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Earnings Calls: 
The Children’s Place Retail Stores Fourth Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Rozalina Destanova
123jump.com
Last Update: 4:19 AM EDT March 24 2008

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Consolidated net sales increased 4% to $670.9 million compared to $645.2 million for the fourteen-weeks ended February 3, 2007. Consistent with its plans to exit the DSNA business and in connection with the review of its expense structure, the company is implementing a workforce reduction to enhance profitability. The company continues to make progress related to its inventory investment strategy.


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John Roberts (Buckingham Research): Are the $80.3 million asset charge and the 50 to $100 million in cost to exit the Disney business both not non-cash?

Sue Riley: Not exactly. First, the Company took an impairment charge one pertaining to exiting the Disney Store and the other pertaining to our decision not to move forward with Jill Emerson. Those are non-cash charges at this point in time. That is basically taking assets that are on the balance sheet and recognizing that they are not going to be generating cash flows into the future or that they are not going to be utilized as intended and writing them down. That is a non-cash charge. Looking to 2008, what we did say is that there could be a cash charge or cash expenditure from the Children''s Place into the Hoop or elsewhere pertaining to the exit of Disney and again that is all documented in the 10K. I just want to clarify the distinction between those two amounts. One is not cash; it is writing down asset value that is on the balance sheet and then the other would in fact be a cash outflow from Children''s Place.

John Roberts (Buckingham Research): Could you run through the 107 million expenses and say what in there one time in nature was?

Sue Riley: The strategic alternatives start with 107 million. You have strategic alternatives of 2.2 million, stock option investigation and related expenses are 10.3 million, pretax, incremental audit fees are 1.2 million and then we have a much larger severance number on the full year and that is because we have a CEO severance that was built in there in the third quarter so that is almost $5 million, which gets us to about 88.5 for the normalized shared services for the year.

John Roberts (Buckingham Research): Looking forward to using that 88.5 million as a base, is that the piece that you believe you can reduce by an additional 12%?

Sue Riley: Yes.

Margaret Shapiro (Retail Tracker): Can you walk us through your thought process today as to what is the right number of stores Children''s Place should have across the country outlets versus front line stores and how many of the stores today have been touched and put into the new prototype and are you considering as you look to reduce the cost of these new prototypes as you open stores and renovate, are you considering a new prototype as well?

Chuck Crovitz: I do not think we have a great visibility to the total store count yet. We need to go back and look at that; we do have a division between our Technicolor store and our Applemaple which is about 40/60 overall. We are looking to building more Technicolor that is our fore into the future but mostly what we are doing is valuing engineering on that format and also doing some refurbishment on some of the other stores; but again value engineering some of those materials as well.

Margaret Shapiro (Retail Tracker): Have you looked at the way the store lays out and the fixturing and even things like that as far as the cost in the store as ways to possible reengineer the stores?

Jill Kronenberg: That is one thing we talk about a lot always looking to find better ways to present the merchandise; but much of our focus right now is on value engineering the new prototype. Once we get that to a place where we are comfortable, then we can start looking at any tweaks we think we might have to do to better present things. We are comfortable right now with Technicolor. We are happy right now with the set up of the stores and the way the configuration with the tables and the fixtures.

Chuck Crovitz: I do think that Jill, me and Richard have done a great job in terms of focusing and being more disciplined to the assortment strategy of moving out of third quarter which is giving this store much cleaner and a much more focused look. I think it is part of the way we are going after the reduction of inventories also reduction in style counts and SKUs and so forth. This is helping our store to be cleaned up.

Margaret Shapiro (Retail Tracker): After you exit the Disney business, will you report that as a discontinued operation and restate last year or how will that work?

Sue Riley: It will be reported as a discon and we will in fact restate last year for the discontinued operation.

Margaret Shapiro (Retail Tracker): Would that be done shortly after your conclude your negotiation with the Walt Disney Company you would re-file or when would we get the timing on the restatement?

Chuck Crovitz: It would be coincident with the filing of our 10K in the first quarter.

Margaret Shapiro (Retail Tracker): Are you expecting a higher tax rate in 2008 on the repatriation of some of the funds?

Sue Riley: That is correct. Even though we repatriated toward the end of the fourth quarter of 2007, we can no longer say that our cash is permanently invested abroad. We will be incurring a higher tax rate in 2008 and beyond as a result.

Kimberly Greenberger (Citigroup): Can you give any comment on the active dialogue that the board has with Ezra?

Chuck Crovitz: Ezra is an active member of our board and he is our largest shareholder, is instrumental in building the business, and has a lot of great insight into this business and we value the input he continues to work actively on the board. It involves major decisions. I do not think that much has changed in that regard.

Vick Camar (Sintos Partners): Does your CapEx guidance for the year include the savings from value engineering or is that something in the future?
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