take it down, we’ve got inventories going up a small amount, just calculate it here, we’ve got inventories going up anywhere from 2 to 3% probably at year end from where they were this year. Roughly in line, maybe a little bit better then the sales growth but generally we’re not talking about slashing inventories or anything like that, we’re just going to be very controlled in our inventories and try not to let inventories grow any faster then sales and hopefully we can grow sales a little bit faster then inventories. So the cash flow we’re generating from next year is basically going to come earnings, there will be nothing from a depreciation and CapEx will be equal so there’ll be no drain there, and hopefully from some of the other line items in the balance sheet we can pick up a little cash flow from a working capital standpoint but its not going to come from slashing inventories. Ken Stumphouzer – Sterne Agee : Just to go back to lease renegotiations, I know its probably very difficult to estimate but in, what kind of concessions do you think you’ll get on the rent renegotiations in aggregate and then secondly maybe A versus B versus C, if you can give a range of the order of magnitude you expect to see for the concessions.

We haven’t broken it out that way, it’s a deal by deal basis. We’re attacking every opportunity we see individually knowing what the mall situation and what our economics are. But we haven’t really broken it out by area. In general we’re not expecting to get decreases in A’s. The A malls are still generally running with full occupancy. Hopefully we can decelerate what gains they’ve been getting. So it really is going to be a B and C mall story for us in terms of seeing those improvements. Ken Stumphouzer – Sterne Agee : And in those stores would you say like 10% rent reductions is aggressive or could it be something greater then that.

It depends on the mall and the concept, 10 would be good. Obviously we’re seeking much bigger gains then that in Underground Station and a few of our other concepts. But it really is a store-by-store situation. Ken Stumphouzer – Sterne Agee : In the Johnston & Murphy’s that did have the women’s products, how was productivity year over year versus the stores without the women’s product, was it incrementally better.

Its hard to answer and I’ll tell you that it would be dangerous to answer and the reason is a number of the stores that have gotten the women’s product are more or less flagship type stores, for example or Madison Avenue stores, and these stores relative to the rest of the chain got clobbered by the meltdown in the financial markets. So there’s too much other noise going on for that analysis I think to be meaningful.

There are no additional questions at this time; I would like to turn it back over to management for any additional or closing comments.

Just simply thanks for taking the time to be with us today and we thank you all for your interest in Genesco. So have a good rest of the day.