Gregory T. Swienton
Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus
Thanks, Art. Turning to Page 24, as I previously outlined in the waterfall chart, our full year 2012 EPS is a range of $4 to $4.10, up $0.51 to $0.61 from a comparable $3.49 in the prior year. We're also providing a first quarter EPS forecast of $0.55 to $0.58 versus the comparable prior year EPS of $0.51. I'd like to point out that the difference in our view of the quarterly seasonality of EPS versus the Current Street consensus is primarily a swap between first and second quarters' projected earnings. Coming into the first quarter of 2011, we didn't undergo the typical level of rental vehicle out-servicing because the market was strongly rebounding at that time. But in this year, in 2012, while the rental market remains strong and is still improving, we're doing a bit more of the typical seasonal out-servicing of older vehicles. In addition, the prior year's first quarter benefited from a decline in pension expense, positive earnings from acquisitions and 3% -- $0.03 property gain in FMS. Given these factors, there's more of a sequential decline from the fourth quarter last year into the first quarter this year as compared to the prior year. Turning to Page 25. As we discussed earlier, pension expense in 2012 will be above our prior expectations and will be up by $0.18 this year. Given the impact from pension expense, we thought it would be helpful to provide you with you a view of historical and forecasted comparable earnings per share, excluding the non-service pension costs. This information helps when looking at the underlying operational performance of our business without the impacts of the equity markets and discount rate environment on our pension plans, which have been frozen for several years. Excluding non-service pension costs, the midpoint of our 2012 EPS forecast is $4.44. This is the highest comparable EPS we'd ever achieved, including in our peak earnings year of 2008, which was $4.43. And we still have significant earnings upside especially remaining in our core lease business. Further, as a reminder, starting in the first quarter, we'll move non-service pension cost below the business segment line for reporting purposes. So going forward, you'll be able to see more easily the operational performance of the segments. We plan to publish historical information under the new segment reporting structure on or around March 1, so you'll have this in advance of our next earnings release. This does conclude our prepared remarks this morning, and we're going to move to questions and answers. [Operator Instructions] So at this time, I'll turn it over to the operator to open up the line for questions.