Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Stillwater Mining Company 2008 Second Quarter Results Conference. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions). And also as a reminder, this teleconference is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the conference call over to your host, Mr. Frank McAllister. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and welcome to everyone and I am sure we are missing a few people. If the technical mess up weren't, so serious I would make a joke at this point in time. But it is serious. We know we have lost a few people on the call. I'm not quite sure how that has happened, but we will try and make sure we get through the call. Welcome everyone and we appreciate you joining us for the Stillwater Mining Company's 2008 second quarter results conference call. I am Frank McAllister, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Stillwater Mining Company. And I have got with me here today, Greg Struble, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Greg Wing, our Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and John Stark, the Vice President of Human Resources, Secretary, Corporate Counsel and also involved in our marketing and sales effort; Terry Ackerman, Vice President of Planning and Process Operations; and Dawn McCurtain, Investor Relations. First let me just remind you of the usual statement. Statements in this conference call are forward-looking and therefore involve uncertainties or risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from projected results. We discuss these in more detail in the Company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risk factors discussed in the Company's 2007 Annual Report on Form 10-K. Now for the second quarter, financially the Company had an excellent second quarter. Net income was $17.2 million or about $0.18 per fully diluted share on revenues of $218.8 million which reflected strong prices for platinum group metals or PGMs, our principal products. These results bring earnings for the first half of 2008 to $20.4 million or about $0.22 per diluted share on year-to-date revenues of $391.9 million. By comparison in 2007…

Thanks, Frank. Let me spend a few moments describing our production challenges in a little more detail. Starting with Stillwater Mining, production of 88,000 ounces in the second quarter was up 4.3% from 84,500 ounces in the same period last year. This was in line with our expectations and however, production growth at the mine continues to be primarily constrained by an overall industry shortage of skilled miners in the camps. While the very high attrition rates experienced last year declined significantly, they are still too high and facilitate increased production levels from our more selective smelting areas. Additionally as the mine has grown, we are experiencing logistical constraints around infrastructure and support activities. Most of these constraints center on ventilation and equipment upgrades required to meet the more stringent diesel particulate matter or DPM standards as well as how we better deploy our haulage and mine support teams. We do feel the mix of mining that we are now using at the Stillwater mine better fits the geology, the reserves than in the past and givers us greater flexibility, particularly with the introduction of mechanized ramp and fill mining about a year ago on the upper west area of the mine. However, we are to maintain and grow production, we need to continue leveraging the more selective techniques and focus on improve our -- and extending our new miner training efforts to compensate for the tight labor environment we continue to face. So in the short-term our strategy at the Stillwater Mine is to continue to focus on our new miner training efforts and aggressively attack our logistical and infrastructure constraints to improve our operating efficiencies. Completing these efforts will take some time, but we are confident we are moving in the right direction. At East Boulder production of…

Well thanks Greg. Let me spend just a couple of minutes commenting on the status of other two head lines, strategic initiatives that market development especially for palladium and company diversification. The marketing front we announced in our first quarter release that PGM industry under the auspices of the international Platinum Group Metals Association had reached collective agreement to fund a substantial market development program of platinum jewelry, initial emphasis was to be on China and the US with the effort led by Norlisk Nickel and supported by several major palladium producers in south Africa and by us. During the second quarter Norilsk Nickel has indeed taken the lead in this effort, period in the work of establishing the organization and coordinating among the participants. However, there is still much to be done. Until the new program is fully funded in operational Stillwater has continue to direct since 2008 market development efforts through the palladium international with precursor organization through the industry effort. With regard to company diversification, I have already discussed the recent growth from our recycling activities. Recycling is a nice diversification because although it still falls within our core PGM focus, the characteristics in the business are very different from binding. Recycling earnings are the changes in metal price in our mining operations. Besides recycling we also hold small equity investments in two independent exploration companies that target PGM and other precious metals. The first of these, specific North West Capital Corporation is directing an exploration network with our financial participation at Good News Bay in Alaska, historically an important source of PGMs. The 2008 summer drilling program there addressing several geological anomalies identified last year was just recently completed and we expect to see the results within the next few weeks. The other company, Benton Resource…

Thank you sir. (Operator instructions). And our first question will come from the line of John Ridges with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi John.

Hi Frank this is Ankush on behalf of John, congratulations on the results.

Thank you Ankush.

Frank was any production during the quarter lost due to the negotiation at east boulder at all or?

Not that we would be able to measure. Were there discussion and comments that were going on amongst the workforce during that period of time, of course that always have and John that perhaps lead to some loss of production. Perhaps the first – there is nothing that we could measure. The second quarter was a reduction in production that east boulder in the second quarter was really related more to operating issues and the reduced work force than it was to the negotiations.

Okay. And then just to get some thoughts Greg did elaborate a lot on the steps and initiatives you’re taking in the mines, but – looking forward into ’09 how should we see the labor situation…?

Labor situation in ’09 will be quite steady, we entered into a full year contract at east boulder this year and a full year contract at Stillwater and a metallurgical complex a year ago so that – we still have several years to run and it should be quite stable. That is as with negotiations. Now, that’s not as with respect to attrition and our training program and Greg has talked about that, we continue to work and focus on our training program, and obviously the effort is then to stand both the attrition rate but also to grow our work force.

So, any sort of time lines you have in terms of the training program?

Let me have Greg speak to this.

Hi Ankush this is Greg. We think the training program is going to take some time, its going to take really a closer look in terms of how we can make it better. I think to kind of answer your question in terms of overall projections, we are seeing actually nice reduction in the attrition rate in Stillwater mine, that is somewhat offset by what we saw happened at the Stillwater mine. I think it is fair to say that we’re going to hold a lot of these levels in the next year or so and then really focus on how we can better engage and deploy mine as they come out of training.

Okay, thanks a lot and good luck guys.

Thank you Ankush, I appreciate your call and participation.

(Operator Instructions). And at this time we are showing no additional questions. Please continue.

Okay. I just really comment to obviously the markets are in a bit of the turmoil right now and I am sure a lot of callers have probably dropped off the line to go back and watch the market and see what’s going on at the market. I will just comeback and add one additional comment, John Stark and I were in China three weeks ago we went from Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing. I have to tell you what’s happening in China is quite remarkable in terms of the constructions that’s going on, the continued constructions and the amount of trading through the country. I mentioned about the car deal, the car deal was increased over the last 10 years probably 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, 6 million, 7 million and as I commented earlier 10 million now. Obviously many of these cars are small, but many of them are also very large cars where you can build Buicks and catalytic and lots of Mercedes and lots of BMW in the country and our guess is and our expectations are that this will continue. We met with one of the catalytic converter builders who is actually here in the town of billings yesterday who commented that prices went up, their demand for the catalytic converters go up a bit, but if the prices came back down in particular in recent couple of weeks, but the demand is growing quite substantially. You attributed this basically to the fact that you know the car companies are in difficult time, perhaps they ran down inventories a bit, but now they’re ramping in back up. While General Motors and Ford and Chrysler are cutting back we know that some of the automobile, other automobile manufacturers are basically either maintaining their build or not experiencing the shortcut back. So our guess is that this is a correction, but to the shortfall both in our own production as well as South Africa and Russia we likely meet some of that fall off in demand and these prices could continue really quite strong as they are right now. And we’ve got some other people that like to ask questions. We would be able to take those questions now. Tony, if we don’t perhaps we will end the call.

And so, at this time there is no question.

Thank you. And then we thank you everybody. And Tony, would you just announce the playback of this.

Thank you sir. And ladies and gentlemen this conference call will be available for replay after 2 pm Eastern Time today through August 19, 2008 at midnight. You may access the AT&T Teleconference Replay System at anytime by dialing 1800-475-6701 and entering the access code of 956361. International participants may dial 320-365-3844. And the phone numbers again are 1800-475-6701 and 320-365-3844 using the access code of 956361. And that does conclude the conference for today, we thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference. You may now disconnect.