Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Molson Coors Brewing Company 2007 fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Mr. Leo Kiely, President and Chief Executive Officer of Molson Coors Brewing Company. Sir, you may begin.

Thanks, Matt. Hello and welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. With me on the call today are Tim Wolf, our global CFO; Kevin Boyce, President of Molson Canada; Peter Swinburn, CEO of Coors Brewing Company; Mark Hunter, CEO of Coors Brewers Limited; Sam Walker, our Chief Legal Officer; Mike Gannon, global Treasurer; Marty Miller, Global Controller; and Dave Dunnewald, Vice President of Investor Relations. This morning Tim and I will take you through some highlights of the fourth quarter and full year 2007 results for the Molson Coors Brewing Company, along with some initial perspective on 2008 and then we’ll open it up for questions. In 2007, despite significant competitive and cost inflation challenges in each of our markets, our company results showed the value of building brands, reducing costs, and staying keenly focused. Equally important, we continue to deliver on the promise of the Molson Coors merger three years ago. For the second consecutive year, we achieved solid top line momentum and substantial cost reductions that exceeded our goals and double-digit earnings growth. So let’s review some highlights for 2007. At the global level, we grew Coors Light comparable sales to retail nearly 4% globally for the full year 2007 and more than 5% on the second half. We achieved net sales growth of nearly 6% in 2007, driven by brand strength, positive pricing, and the benefit of favorable foreign currency. We grew net pricing in all three of our businesses on the strength of our brands and the discipline of our sales teams. We kicked off our next generation resources for growth cost reduction program early in the year and wrapped up our original three-year merger synergies program at the end of 2007. For both programs, we exceeded our 2007 financial goals. Across the company, we captured…

Thanks, Leo and hello, everybody. I will start with fourth quarter financial highlights. In the last quarter of 2007, each of our businesses faced difficult competitive conditions and cost inflation, as well as cycling the 53rd week in the fiscal 2006 calendar. Still, our company maintained momentum to grow net sales and gross profit and reduced cost, which allowed us to invest in our brands and grow total company operating income and after-tax earnings strongly in the fourth quarter, as we detailed in our earnings release earlier today. On the bottom line, we achieved income from continuing operations of $133 million, or $0.73 per diluted share in the fourth quarter, and this is up 23.6% from a year ago excluding special and other one-time items. Foreign exchange movements increased our total company pretax profit by approximately $12 million in the fourth quarter, excluding special and other one-time items, driven by the appreciation of the Canadian dollar and the British Pound versus the U.S. dollar. On the other hand, cycling the additional week in our 2006 fiscal calendar reduced fourth quarter pretax profit this year by approximately $6 million and reported sales volume by about 600,000 barrels. These results exclude one-time tax rate benefits in the fourth quarter this year, restructuring and brewery closure costs in Europe and Canada, as well as expenses related to our proposed U.S. joint venture. These adjustments are described in more detail in the earnings release, news release we had distributed this morning. Unless otherwise indicated, all financial results we share with you today will be in U.S. dollars. In segment performance highlights, starting with Canada, pretax income of $129.6 million excluding special charges in the fourth quarter was 2.9% lower than the year ago. The decline was driven by the impact of the additional week…

Thanks, Tim. In 2008 we remain focused on building strong brands and reducing costs in each of our businesses, and we’ve ended the new year with encouraging momentum. Our strategic brands in Canada are building volume momentum and taking share. In the U.S., we have strong and broad volume and market share momentum on our four largest brands. We are holding the line on pricing in Europe and helping our retail customers work through the smoking bans and in all three of our businesses, the strength of our brands is supporting positive pricing and cost reductions are providing resources to offset inflation and grow our business. To keep this momentum rolling in 2008, in Canada we’ll continue to build on the momentum of our strategic brands, where we’ve experienced strong volume growth. We’ll continue to bring innovation to the market in new packages, promotions, and advertising platforms, including the cold certified can for Coors Light and new advertising creative for all the Molson brands that will launch and evolve in 2008. We’ll continue to build on our super premium portfolio of owned and partner brands through new programming and unique SKUs, leveraging the double-digit growth of these brands in 2007. The most recent example of our efforts in this critical segment is our new long-term joint venture with Grupo Modelo effective at the beginning of this year, to import and distribute and market the Modelo beer portfolio across Canada. The joint venture builds on the previous successful relationship we have with Modelo as we now pick up these super premium brands for our portfolio in the Western Provinces. In the U.S., we are staying focused in 2008 on maintaining our strong volume and share momentum while continuing to aggressively reduce costs. Coors Light, Keystone, and Blue Moon will remain our…

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Judy Hong from Goldman Sachs.

Tim, I was hoping, if you could just give us a little bit more color in terms of this lower tax rate forecast for 2008. I mean, it’s clearly a much lower number than your ongoing rate. What’s driving that? Is it not affecting your cash flow? And thirdly, whether there’s sort of an opportunity to take down your long-term tax rate?

We’ll save a lot of the detail for Dave’s call but this doesn’t immediately reduce cash taxes. As I said, this phases in over the next few years. There’s a reasonable possibility sure that this could over time lower that range that I gave you, the 22% to 28% and again, we’ve got to just see what happens on the legislative front. Obviously this is good news when our biggest profit, biggest cash generating market, its government deems that lower taxes is a good thing. It’s a good thing for Canada and it’s a good thing for Molson Coors. So yeah, I think this will play itself out to be a slightly lower over time tax rate and certainly in 2008.

Okay, and then just a question on Canada, Kevin. It looked like in the fourth quarter you saw better net pricing per barrel growth and you’ve talked about reducing discounting in Ontario. Can you just talk about the competitive dynamics there and as you look out 2008, is this sort of a trend that we could look forward to in terms of getting better pricing and still maintaining the improved share trend that you’ve seen in that market?

Judy, if you look at the fourth quarter, our net pricing was probably about 2.5% on a national basis and clearly we did pull back on our activity compared to a year ago, so it’s encouraging to see that our share performed pretty well in the face of that. If you look at what’s happening so far year-to-date, the activity is about the same, maybe a little bit less in Ontario than what’s happened last year at this point in time. But this is early in the year and these are pretty small from a volume perspective, so we’ll have to kind of play it by ear going forward, but certainly our performance in the fourth quarter was encouraging.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bryan Spillane from Banc of America.

Actually, this is Joe [Herak] with [Guttermer] Research. A couple things, Leo; congratulations on the solid numbers. You always seem to come through in very challenging times. Can you provide some more color as to what you are doing for your supply chain initiatives to reduce manufacturing cost per hectoliter as you originally promised $150 million in synergy or savings to decrease working capital?

Tim, you want to speak on that?

Yeah, and I’m assuming you’re referring now to our resources for growth effort for this past year and the next few years. We’re continuing to look for ways to optimize our footprint. I think you saw in the fourth quarter the work that our Canadian team lead on optimizing how they would source volume for Canada by the careful shutdown of Edmonton is a great example. And as we found, the more we work this, whether it’s optimizing the Canadian production footprint, doing the same thing in the U.S., obviously we’re seeing the impact this year and we’ll see a continued impact in the first part of ’08 from the construction of the Shenandoah facility is the sort of work we are going after. Clearly leveraging procurement deals, not just directs but indirects, are the sort of things we’re taking a look at. We announced our North American supply chain optimization, which resulted in much more efficient use of our skills and talent. We don’t need three engineering groups. We don’t need three design groups and we’re starting to push that as an opportunity. So what’s most exciting about the production, manufacturing, cost of goods work and resources for growth is it really spans all areas. It’s not focused on one area. It’s not focused on a couple of SKUs. It’s really across the business, across all activities throughout the supply chain.

Okay. You had $50 million targeted for your packaging operations at Golden. How is that coming along?

Well. Again, we try to be really careful about what we say versus what we invest. I mean, the U.S. has done a great job in the last year and it has an exciting pipeline of ideas for ’08 and ’09 on packaging initiatives. So make no mistake -- as we save money on packaging, on line productivity, on line optimization, on plant scheduling, we also want to make sure that we are investing back in packages and liquids and ideas that our consumers and distributors and retailers can get behind and that’s exactly what the U.S. business has and is doing.

What metrics are you guys using to measure success? Are you looking at RONA, ROE -- how are you guys making sure you stay number one in the industry with the right metrics in your manufacturing process?

Well, I’ll defer to our supply chain folks and if you’re talking about the U.S. to Peter Swinburn, but we look at COGS per barrel, we look at line rates, we look at efficiency rates, we look clearly at safety metrics because no amount of productivity is ever worth comprising the safety and health of our employees, so we look at all of that. Quality scores, we have a battery of important metrics that we look at not just in the U.S. but in the U.K. and Canada as well.

Okay, and final question; going forward for 2008 -- Leo, what would you like to tell all the shareholders on the call is your number one goal to reduce costs to make sure your stock price continues to go up, you stay number one in the industry, and you continue to provide the best brand for the value?

You know, Joe, it’s interesting -- it’s really about engaging people. It’s remarkable to me. I mean, we’ve set some pretty high goals but once those goals are owned by our teams and rolled down to the people close to the action, we get ideas better than these stretched targets. So to me, it’s really keeping our people focused, having them understand why we’re so focused on costs to remain competitive, because it gives us the resources to invest in the top line and grow the bottom line at the same time. And the more people get that, the more yield we see, plain and simple. So that’s our game plan and we’re staying with it.

And we will share the progress and resources for growth. Some of the ideas, the new ideas that have come to the fore and show you how that’s working because we think, to Leo’s point, by engaging people across the entire organization -- and it’s G&A too. It’s how we get more efficient in the back office as well as on the production floor. We think we’ll have some more positive and encouraging things to share with you next month in New York.

Great. Thank you very much. Continued success down the road.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kaumil Gajrawala from UBS.

Thanks, everybody. Can you talk a little bit about the cost savings programs that have been planned, particularly in brewery optimization between the Coors and Molson merger and if anything has been put on hold between now and when the deal closes?

I think you misspoke. I think you mean Miller and Coors?

No, actually I mean the old plants from Molson and Coors.

I’m sorry. I didn’t understand your question. Absolutely, positively not. We, as you saw, we over-delivered by $25 million on our total resources for growth program separate from in addition to what we did with synergies in 2007 and as I shared in my remarks, we’re going after $55 million more in 2008 on resources for growth. So absolutely, again on the production floor, procurement, back office, we are not slowing down our resources for growth for Molson Coors at all because of what may happen and the great opportunities that we see in the Molson Coors joint venture down the road.

We’ve taken a point of view that no matter what our future is, these initiatives are right for our business. And in a sense, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If this is right for our North American matrix, it’s going to be right for the JV. And I am very impressed the way our teams have stayed focused because you’re right -- there’s a tendency to say why should we do this now and something else is coming. The fact is we are out ahead of it, it sets the tone for the JV, gives us positive momentum for going into the JV and really tackling those synergy challenges with great momentum. So that’s the posture we’ve taken and the team is delivering.

Great, that’s useful. And then quickly on Blue Moon, I noticed there’s some print advertising out now. Is this a bit of a change in strategy or is Blue Moon so large now that it’s going to require some media support going forward?

No, no, we’re not changing strategy on Blue Moon. We’ve been pretty consistent with our approach. I mean, nothing remains exactly the same forever but the strategy is pretty consistent. That’s exactly what we -- we plan to keep to that going forward because quite frankly, the sort of success we’ve had with it, why on earth would you bother to change?

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Christine Farkas from Merrill Lynch.

Thank you very much. Some follow-up questions on Canada, if I could, Kevin or maybe Tim; I’m trying to reconcile your reported volume decline down 9.9% according to your press release and your reported sales up 9.2%. I think your price mix was up 4.5 points. Can you just talk a little bit about currency or other factors that would have driven that big swing in the top line?

Kevin, you want to take shot at that?

Christine, I’m having a hard time reconciling your numbers, to be honest. Can you go over your first nine and your second nine?

Well, the reported barrels on your press release show volumes down 9.9%. Is that actually incorrect? Because you talked about volumes down 3.8 excluding Foster’s impact.

Right. Okay, so -- okay.

So was Foster’s six points of volume, negative volume hit year over year?

There’s a -- you’ve got to compared 14 weeks a year ago to 13 weeks this year, so 130,000 hectoliters I think there, and then the rest is Foster’s.

And your overall revenue per barrel growth was 4.5 points?

Right.

Okay, that included a couple points from mix?

Yes, it did.

Okay, and can you tell us maybe in dollars how much currency added to your Canadian top line?

How much in -- in Canadian dollars?

Yeah, either points to growth or dollars, U.S. dollars would be fine.

Okay, bear with me. We’re going to grab that -- $17 million.

On the top line? Okay. If I could just follow-up then with respect to a broader question on Canada, how is it progressing throughout the year, the overall mix impact from value brands growing faster than premium brands? Has that changed and how do you find your activities are working there?

The value segment has actually stopped growing and is in a slight decline, so what you are seeing when you look, if you stand back and look at the whole market is you are seeing accelerated growth in the super premium and you are seeing the premium brands -- because remember it’s done by what the regular retail price is, so as regular brands increase their discounting and you saw that throughout the course of all last year, they are still classified as premium brands, if you like. So that stunted the growth and actually turned the value segment into a decline. So you are seeing some normalization there driven by the growth of the premium light segment but also the premium segment beginning to stabilize and the super premium continuing to outperform the whole market, clearly.

Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks. And just moving lastly to the U.S., Peter, we’ve head some comments from other beverage companies about slowing immediate consumption trends. Now your brands have performed very well and it may be less relevant to Molson Coors but can you talk about what you are seeing in perhaps some of the on-premise trends or other immediate consumption trends with respect to those channels in your brands?

Yes, certainly. It really varies by market. Overall we are very comfortable with consumption trends, though we are seeing softer trends over in the Northeast.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Swartzberg, Stifel Nicolaus.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Tim, on the free cash flow for ’08, a couple of clarifications, if I could -- the 550 number is where you remain. If you think about that number in terms of what might be possible puts and takes against it besides the JV as you move through the year and besides, of course, an earnings view you might have that could obviously change but things like pension contribution, CapEx, some of the things historically we’ve seen cause that number to be different than you thought at the beginning of the year. What are some of the items you’re at least contemplating as notable -- as potential notable changes to that 550?

Good question. I mean, obviously our objective is to park it above the 550, right? I mean, that’s -- but we want to make sure that we are flexible enough to be investing in ideas. You’ll see that the guidance I gave on the CapEx, a plan of about $280 million, is a bit more than what we shared at the 250 level earlier last year, and so because when opportunities like a contract packing project with S&N in the U.K. arise and it’s very, very high return, very attractive, we want to make sure we can fund that and go after it. So discrete projects that have very attractive returns, that are cash positive, we’re going to take a look at. So could the 280 be a little bit higher, a little bit lower? Certainly. That’s one of them. Pensions -- perhaps, but as we’ve been sharing, we’ve made very significant pension contributions, we’ve de-risked our pension asset allocations. We think we’re pretty darn close -- again, you’re never done but we are very, very far along in terms of being fully funded. I think those are the two main areas where we’ve had variability in the past, to your point, so I’ve got to presume that’s where we are going to see the most variability -- again, still within a pretty tight band in ’08. Restructuring opportunities -- I mean, you saw the great opportunity to close Edmonton. I can’t think of anymore plants we’re inclined to shutter but it’s those sort of instances that when we have an opportunity, we’re going to go after it. If it requires cash to restructure or improve or tighten, we’re going to do it and of course we’ll be forthcoming in details on how we do it and why we do it but it’s business opportunities that we want to seize or momentum we want to chase that could cause us to alter that 550.

That’s great. Very helpful, Tim and if I could, same topic but if we bring the JV into the picture here and perhaps I missed this but if we think about the timing of the $450 million in CapEx that the total JV would invest to get the $500 million in savings, how are you thinking about the timing of that 450? I mean, is it particularly first year, second year? How does it weight among those three years?

Mark, just a couple of things -- first of all, the $430 million that we shared in New York in October and have been consistent since then is the total CapEx and restructuring costs, so restructuring and any write-offs, relocations, severance -- those sort of expenses costs, cash use, is also in there. What we shared is we would be spending roughly $200 million plus or minus 10%, 15%. And again, the bulk of that CapEx is going to deliver logistics synergies and production synergies that we detailed by optimizing what will be an eight plant versus a two plant or a six plant supply chain footprint. To your point, the best thing for the JV, the best thing for SABMiller value, the best thing for Molson Coors value, is to spend that money wisely but to spend it quickly because we would love to be in a situation, I think, and certainly wouldn’t speak for our colleagues in Milwaukee, but think about the -- we’d love to be in a position where most of if not all of the eight plants in the JV footprint are ready to rock and roll as one system as quickly as possible -- certainly, certainly in time for all of peak season ’09 but maybe even a portion of ’08.

Great. Thank you, Tim.

(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from Bryan Spillane with Banc of America.

Good morning, guys. Just a couple of follow-up questions; first, Tim, getting back to the free cash flow, any thoughts on the potential for share repurchases and also how you are thinking about your balance sheet now going forward, where repurchases, dividends, and acquisitions kind of stand?

Your second point first -- we like our balance sheet. You know, the tender that we just announced really in my mind kind of completes our three-year journey as we begin our fourth year of Molson Coors, of paying down all the debt that we can cost effectively pay down. We have said and will continue to repeat the soundness and solid funding of our pension plans in all three geographies. We have dispatched the Brazil investment just a year ago so overall we feel pretty darn good about our balance sheet and sure, you will see -- as you look at our K, you will see movements, much of which is triggered by FX. Obviously when you have an asset like the Canadian business and the Canadian currency does what it does, you are going to have some of the values really spiking up on you. But in terms of the overall health of the balance sheet, I think we all collectively feel really good about where we are, the financial strength that we have to go forward and do some great things over the next couple of years. That’s point one. Point two, in terms of disposition of free cash flow, don’t forget -- I mean, again not to repeat myself but we’ve been hard at work the last couple of years building plants, making pension contributions, paying down debt, and so now as we embark on ’08, this will be a year where we don’t have lots of earmarks, so to speak, for our $550 million. We’ve begun, we’ll continue a conversation with our board in terms of the right thing to do in terms of cash disposition but also acknowledge it’s been -- you know, Leo’s challenge to us, it’s been our mantra that we want to invest money to become more competitive to make money and our first commitment is to the business to build it, and that free cash flow will help do that. Certainly, certainly not ignorant or blind to the fact that our dividend hasn’t moved in three years. I mean, we are clearly aware of that and that’s part of the conversation that we would and will have with our board.

Would you think timing of that is -- is that conversation better had once you’ve got the clarity on the JV closing? It’s kind of hard to make that -- make those sorts of decisions until that happens. Is that fair to say?

I think it’s for our board to direct and counsel on timing. I think that would be premature and inappropriate of me to say it. I’d be presumptuous in talking about timing.

Okay, and then Leo, can you talk a little bit about the transition? Again, assuming that the JV is approved and you move into your new role, what the succession plan is now?

You know, I think as we’ve said before, we have a really robust succession dialog with our board you know, as evidenced by the way we are able to move behind the Frits van Paasschen departure this year, with Peter Swinburn moving to the U.S., Mark Hunter moving into the U.K., we really feel good about our leadership team. You know, this is obviously board work and the dialog will continue but I feel very confident we have the talent on board we need to move forward. We won’t announce any of the new team for the JV other than what’s been announced. Until we have DOJ approval, it just wouldn’t be appropriate. But in that sense too, we feel like we’ve got tremendous depth as we head into this venture.

Okay, and if I could, just one last question relative to the DOJ -- are you still providing information to the DOJ or have you pretty much provided everything they asked for?

We’re still in process. This is a -- you know, a process that just plain has a pace to it, you know? So we are still in document transfer. We are preparing white papers on key issues. We’ll have executive interviews in the month of March, for example, so this is a process that’s -- you know, we’re just working our way through and frankly there aren’t any tea leaves to read. What we do feel positive about is we anticipate a decision early to mid-summer and we obviously think it’s going to be a positive one.

Okay, great. Thanks, guy.

Thank you. Mr. Kiely, I’m showing no further questions at this time.

Thanks for being with us, everybody, and I appreciate your questions. I want to remind you that to win in the beer business, you have to grow, you have to make money, you have to have a great team, okay? And I think underlying our results this year, the investment in growth and the bang for the buck in our investments for growth is one of the things I’m most excited about and building a team that’s market-facing, brand led, and focused on bringing meaningful innovation to the market is the way we believe we’ll win in the beer business. And obviously to do that, we’ve got to grow the bottom line and have resources for those investments. That’s our game plan. We’re sticking with it. Really, thanks for being with us today. That’s it, Matt. Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.