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WW International, Inc. (WW)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 15, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Weight Watchers International Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 Earnings Teleconference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards you’ll be invited to participate in the question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, February 14, 2012. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Sarika Sahni of Weight Watchers International. Please go ahead.

Sarika Sahni

Management

Thank you. And thank you to everyone for joining us today for Weight Watchers International’s fourth quarter and full year 2011 conference call. With us on the call are David Kirchhoff, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ann Sardini, Chief Financial Officer. At about 5 p.m. Eastern Time today the company issued a press release reporting its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2011. The purpose of this call is to provide investors with further details regarding the company’s financial results, as well as to provide a general update on the company’s progress. The press release is available on the company’s corporate website located at www.weightwatchersinternational.com. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures disclosed on this conference call to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure are also available as part of the press release. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will contain forward-looking statements. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today and except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Kirchhoff. Please go ahead, David.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Good morning. And thank you for joining for us as we review Weight Watchers International’s performance for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2011. Weight Watchers ended 2011 with a strong fourth quarter and the best financial performance in the company’s history. The combination of the launch of PointsPlus and hard hitting marketing benefited our North American meetings business throughout the year, but particularly in the first quarter of 2011 when we saw explosive growth. The WeightWatchers.com business surged to new heights throughout the year. Strong performance in the U.K. was sufficient to offset softness in our Continental European business. In the fourth quarter 2011, our business delivered solid year-over-year volume growth and very strong financial performance despite beginning to lap the surge in volume we experienced with the new program launch that began in late November 2010. WeightWatchers.com remained at all time highs throughout the end of fiscal 2011. On a constant currency basis, Q4 2011 revenues grew 12.5% over the prior year period with meeting fees up 11%, in-meeting product sales down 22% and internet revenues growing 60%. From a volume perspective, combined global online meetings and in-meetings paid weeks grew by 34% in the fourth quarter versus the prior year period. Q4 2011 global paid weeks in our meetings business were up about 13% versus the prior year period, while paid weeks for Weight Watchers Online remain very strong at 67% versus the prior year period, almost exactly on par with the growth rates we saw in Q3. Q4 2011 EPS was $0.86, compared with $0.66 for the same period in 2010, a growth rate of 30%. Included in the Q4 2010 EPS was a $0.02 benefit per share from the reversal of a prior year U.K. debt accrual. For the full year, the company…

Ann Sardini

Management

Thank you, David, and good afternoon, everyone. Before reviewing some of the details of our fourth quarter results, I’ll provide a recap of our full year 2011 performance. Full year 2011 revenues were $1.82 billion, a 25.3% increase versus 2010, reflecting strong growth in our customer count. On Monthly Pass and Weight Watchers Online active basis grew 30.5% and 50.5% respectively from the end of 2010 to the end of 2011 to a combined $3 million. In addition to the benefits from the higher customer base coming into the year, the NACO and U.K. meetings businesses and WeightWatchers.com experienced strong customer recruitment during the year, a result of the very positive response to the new program launch, coupled with the growing benefit of our effective marketing. These factors yielded annual growth versus prior of 38.1% in our principal volume metrics paid weeks. The 38.1% growth in paid weeks for the full year operating income growth versus prior up 40% to $546.3 million on an as reported basis, note the 2010 included a $6.5 million charge, related to the settlement of the California labor litigation and a benefit of $2 million from the reversal of the prior year U.K. debt accrual. Our operating income margin for the full year 2011 was 30% versus 26.8% in 2010. Interest expense came down 21.5% or $16.4 million in 2011 versus 2010, as we deleveraged to a net debt-to-EBITDA level of 1.72 times. Net income for the full year 2011 was $304.9 million, up 57% and EPS of $4.11 was 60.7% above the $2.56 prior year level and finally, the full year 2011 delivered $406.4 million of cash flow from operations, significantly exceeding the 2010 level of $313.1 million, which excludes a $31.6 million one-time payment made in 2010 for prior period U.K. debt charges.…

David Kirchhoff

Management

Thank you, Ann. 2011 was an important year for Weight Watchers on a number of critical dimensions. A brand has never enjoyed the participation it has seen this past year. The combined ranks and people attending meetings and participating via the online product represent the highest level of engagement that we had seen in our almost 50-year history. The brand has commended significant attention, interest and buzz throughout the year. Weight Watchers received due credit for its highly effective weight loss system in several clinical trials as reported by marquee academic journals such as The Lancet and British medical journal. We have been able to continue to demonstrate that we are unique suited to deliver excellent weight loss outcomes cost effectively and a scale that is unmatched by any competitor. We are committed to build upon this momentum before we realize our role the leading frontline defense against the obesity epidemic. As we look to 2012, we will build upon this foundation by pressing forward in our key strategic areas. Innovation, as an organization we succeed when our members succeed. Given the inherent challenges of losing weight sustainably we see numerous opportunities to help our members by aggressively innovating our offering. Innovation can come in the form of program changes, the most extreme example being a platform change such as PointsPlus. However, innovation can and should also come from areas such as technology and service innovation. We have an ongoing comprehensive effort to identify and develop significant innovation territories and expect some of these to be implemented for January 2013. In the recent announcement by U.S. News naming Weight Watchers, the best weight loss and easiest to follow diet is one sign of our innovation success. Marketing, we’re continuing to refine and improve upon our marketing playbook. We have been…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Charles Boorady of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead, sir. Charles Boorady – Credit Suisse: Thanks and good evening. My first question is if you can just quantify for us, the signup growth rates for the online business kind of quarter-to-quarter for 2011?

David Kirchhoff

Management

We tend not to release specific signup growth rates. What we do instead is we report paid weeks growth for the quarters and then typically as we’re going through the quarters, we will talk about end of period active subscriber growth. But again the paid weeks volume growth we are looking for the global online businesses pretty consistently between 30% and 35%. Charles Boorady – Credit Suisse: Okay. Great. So the seasonality on that business Dave, is that more consistent growth throughout the year than what you see in the meetings business?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Well, I think part of what’s affecting, if you look at the seasonality of that business is, it’s not totally different from the meetings business particularly in other way we have Monthly Pass. The way that business scales up is we tend to see a lot of people as you would imagine signing up in the first quarter and that’s what we’re seeing literally as we speak. And while that’s happening the subscriber base continues to build and in generally peaks sometime kind of mid Q2, late Q2, then you will see it dip a little bit during summer when not that many people are signing up, but people may still be treating then it usually picks up a little bit with increasing signup volumes during our fall campaign and then it usually drops a bit during the sort of traditional holiday period, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then the game starts to move as we began the next New Year. Charles Boorady – Credit Suisse: Got it. My second question is just on the B2B and also the business to government potential and thanks for the added color on your initiatives there. The sale cycle is usually pretty long in that business from what I have seen on the health plan side and so it’s a bit surprising given that you started in 2011 that you signed up few big trophy accounts and I’m wondering if you can…

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. Charles Boorady – Credit Suisse: … give us a size of sort of what your backlog looks like, how many employers you’re talking to right now, what the interest level is that we can gauge the trajectory of growth in that B2B business?

David Kirchhoff

Management

I think once our sales engines starts getting up to kind of more of a predictable and regular pace as we kind of workout some of the operational things in the business, we’ll be in a better position to start giving kind of I think more clear indications of what backlog looks like. That said, one point I’d like to make as a distinction is that, the large accounts business that I was referring to, in other words, large corporations, they are relatively feel of our large accounts and I only mentioned three because those are the three that have given us permission to use their names as we have discussions like this one, we obviously have others. That a lot of times were not actually part of the health plan, this is Weight Watchers is provided to employees as a separate benefits and so it can be provided off cycle a little bit and so, usually if there is a sales cycle issue, it would be equally if not more like to come up with respect to budget considerations and where the HR department budget might be in any given point in time, there are number of other different conditions. And so it’s not explicitly defined to a sort of hard set health plan benefits calendar. I think as we continue evaluating ways to partner and work with insurance companies, you can imagine circumstances in which that might come in to play and should we has success in the coming years of presenting our offering successfully for inclusion and programs like Medicaid, Medicare via CMS, that would obviously have its own sort of cycles and timings, but that’s kind of for the future, so right now we’re not heavily dependent on those types of cycles you might imagine. Charles Boorady – Credit Suisse: Okay. Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Jerry Herman of Stifel, Nicolaus. Please go ahead. Jerry Herman – Stifel, Nicolaus: Hi, guys. Good evening, Ann.

Ann Sardini

Management

Hi, Jerry. Jerry Herman – Stifel, Nicolaus: I guess the first question I just wanted if you would be willing to share the year end membership on Monthly Pass and just the notion of the price increase and just to verify that, if a individual disengages that when they come back that that happens at the higher price and what sort of motivation was that to keep them engaged at the time of the December price increase?

Ann Sardini

Management

I can give you the Monthly Pass end of period, the end of year we had about 1.4 million Monthly Pass subscribers globally, if they were to come back -- if they were to… Jerry Herman – Stifel, Nicolaus: Okay.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Go ahead.

Ann Sardini

Management

If they were to come to cancel the membership and then come back the likelihood would be that we would charge the higher amount unless there was some circumstance that as far as not doing that, but typically would do that, I mean, if you…

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. I mean, Jerry, if I understand your question correctly and I may not, we did not try to time the price increase as a way of sort of artificially keeping people retain longer at the end of the year by giving them an encouragement. I think that the distinction between sort of the price $39.95 and then they come back and have to pay $42.95, I just -- I doubt that that’s significant enough to have a significant impact on the decision making of any existing customers. So, I suspect -- so I don’t suspect there was much of that going on. Frankly, the decision around just had as much to do with the number of other operational considerations and the fact that we had felt like with all of the enhancements and improvements we’ve been making including some of the ones we watch in the fourth quarter that it was appropriate for us to take that action. Jerry Herman – Stifel, Nicolaus: Great. Thanks. And then just a follow-up, can you talk conceptually about the rationale behind the Dutch auction vis-à-vis the issuance of the dividend growth opportunities, just sort of general uses of cash and maybe you can share some of the high level highlights of the Board discussion there?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Well, it goes without saying that the vast majority of the Board discussion would be quite confidential as you can imagine. But I guess just to your question. I think the way that we look at the share repurchase is that it’s tax efficient for us. It really does from our perspective allow us to have a much more efficient capital structure. It improves, frankly our tax efficiency, as a company, we pay relatively high taxes compared to most corporations. And with the cash flow we generate and everything else, this was a very easy way for us to execute something like this that we thought would be beneficial both for the company and for shareholders.

Ann Sardini

Management

(Inaudible)

David Kirchhoff

Management

And it also make an obvious point it’s also highly accretive. Jerry Herman – Stifel, Nicolaus: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Chris Ferrara of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: Yeah. Hey. Thanks, guys. Hey, just on the guidance range, first of all, I understand that percentage range or the width of that range is similar to what you guys did last year. But I would imagine that the moving parts may not be a significant this year without an enormous launch that you had last year. Can you talk a little bit about the rationale with that range as wide as it is in the $0.40 area and I guess, what drives the low-end of that range versus what drives the high-end of that range?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah, I mean, if there is -- I don’t know that there is a tremendous science behind the range, part of it is, just historically to your point, 10% has generally been kind of the range that we provide at the beginning of the year. I always point out the fact that, we definitely know a lot more after five weeks than we knew before the year started but we continue to sort of improve our understanding of trends that are happening with the business, understanding kind of where the economy is going, how that affects the consumer, etcetera, etcetera. And so from that point of view, we like to start here and then obviously as we get into reporting on Q1 what we typically do is we narrow the range and so on and so forth, so kind of our usual practice. In terms of what would necessarily drive to the upper lower end of the range. As you know Chris, our business outcome in terms of EPS is generally going to be driven more by topline considerations than by anything else. Our costs are fairly predictable and we usually have good contingency plans and everything else worked in. So really it is more a function of wanting to get better visibility and to how the volume trends are going. We have a pretty good sense of what the winter campaign is going to look like. By the time we will report our Q1 numbers, we’ll also – we’ll have the full winter campaign behind us, but we will also have a good indication of the spring campaign which by the way we’re feeling quite good about. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: That helps. And I guess speaking of that topline guidance, I guess, unless I missed it, it sounded like you basically said that attendance or revenues would be flat in the first quarter and then get to kind of high single to low doubles for Q2 through Q4. And if that’s right and we are talking about at the mid-point something I guess 7.5% range, 7% to 8%. I guess it looks like the dot com expectation or assuming that revenue growth in online mirrors or mimics in some way, paid weeks guidance. But it kind of looks like dot com is going to drive a lot of revenue growth based on that initial guidance assumption on the topline. So, A, is that right and I guess, is that to your point it’s early on and that’s the way you are looking at things. Just want to make sure that rationale is the way you are looking at it as well?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. I mean, the dot com business is obviously going to be driving a lot of our value as we go throughout the course of the year in terms of revenue. As I said before, if you follow the guidance we provided on meeting volumes, we are looking in the first two quarters as negative comps in terms of overall attendances and paid weeks, but that goes into positive territory as we get into Q3 and Q4. So, really that’s just a function of the significance of, A, the impact of the Q1 comp on the meetings business and B, some of the executional issues that I mentioned, for example, on the small account network business. Whereas dot com has despite the fact it’s comping the sort of crazy triple-digit growth rates that we experienced last year still or signup volumes so far this quarter are still in excess of where we were prior year benefiting significantly by men as well as growth in our international dot com businesses. And we expect to continue benefiting from that growth a little bit more consistently over the year. So that’s why the dot com pattern looks a little bit more uniform where the meeting business is more digging out a little bit from Q1 and then sort of getting progressively stronger as the year goes on. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: If you look at in the quarterly fluctuations to make sense, I guess what I’m asking is on a full year basis it kind of sounds like you guys are implying with your guidance that the meeting business won’t generate any revenue growth? And maybe currency is a factor in that but is that a misinterpretation because just based on the numbers you gave it sounds like that’s what it is and it’s very possible, I got that wrong, you get a lot of information early on, I just wanted to see if I got that wrong or right?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. I think given the impact to Q1 that’s an accurate statement to make in terms of overall revenue growth over the course of the year. I guess my point is, as I look at the business and its underlying strength the fact that the meeting business will be sort of back-end solid revenue growth as we get into the second half. It’s a mere reflection of sort of where the meeting business really is from a structural point of view and the fact that dot com will be delivering strong growth throughout the year is obviously good news. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: Yeah. That’s perfect. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Greg Badishkanian of Citigroup. Please go ahead. Greg Badishkanian – Citigroup: Great. Thanks. Yeah. So just kind of going along those lines, the year is very heavily backend loaded. So how much of it’s due to tougher compares versus some of the other drivers that you’re going to expect to come in full force in the back half of the year?

David Kirchhoff

Management

It’s really, it’s the tougher compare of Q1 significantly, because again it’s sort of that’s our heaviest environment period and the impact of having fewer enrollments, you feel it over the course of the year although the degree to which you feel it decreases as the year goes on because as you imagine, there’s enrollments that you might have liked to have had would have been a trading throughout the course of the year. So, therefore, their impact declines as you get into lighter quarters. That, plus the fact that couple of the issues we had, for example, not having as many of the stores open as we would have liked, not obviously for the lack of effort but not having as many as we would have liked as well as the issue with the regional network business. The timing of those two things not being there for us in Q1 kind of made it doubly difficult and so it was a combination of a comp but very significantly those two other factors, particularly if you look at the NACO business that had the impact or it did that they requires us to then sort of back out. The good news is, is that because for example the regional At Work business was executional, it also means it is by definition very fixable which gives us a lot of confidence of returning it back to the right kind of trends as we go into Q2 and beyond and then obviously the comparable goes away as we would expect it to in terms of Q1. Greg Badishkanian – Citigroup: Okay. Okay. And then, I know you guys gave out some good revenue guidance for the first quarter and you typically, I know you don’t give out quarterly U.S. guidance, but I’m just thinking because, it is pretty uneven. It’s getting pretty volatile throughout the year and low in the first quarter and kind of backend loaded. So is there any way we should think about margins in the first quarter and EPS around I think $1.13, just so we can model that right?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. My advise on modeling is to listen very closely as you read back to the transcript to what we talked about in terms of the impact, for example, the fact that the gross margin would be picking up a little bit more as we get into the latter half of the year. But really the big story with Q1 is marketing. And again, just to sort of reemphasize the point, if you look at the lot of the incremental marketing spend, which you can now back into given the 750 basis points I shared, 70% of that is coming on investment behind the dot com product. Of that investment, a significant amount of that incremental spend is coming against men, which is a market segment for which we are still building awareness, so the CPAs are relatively higher, as well as doing television and advertising, for example, in Continental Europe, Canada, a couple of other places, again where awareness of Weight Watchers online might be relatively lower, so therefore the CPAs are relatively higher. My point is, is that you kind of have this kind of double effect of relatively higher CPAs on a lot of those incremental marketing dollars then being applied against the Weight Watchers online product and the revenue that you get, for example, in Q1 for a Weight Watchers online signup. I mean, think of it this way. You are looking at average monthly price of like $18. So really the revenue benefit that you get from a signup, if you get them in the mid-point of the quarter, is going to be effectively $28, something like that, you could have CPAs sort of far in excess of that. So what that does is basically then turns -- they’re kind of it turns into a negative contribution if you will in the first quarter, but then as you pass that initial marketing investment, you continue getting revenue benefit over the course of the year which is why the sort of upside down between revenue and marketing then goes away as you’re going to Q2, 3 and 4, so what it is, is just the shape of this given the intensity of the marketing spend behind Weight Watchers Online, it’s really just causing the nature of our quarterly financials to work very different than what you might be used to seeing in prior years. So again my advice from an online perspective is to sort of pay close attention to the relative impact of this marketing being applied against dot com, given that for the first quarter and frankly for the full year about 70% of our incremental marketing investment is going against Weight Watchers Online globally. Greg Badishkanian – Citigroup: Great. Helpful. And just finally, you had made price increases, what do you think the elasticity is there, and next year do you think you have the opportunity to raise prices again on probably not?

David Kirchhoff

Management

I think over time, the elasticity we would expect from a price increase and based on what we have seen in the past for example with Weight Watchers Online, we have not seen long-term negative impacts in terms of raising price on Weight Watchers Online. Now it’s important to note that the Weight Watchers Online is a fairly inexpensive product which I think is one of the reasons that we’re seeing in our portfolio that which is one of the reasons why it has been so successful in gaining traction and its self-help market if you will. In terms of the price increase of Monthly Pass, I would expect if there has been any volume impact and I can’t rule out that it might have had some volume impacts in the first quarter, but if there has been any volume impact that will probably quickly go away based on our past experience and price increases with pay as you go. Greg Badishkanian – Citigroup: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Gary Albanese of Auriga. Please go ahead. Gary Albanese – Auriga: Hi. Good evening, everybody.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Hi, Gary. Gary Albanese – Auriga: Hey, just a follow-up on the last question. You mentioned the marketing is going to be different from what we’ve seen in the past. But does that indicate, is this the kind of expenses we’re going to continue to see seasonally in the future like the first quarter of 2012, 2013, et cetera?

David Kirchhoff

Management

I’m not sure and I’ll tell you why. For example, in spring of this year, we will be advertising Weight Watchers Online from that again, but we did that last year as well. In 2011, we did not have a men’s campaign during winter which we do this year. So that’s truly incremental spend. In the case of the television advertising we’re doing in for example kind of in Europe and Canada and some of those places, we did not have that spend last year, we do this year. What it means is that we have caught up and this just a little bit of strategy on some of our Weight Watcher Online as we’ve been able to continue to very profitably increase penetration of Weight Watcher Online, although we still think it’s underpenetrated versus where it’s ultimate potential is, but we’ve been able to profitably increase penetration by increasing the number of weeks we’re on air, by expanding audiences and by selectively heavy up in terms of media weights and things like that. So, I would expect that as we go forward we will be looking for -- in future years, we’ll be looking for new opportunities to find new ways of getting people into the fold i.e. move ways to invest marketing investment that we would expect would have a profitable CPA. However, I would say that what you’re seeing this year in Q1 given those things, for example, men in Europe for the first time being on-air with two pretty sizeable investments that resulted in much more of a step up than what I would guess you would typically see. And so I think that as -- no promises and I don’t want to get into forecasting 2013, but I can envision right this red hot second the kind of structural shifts in terms of new avenues of marketing Weight Watchers Online to the extent that we’ve had this year in 2012. Gary Albanese – Auriga: Okay. That’s helpful. I appreciate that. Second, what’s the Monthly Pass for the grandfathered customers, do you have a percentage of those customers that are being grandfathered or rough estimate of how large that segment is?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. I mean think of it this way. As you heard Ann referenced, the Monthly Pass subscriber base, now that was global but the Monthly Pass subscriber base at the end of this year was 1.4 million. So, you can estimate how much of that was North American. Virtually all of those folks with probably 95% would be my guess at the end of this year were grandfathered. So, that’s like as of the beginning of January st1. But then now that you have new enrollments coming in, you’d gradually see that shift over which is why the benefit of the price increase and I think it was where you’re going, that’s why the benefit of the price increase from Monthly Pass you really don’t get anything from it in Q1, which is by the way, it’s another reason why Q1 revenues aren’t going up more. You begin to get more revenue as you get into Q2, 3 and 4 because of greater percentage of your North America Monthly Pass mix is on the new price versus the old price. Gary Albanese – Auriga: And the second half falls with the basically the eight month retention you start to see more…

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. And the other thing I’ll say about the eight month retention is that’s mean retention. We do have a relatively long-tail. In order words, we tend to have -- the attrition tends to go down as we get into someone’s average duration. So it’s not a precise, at eight months everybody flips over, but it’s not a bad way of thinking about it. Gary Albanese – Auriga: Okay. And one last quick question, with the estimates -- does that include the expected higher interest from the incremental debt?

David Kirchhoff

Management

No. It does not. The $4.20 to $4.60 is exclusive of the tender offer and the financing associated with the tender offer. Gary Albanese – Auriga: Okay. Thank you.

Ann Sardini

Management

So, the accretion does include it.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. The accretion that we provided at the end of my remarks is obviously net of financing cost. Gary Albanese – Auriga: Okay. Great. Thanks you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Anand Vankawala of Avondale Partners. Please go ahead. Anand Vankawala – Avondale Partners: Hi. Thanks. Good evening. I just wanted to ask a quick question regarding the store conversions. How do we get from 35% to 80% at the end of this year? Can you give us a little bit of an idea of the progression through the quarters?

David Kirchhoff

Management

I think we would probably look to maybe get into a little bit more detail once we get into Q1, I mean, I think one of the things that we’re just working through is just sorting out kind of what we have right now given that January is typically a crazy time in our meeting rooms. But I think as we get into maybe first quarter release we’ll be able to give a little bit more specificity at the manner in which they are going to progress out. That being said, I think that our expectation would be that we would make steady progress over the course of the year. So you can sort of use that as a kind of rough or some before I get a chance to give you kind of more precise estimates. Anand Vankawala – Avondale Partners: Okay. And then just look like, I’m trying to understand with the online business and the active subscribers, I mean, it dropped off quite a bit in Q4 relative to the paid weeks and the online business. I’m having a little bit of trouble just reconciling the difference between those two metrics?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Well, to be clear, paid weeks for Weight Watchers Online in Q4 were up 67%, but if you look at the end of period action subscribers and kind of where we ended the year. So end of period action subscribers were up 50% versus prior year. That’s comping against 38% growth over what we saw Q4 2010 versus Q4 2009. Here is what’s going on. If you look at the end of 2010, those last four or five weeks Weight Watchers online in the U.S. in 2010 was beginning to benefit from the buzz around PointsPlus, as well as of the television campaign in that final week of the year. So that resulted in us having kind of a surge in the actual subscriber base. So if you kind of look compared to that 50% versus 38% and you compare what that provision looks like, end of period action subscribers and one it implies about was using say 2010 as a proxy, it actually is quite strong from our perspective and so view Q4 for Weight Watchers Online is in absolutely excellent quarter. Anand Vankawala – Avondale Partners: Okay. And then, I guess, last just also on the online business, do you have any thoughts on emerging competition in the online space, we’ve seen few online startups that have been popping up, that have been just going up in popularity. So just initiative that you have in place just to combat that?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah, I mean, of course, we’ve been saying online startup pop up actually for the past 10 years, so this is a new per say. The first point I would make in terms of structural advantages we have in this proposition is that first off we have the only online offering is apparently we’re paying for because the other apps I guess the people who wrote and don’t have sufficient confidence and then they think that they worth very much money. But putting that aside, what I would suggest is that the average person who buys Weight Watchers online is not buying an online calorie counter, they’re not buying any particular at per se, they’re buying a proven program with the brand that they trust that they notably -- that they know will work. The fact that it supported by apps is what makes for compelling value proposition. So it’s not the application itself. And a lot of these online apps that we’re now starting to see, for example, there is one type like, smart people has now been around for a bunch of years, it really hasn’t had any impact that we can discern on our business, apps that are now popping up on the iTunes store that are out there, but again we can’t say any discernible impact on our business and I think it’s because of the value proposition between them, it’s pretty different. The other point that I would make though is that, while we have a lot of confidence and again inherent strength and competitive advantage of our brand or program in the fact that we have something that people intrinsically want, we also don’t resting our (inaudible) so literally we come the same universe, looking for any good new technology, any new good idea that we can find no matter who does it whether it has a million downloads or 100 downloads, we look it all of it and we take the best ideas we can get, we aggressively seek to roll it out. The good example of that for example was rolling out the barcode scanner, which sounds like a really simple little application but if the barcode scanner in the context for following Weight Watchers is actually have turned out quite powerful, the barcode scanner in isolation just to show you a calories would be a little bit more beyond. And so from our point of view, what we want to do is sort of take the best of the ideas that are out there but then ramp them into this broader value proposition of this highly compelling behavior modification program known as Weight Watchers. Anand Vankawala – Avondale Partners: And I guess just one quick follow-up to that. How many -- what percent of your users are using the mobile applications?

David Kirchhoff

Management

I don’t have that number off the top of my head, but it’s getting pretty high and the reason I don’t have it off the top of my head is that we have indications on what percent own a smartphone. But it’s a little bit trickier for us to say who is actively using the app versus the website at any given point in time. Anand Vankawala – Avondale Partners: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Chris Ferrara of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: Hey. Thanks for taking the follow-up, guys.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: Dave, can you just give a little bit of a view, I guess what the signup growth in the meeting business might have been in Q4 and I guess how that would look into Q1? And then just give a little color on why that would change, what if the install base this year versus last year trend similarly because of the big Q1? Why would you have an opportunity to kind of change that trend as you get to the spring diet season, I guess it would be the different dynamic there. But the more important part is, can you talk a little bit about what the signup growth was in Q4 and what it trended like in the meeting business and make, I guess, in first quarter so far?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. Sure. I’ll be happy too. We were experiencing enrollment growth up to the point of the soft launch of PointsPlus and we’re sort of copying that. What happened at the soft launch which is right after Thanksgiving in 2010, was this sort of somewhat bizarre experience, it’s almost like getting snow in Bermuda in which we saw a huge number of people enrolling, relatively speaking enrolling in the meeting business in November, late November of 2010 through December. So obviously, while that was happening, we would never expect to see that before or after, it was just the uniqueness of all the buzz around PointsPlus and the PR, and everything else from this big moment of change, obviously, therefore during late November and December, enrollments were running behind from where they were in prior, but we expected that and we’ve been guiding to that and giving indications of that both before and after the fact, so that wasn’t any particular surprise. And then if you look at the enrollment growth that we continue to see in Q1 of 2011 versus prior, there were some pretty impressive very significantly into sort of high double-digit numbers for a number of weeks versus 2010, which admittedly was relatively weaker quarter, but they were also sort of substantially above 2009 by kind of leaps and bounds. What we saw last year, if you go back and look for some of the old scripts, was that relative enrollment growth began to moderate as we got into Q2, Q3 and to sort of more levels that we would associate with kind of just generally good and strong vibrant brand. And so, if we reflect upon that pattern of enrollments that we saw in 2011 and we look at where we are right now and the things we have coming up, it’s what we used to form the basis of our forecast of the volume trends beginning to moderate from an enrollment perspective as we got into Q2, Q3 going into Q4. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: And I guess, in Q2 ‘12, I mean, do you have any -- can you talk about what the enrollment trends have looked like so far if you didn’t say that already?

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah. I mentioned a little bit in the script and I’d be happy to repeat it a little bit to emphasize the point. Again, if you look at sort of what you would normally expect from a seasonal pattern and then you look at 2011. The degree of signups or enrollments coming in Q1 2011 was anomalous compared to a normal seasonal pattern if you index Q1 versus Q2, Q3 and Q4, and what we had seen virtually in any prior year and that’s the effect of a PointPlus launch. If you look at kind of the enrollment levels we’re seeing right now. When I’m looking at weekly enrollments coming in, I’m comparing it both to where we were in 2011, in which case we are behind, as I have referenced, but I’m also comparing enrolment levels to where we were in both 2010 and 2009. 2009, by the way being an innovation year when we rolled out momentum, in both of those years, 2012 enrolment levels are running comfortably ahead of both 2010 and 2009, which I use as another good sort of touch point to demonstrate to me that I think where we are seeing overall enrolment levels in NACO, therefore it feels appropriate for where we should be, particularly in the non-At Work part of our business. Chris Ferrara – Bank of America: Got it. Thanks.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Yeah.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions. Please go ahead.

David Kirchhoff

Management

Okay. Thank you for joining us today, and I look forward to speaking with you again at our next quarterly earnings release.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference call has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.