Key questions and answers from the third quarter earnings call conducted by Dollar Financial Corp. (DLLR: chart) on May 5, 2008.

Dennis Telzrow (Stephens Inc.): It looked like the interest cost was a little bit higher sequentially, but the total debt did not change. Can you comment on that?

Randy Underwood: Earlier in the year we had a lot of cash available for investment from the $200 million of convertible securities offering that we had and we placed those proceeds in T-bills and gained some interest income earlier in the year from that investment as we worked that down by putting it to work in the Midwest and the southeast Florida acquisitions, we have less interest income to net against our interest expense.

Robert Napoli (Piper Jaffray): Would you expect the tax rate for next year to be more towards the 38% range or with the US profitable for a full year on a mix of earnings?

Randy Underwood: Expect it to be probably in 30% on the low, maybe 39% on the high, just depending on the mix of how the economy’s ultimately earned and various countries that we do business in and related to state taxing jurisdictions as well.

Robert Napoli (Piper Jaffray): On the expense side, are you spending more on the collection side?

Jeffrey Weiss: We had quite a little bit of new store development expenses from the first, second and the third quarter. We had the integration of the acquisitions that we did, particularly the one in Florida, so we had some incremental training costs and transition cost in it.

We also had a number of smaller acquisitions around the globe that we integrated into the business in Canada and the UK that likewise had incremental training costs and new systems put in, those types of things.

Robert Napoli (Piper Jaffray): Given the conservative outlook on the underwriting side, are you still expecting solid double-digit revenue growth?

Jeffrey Weiss: Our stance as a company is not to chase top line at the expense of proven credit metrics and depending on what we see in the economy’s, that will guide us in how aggressively we seek to grow revenue.

Robert Napoli (Piper Jaffray): On the Canadian legislation, given that 52% of your revenue was out of Ontario, can you give an update on that province in particular?

Donald Gayhardt: It is a poll interest system, so the same government there, which is the liberal party government. There is some amount of the talent, does not have rates in it, but that’s those sort of loan structures etc.

We have got a trade association there and the member company’s in the association. We are an active participant in making our views about legislation, regulation heard in the appropriate places and the way the processes have been run up there it has been very sort of open and inviting of comment and we would expect to see the same kind of thing unfold in Ontario.

Henry Coffey (Ferris, Baker Watts, Inc.): Has the suicide rate of the competitors increased yet?

Donald Gayhardt: It is clearly going to change the environment. We look at a place like Manitoba where like you said a lot of the company’s are charging above the rate. We think of multiple products, multiple services and a brand name and a store in every town with more than 50,000 people in Canada.

Henry Coffey (Ferris, Baker Watts, Inc.): On your pawn operation in the UK, how substantial is that relative to your overall UK operation?

Jeffrey Weiss: We had about 4 million pounds of revenue, so it’s a pretty good-sized piece of business for that particular business unit.

Donald Gayhardt: It’s jewelry only and the jewelry is gold, silver, diamond. Our redemption rates are very strong; it’s consistent with the industry average. We only retail currently in about a half a dozen locations.

That’s essentially marketing as opposed to a profit and it’s to alert folks that we are in business. We have become, we believe, the third largest pawn operator in the UK with our very narrow focus.

Richard Shane (Jefferies & Co.): In context to Manitoba, but where does your average ticket size compared to what you think your borrowers will be allowed to take given the income test?