Matthew E Rubel: I’m looking at it more conservatively given the general market conditions, and also to make sure that all of our significant assumptions about Collective Brands are intact. The base premise of the acquisition and the synergies that we see there, are there.

John Shanley: Are you more conservative on the Payless operation or the wholesale brand component of the company?

Matthew E Rubel: I’m taking the whole thing based on how the whole market place is right now.

John Shanley: Looking at the upcoming quarters, you’re up against some tough comparisons. Are you feeling optimistic that the sales results in the Payless division can exceed those strong numbers from the year ago period?

Matthew E Rubel: We feel good about this strategy and feel we’ve got the right merchandise and the right set-up to get the business growing.

Jeffrey Stein (KeyBank Capital): On the purchase accounting adjustments, is this going to be a one-time hit to results next year or do they amortize over a period of time?

Ullrich E Porzig: Some of them will carry on for several years to a decreasing degree.

Jeffrey Stein: On the sandal business, what impact would you anticipate on the gross margin in the quarter?

Matthew E Rubel: It’s fairly material in terms of the excess markdowns that we both took and realized them accrued for in the quarter.

David Mann (Johnson Rice): In terms of your initial thoughts when you agreed to purchase Stride Rite, how did the final debt cost compare to your initial assumption?

Matthew E Rubel: We had three different scenarios. There was a scenario A which came off the table, though that one might have been a little bit lower cost financing but we took that off the table. Of the financing, we ended up slightly lower to about where we thought we would be.

David Mann: Does that mean that the turmoil in the debt market didn’t have much impact on your position?

Matthew E Rubel: It had some personal impact, but no long term lasting business impact.

Jonathan Braatz (Kansas City Capital): What type of levels of cap-ex would you anticipate combined with the Stride Rite acquisition?

Ullrich E Porzig: Some of them will decrease next year because of our supply chain initiative.

Jonathan Braatz: You acquired Stride Rite for the top line, improving the growth aspect of the company, and leveraging the brands. Do you want to give us a number or an expectation of what you think you can do with this top line?

Matthew E Rubel: I will be a little more clarified about that at the end of the first quarter of next year. We’re here with the Stride Rite team for 3 days to get onto a very specific strategic planning process which has financials with it.

Rob Wilson (Tiburon Research Group): Can you have success financially without success in the sandals business?

Matthew E Rubel: Yes and what we have to do is build out these brands across all classifications. One of the reasons we focus on the casual business in the third quarter is because historically it was a profitable business for Payless and Payless didn’t even its businesses out, so we have teams that we have put on how to manage each classification by quarter, by zone.

Our success in both Airwalk and American Eagle as well as Champion is showing that our productivity per five-foot section in these brands is much higher than our private brands and so as we move to that 70% to 80% ratio, you can see more consistency as well as continued leverage.