As you know, this is a new facility that we entered into in April of this year. It has no financial covenants provided our total available liquidity remains above $37.5 million. In addition to our strong balance sheet, we generate more than enough cash to run the business. In addition, we are committed to our very conservative approach to discretionary cash expenditures like capital for instance. We expect spending to be less than $60 million, a reduction of more than 50% versus this year in 2009.

In addition, while we clearly believe that our stock is of value right now, we are taking a very conservative approach to buybacks. As you know, we did not repurchase any stock in the third quarter. We also took a very conservative approach to our inventory receipt plan for spring 2009. In fact, we bought spring receipts to the current trend of the business.

Furthermore, we do not have to make product commitments for the second half of 2009 until early February and this will give us the opportunity to read the fourth quarter selling period and more importantly have better insight into the mindset of consumers before we commit. This conservative receipt plan conserves cash and positions us for better margin performance as we move from the fourth quarter of 2008 into 2009.

Finally, we have been very aggressive with our cost reduction initiatives and we’ve just ramped up our efforts even further to drive significantly more savings than previously planned. So aside from the critical activities surrounding strengthening our brands which Kay discussed earlier, we are being extremely aggressive in managing all controllable elements of the business.

Turning now to our third quarter results, starting with sales. Net sales declined 12.3% versus year ago to $527 million reflecting our overall comp decline of 19.4%. By division, net sales at Ann Taylor declined 25% to $159.5 million in line with its comp performance. At Loft, net sales declined 11% to $263 million on a comp store decline of 15.4%. Gross margin for the quarter declined 730 basis points to 48.8% versus 56.1% last year. This performance primarily reflected the impact of the soft top line and aggressive promotional activity to clear through inventory.

Total inventory for the quarter declined 10% versus year ago, reflecting a total in-store inventory decline of 13% partially offset by in-transit inventory that was essentially even with year ago. As we mentioned previously, this in-transit inventory will put pressure on Q4 gross margin as we bought to a much better comp than we now anticipate.

Our SG&A for the quarter was down 4% or approximately $12 million to $258 million. This improvement reflected lower store occupancy and payroll costs at existing stores, restructuring program savings and tight management of expenses, as well as reduced performance based compensation expense. Partially offsetting these benefits were operating costs associated with new stores and planned investments supporting the launch of Loft Outlet.

We are pleased that as expected, we are seeing the benefits of our restructuring initiatives in our financial results and in fact, savings are now trending ahead of our original expectations. In terms of restructuring details for the quarter, pretax charges totaled $19.9 million. On an after tax basis, charges totaled $13.2 million or $0.24 per diluted share. In the third quarter last year, we incurred $1.3 million in pretax restructuring costs which amounted to $800,000 on an after tax basis or approximately $0.01 per diluted share.

Excluding these restructuring costs, operating income in the quarter was approximately breakeven compared with $67.9 million last year. Net income on the same basis was also approximately breakeven compared with the net income of $41.5 million or $0.67 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2007. Weighted average diluted shares outstanding for the quarter declined 8.6% to 56.3 million shares versus 61.5 million shares in the third quarter of last year.

Our effective tax rate was 33.6% for the quarter versus 39.5% last year. Depreciation and amortization in the third quarter totaled about $33 million versus $30 million last year. Capital expenditures for the third quarter were down 45% versus year ago to $28 million versus $51 million in the third quarter of last year. Our total store square footage at the end of the third quarter totaled approximately 5.7 million square feet, a 5.2% increase versus the 5.4 million square feet at the end of the third quarter 2007.

During the third quarter, we opened 15 new stores and closed 8 ending the quarter with 966 stores. The Loft division opened 8 stores and closed 7. Ann Taylor Factory opened 5 new stores and Loft Outlet opened 2 new stores. We did not open any Ann Taylor stores and closed 1 during the quarter.

Turning now to our strategic restructuring program, as you know a couple of weeks ago we announced the expansion and acceleration of our existing three year restructuring program, which is now expected to generate ongoing annualized savings of $80 to $90 million, up from our previous expectations for $50 million in savings. We expect to generate $35 million of these savings in fiscal 2008 or $10 to $15 million more than our previous expectations for $20 to $25 million. This increase in expected savings for this year reflects the benefit in 2008 of approximately $6 million from our workforce reduction recently announced, as well as additional savings from initiatives in our stores and in the procurement area. Costs associated with the overall program are now expected to be in the range of $65 to $70 million over the three-year period. These costs include the $40 to $45 million originally anticipated under the January program plus incremental costs of approximately $12 million associated with the workforce reduction announced on November 6th, as well as charges totaling approximately $12 million related to the additional non-cash write down of assets associated with our original store closure plan. And we expect to incur approximately $30 million of these costs in fiscal 2008.

You will recall the key element of our restructuring program involves optimizing our store portfolio. For 2008, we plan to close about 60 stores under the program with 33 Ann Taylor stores closing and 27 Loft stores closing. To date, we’ve closed 26 stores, 9 of which were Ann Taylor stores and 17 of which were Loft stores. And we expect to close the remaining 34 stores during the fourth quarter with a majority of these stores closing at the very end of the fiscal year.

Turning to the P&L impact of our restructuring for the third quarter, we incurred approximately $19.9 million in pretax restructuring costs comprised of $12.2 million in cash charges primarily related to severance associated with the company’s organizational streamlining that we announced earlier this month, and $7.7 million in non-cash charges related to the additional write down of assets associated with our planned store closures.

In the third quarter of last year we incurred $1.3 million in cash charges related to consulting services to support the launch of the program. For the first nine months of 2008, total pretax restructuring program costs totaled $26.8 million in 2008 versus $2.2 million in 2007.

Moving on now to our viewpoint on the balance of the year, while we’re not providing specific EPS guidance I do want to share with you how we are currently thinking about the fourth quarter and the full year. Starting with the top line, we are planning for comps to continue to be under the pressure we experienced in October and into early November, specifically in the down 25% range overall. While we’re hopeful the trends will pick up, we’re not counting on it.

Since we bought inventory to a mid-single digit comp decline, this much softer top line expectation along with a very competitive and promotional environment, and our focus on ending the year in a healthy inventory position, will put significant pressure on gross margin as it did in the third quarter. We expect SG&A to continue to show improvement, although on a rate basis it will be under significant pressure.

And finally, we expect to end the year with cash in the range of $75 to $100 million. And with that, I’ll turn it back to Kay.

Katherine Lawther Krill

Thanks Mike. Before we go to your questions, I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. First and most importantly, our Company is financially strong. We have plenty of liquidity including a solid cash position and access to an additional $250 million committed revolver that is available to us through April 2013. I am highly confident that we will successfully manage through this environment.