Geoffery E. Merszei: You're correct. We're a little bit out of the range. In the past what we've said was that we regularly see quite a bit of movement in that category. What we said, for planning purposes, was that you should use a level of about $150 million to $200 million per quarter, which is a reasonable estimate. Last year, we were above that range because we had some unique items. We had the $40 million that was franchise tax accruals. We also had a special performance-based employee bonus that brought it up to a level of about $257 million. This quarter, we had lower accruals for performance-based compensation and for our employee stock purchase plan because of the lower level of the stock price. We also had some benefit coming from an excellent performance from our insurance operation as well as some hedging gains as you have pointed out.

P.J. Juvekar (Citi): Under your portfolio optimization plan, is there anything that you want to divest, particularly in specialties?

Andrew Liveris: We have a business portfolio optimization group for a reason, which is the commoditization of certain businesses and assets including the performance businesses. That obviously speaks to what we've done in the last several years, which is 92 factories shut down, 42 sites exited and 38 businesses sold. You'd expect us to continue to prune from the bottom as these new feedstock hydrocarbon commodity realities become alive. We're going to get our joint venture formed. Once that joint venture forms, that creates an interesting future possibility at home for some of these pseudo-commodities and we don't dismiss the Saudi ARAMCO opportunity. You can expect the company's asset-light strategy to keep coming to life in terms of how we become number one in the world in the area of competitiveness especially given the new input costs.

Peter Butler (Glen Hill Investments): Is it correct that you are expanding the scope of the Kuwait joint venture in your negotiations?

Andrew Liveris: The opportunities to do more are clearly top of mind for both of us. We do have job one, which is close to be announced, as promised in our early announcements and both of us are very committed to doing that. The due diligence is working perfectly but your notion of doing more will be top of mind and there is some good logical fits that can occur. Creating this powerhouse of a joint venture presents this unbelievable opportunity to marry a state-owned feedstock-rich company that has global expansion in its sites with a petrochemical franchise like ours.

Peter Butler (Glen Hill Investments): Your statement in the guidance for Q2 is puzzling especially given the background that your Q4 earnings were down and Q1 was a little lower and yet you expect the Q2 to be another great quarter. Does your company have a new standard for earnings now and the ambition is to have a small decline?

Geoffery E. Merszei: These comments are in the context of the environment that we were working. When you face increased hydrocarbon energy costs in one quarter, it equals a higher cost, which is closely equal to entire of the prior year and then ending up with these type of results with an economy that is highly cautionary in the United States, in that context, we have done extremely well.

Andrew Liveris: The strategic drive is to create an earnings-ridge and not a decline to a trough. We've made statements that we would earn north of $3 at the next trough. I'm the last to keep wanting to see a decline on a year-on-year or sequential. Given our strategic moves paying off already through the portfolio moves we've made, inclusive of our joint ventures, we have arrested the decline and despite these headwinds, we still have very good cash flows and earnings power. This is because of our strategy working and we've committed ourselves to changing our earnings profile. That's our strategy. The day will arrive when that profile is transformed and we will start talking about year-on-year earnings inclines and quarter inclines, which is what this management team is driven to do.

Scott Burk (Bear Stearns): There is significant cost increases year-over-year, but what does that look like sequentially?

Kathleen C. Fothergill: Sequentially, it was about $500 million.

Scott Burk (Bear Stearns): How much did you spend on share buyback in the first quarter?

Geoffery E. Merszei : We spent about $410 million.

Mike Judd (Greenwich Consultants): You have some new business in your polycarbonate resin business. Do you have detail as to how much of that business is durable versus the non-durable type applications?

Andrew Liveris: Polycarbonate is destined for our new joint venture with the Kuwaitis. It will go in there and one of the reasons we have done that is because of the position our company has globally. We are number five in the world and building ourselves to the top one or two from the position we are in needs some big stock back integration, which we can get with the our new partnership. The key raw materials there relate to aromatics and that's very key in our Kuwait partnership.

Mike Judd (Greenwich Consultants): What is Dow's position globally in terms of pounds?

Andrew Liveris: In terms of our position though, we do have two excellent joint ventures; one in Japan and another in Korea. It’s with Sumitomo and LG respectively. One of these joint ventures is the star of the shop. Both of them perform very well and most of their end-use markets are what the Asian market is all about, which is optical media. If you take those two joint ventures, which you don't see consolidated in our top line because they are joint ventures, and if you add our share of those joint ventures in our total Polycarbonate business, you will see much more balance between optical media and durables. But if you take the pure Dow business, which is the U.S. and Europe, it's more centered around durables.

Kevin McCarthy (Banc of America Securities): Can you provide an update on your Styrenics joint venture with Chevron?

Andrew Liveris: Expect the new joint venture Americas Styrenics to begin operations very shortly, probably next month. Once that joint venture launches, we'll look at its envelope and begin to expect the synergies the two parents eagerly want to get. The first is on the downstream, which is polystyrene, which is mostly our contributions and the second is the upstream, which is styrene. The new joint venture management and the new joint venture Board will be intensely focused on making that the number one business in the Americans. The focus from the two shareholders remains intense on putting that company together for improving profitability and making that business a growth business.

Frank Mitsch (BB&T Capital Markets): Your commentary regarding the TIC JV is helpful. However, what are you going to do with the cash and is the timing of that announcement predicated on the closing of the transaction?

Andrew Liveris: The hurdle that has to be overcome with any M&A is share buyback. We understand accretion is instant on share buyback and takes time on an acquisition. But we've also said the types of properties we're looking at are basically for growth. Cost synergies play a role in making affordability work. We want to grow and we're putting in place a new earnings profile. Focusing on the businesses and markets that we've talked about, our market-facing units and our performance businesses, means that we’re looking at clean buys or as close to clean buy as we can get. The value proposition has to be right. As a consequence of that, the discipline has to stay intact.