Patrick D. Campbell: It is hard to look at first quarter being 21.5. Our objective of 24.5 - 25.5 is a realistic one. The best way to think about that business is to assume that the first quarter would be indicative of where the year will run.
Shannon O''Callaghan (Lehman Brothers): Health Care is coming in better. Where are the other big offsets given?
Patrick D. Campbell: Industrial is good. Our margin expectation for the year is 22.5 to 23.5. They are consistent, we can continue to perform at the company level where we say we are and then continue to bring D&G down business is somewhat like we ran here in the first quarter.
Scott Davis (Morgan Stanley): The rate of change in Display and Graphics was negative, but it was a surprise that Health Care and Electro and Communications came in strong. Are there any timing issues that may have mix or some timing issues that may have benefited margins in the quarter?
Patrick D. Campbell: There is nothing in either segment that is unusual that you should take away that there was a common artificial impact on either one of those businesses. E&C just continues to perform well. They have got a few businesses that are just absolutely doing gangbusters now. They are at higher margins than what their average is, so that continues to hold them up and Health Care across the board is performing well, both geographically across all business segments.
George W. Buckley: We are going to take the old traditional core of 3M and invest it and make sure it remained strong; it became a base from which to build the rest of the growth platform. We have seen wonderful performance, improved performance from Abrasives, from the electrical markets division which is in the E&C segment. We are seeing it in industrial tapes. We are seeing an improvement and resurgence in medical and the automotive aftermarket. One of the businesses we were struggling with terribly, which was the personal care division which is the division that makes diaper tapes, is another business which is turning around. There is no reason at this moment in time for us to believe unless end market conditions worsen dramatically that we can not see continue to either improvements or at least steady performance from those businesses.
Scott Davis (Morgan Stanley): On Aearo are there cost synergies, any strategic benefits above and beyond what you talked about on the last conference call?
Patrick D. Campbell: Businesses continue to perform even above our short term expectations.Everything thus far has been good. The integration planning has been outstanding with them. I can not say enough about the relationship that we have had with the organization thus far. I would rate it better than we thought when we first looked at it.
George W. Buckley: When we do the modeling of the businesses we tend to be the serious critics of synergies both in the cost area, but in particular in the sales area. In over many years of experience of these sorts of things, it is a place where company seems to consistently make mistakes. What seems to be transpiring though in Aearo because they are relatively simpler products and they are so familiar and close to the OYGS core that we have had many years. There is a high level comfort and being able to get those Aearo products into the international markets and drive sales in this.
Jeffrey Sprague (Citigroup): Could you give your all in organic read on Europe in the quarter ex-currency, ex-deals?
Patrick D. Campbell: The organic in Europe for the quarter is 1.7%, which is slower growth rate for them versus last year''s first quarter and from the trend standpoint. Easter does affect them in more than Mediterranean part of the Europe. We do expect second quarter will be better. I did not want to get into excuse game but I still feel good about Europe. We have a eyes wide open in Europe to make sure that we do not see a slowing trend there but we still feel good about the programs that we have in Europe, the Central East Europe, Africa and Mid East continue to grow at double-digit rates.
Jeffrey Sprague (Citigroup): Optical has gone commodity. Can you give color on the attachment rates and where you are staying with the mix and how the composition is shaking out?
George W. Buckley: It is a four segment business. It is the LCD TVs, the handhelds, the notebooks and monitors and essentially this particular story is about LCD TVs. The handheld, attachment rates, monitor and notebook CR monitors, while they jump around have largely remained okay. It is at least stable. There has not been the same intense pricing pressure in those markets simply because the value proposition for somebody is high brightness films, it is strong because it held battery life. The whole game is essentially down for the LCD TV market. The market in many respects is still trying to find bottom, it is trying to find that where this ball is is, the bill of material that he can get to with an acceptable performance from a set for a customer. What might happen is once the bottom is found at the lower end of the market, if you think about it as a sort of good, better, best, once the bottom of the pricing is the lower end of the market, the top end of the market will be found and there is going to be re-contenting. There are some positives in the energy area for example, 3Ms films can tuck in the small television. A third of the energy usage in the bigger television more, but in the end that maybe not be replaceable. It will sell you more televisions. But you might get the customers to make choices left and right on a sort of low energy versus a high energy set. What we are also doing is putting a sampling of lot of inexpensive but still relative high performing diffusive the films into the markets. We can supply that bottom end of the market and get some more leverage there. I think that still during the 2008 in summary, we are going to see more turbulence in that market as the set manufacturers in particular scramble for share and they are prepared for digital switch over and I do not know if it is fully commoditized yet I suspect not, but I think this first bumpers totally will be in the worst bump.
Jeffrey Sprague (Citigroup): What your dental growth was in the quarter?
George W. Buckley: Dental growth in dollar terms is north of 10% on a local basis mid single digits.
Patrick D. Campbell: Dental is greater than double-digit, the orthodontic business was stronger there at almost 25% growth in the orthodontic business part of that due to an acquisition we had. Combined oral care on an ex-currency basis was around 7.
David Begleiter (Deutsche Bank): Good performance in the industrial, but no operating leverage margins fell. Can you comment to that?
George W. Buckley: Having a low 20''s margin in a mainstream industrial business is a good performance. Our objective in that business is not to grow margins, as much as get to the top line growing. They can keep the top line growing the way they have, keep margins the way they are I would be happy with that model. You have heard from HC Shin, in the past that he has got a lot of focus on operational excellence to continue to drive productivity to get cost out reinvest back into the businesses. One of the things that does hurt industry from margin standpoint is we have made some acquisitions in that space that have not been necessarily at the same margin level that some of our core businesses have so it takes a while to build those profit rates up. I am not at all concerned with the level of margins within the industrial.
David Begleiter (Deutsche Bank): You mentioned optical films being a good growth business. Referring to a new revised space not from last year’s base, correct?
George W. Buckley: Correct.
|