Key questions and answers from the second quarter earnings call conducted by Dollar Financial Corp. (DLLR: chart) on January 31, 2008.

John Hecht (JMP Securities): Can you tell us what the organic state of the US payday lending environment is?
Jeff Weiss: We have gotten that back to where it was prior to the change. Now there are these pricing differences there, so yield is not quite as high as it was. The aggregate dollar revenue was not as high as it was.

John Hecht (JMP Securities): What happens in the UK and Canada from a tax refund perspective and how does it affect volumes in the near term?

Don Gayhardt: In the UK, there is no tax season in the UK. In Canada, there is a tax refund season which is going up currently. In the US, there was a delay in IRS issuance because of some complication of calculating eight alternative minimum tax.

The impact of that seasonality has declined. There has been some moderate decline in portfolio size in the US, less so in Canada because people get their refund checks and pay down their loans, a modest up tick in check cashing fees although that has smoothed out quite a bit as more and more merchants are offering deals if you bring in your tax check.

John Rowan (Sidoti & Company): What effects do you think you will see from this Federal Stimulus Package if these rebate checks go out?

Jeff Weiss: Depending on what the permutations of the program is and how the checks are mailed, we expect to see the an increase in check cashing fees and people using the proceed of their rebate to pay down debt.

John Rowan (Sidoti & Company): What were the new hedges that you were putting on?

Jeff Weiss: We have hedges for the quarter that we are in now, our fiscal third quarter and the fourth quarter. We bought them when the rates were very high in terms of the weakness of the US dollar. We typically hedge out at least six months and generally no further than a year that the cost just gets really prohibitive to go out much that long.

Bob Napoli (Piper Jaffray): Are you seeing some of the effects from the fallout in the housing market in Florida and is that going to set you back at all as far as attaining profitability in the US?

Jeff Weiss: Florida seems to be fine particularly since the preponderance of the stores we have in Florida, the overwhelming majority on the East Coast and while there was an enormous speculative room in the panhandle in Western Florida and particularly in Miami, our stores are cited in areas that were already established residential and business neighborhoods.

There is a labor force that flocked to Florida and became fully employed in Florida because of the construction boom and we have not seen any full work so far. What would happen is we would see a modest decline in the face amount of checks because employers would not have to tick so vigorously for labor, it was pro-employment in higher paying construction jobs and a similar small decline in the number of checked cash over time.

Bob Napoli (Piper Jaffray): On acquisitions, are you working on a number of smaller deals in various markets at this point?

Jeff Weiss: The acquisition pipeline is quite full. I hope the exit of more or less of private equity from the sector enabled strategic buyers to look at possibilities much more realistically.

Richard Shane (Jefferies & Co.): What is your outlook by geography?

Jeff Weiss: Canada has had a booming economy particularly in the Western part of Canada because of the commodity, minerals, oil, gas and it is hard to see that that boom will sustain itself over the next indefinite period of time. We have yet to see a discernable differential in our Canadian business as a consequence of any economic slowing.

In the UK, you still have a very strong market although there has been a similar recorded dislocation in UK as housing prices have stopped increasing versus the report of decline in US housing prices, but you still have a very significant influx of people into the labor force particularly in the service sector as Don mentioned in the Olympics.

And in Canada, UK, and the US, fewer than 23% of our customers are homeowners, so they really are not afflicted by the sub prime mortgage blues. So the UK economy is more or less steady state although again, London which has enormous preponderance of the population in the UK and we are very strong and seeing a very strong surge in new potential customers whereas these people flock to the jobs created by the Olympics.

Richard Shane (Jefferies & Co.): Do you know on a household basis what your customer’s average tax refund is?

Jeff Weiss: We cash tax refund checks somewhere in the $1800.00 to $2100.00 range in the US.