Well, to have declined 14 basis points, it couldn’t have been.

J. Michael Schlotman

Right.

Edward Kelly - Credit Suisse

Okay. Thank you.

David B. Dillon

Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Karen Short representing FBR Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Karen Short - FBR Capital Markets

Hey, everyone, good quarter. Sorry, not to beat a dead horse here but just on your guidance, so I had to paraphrase, it looks like you obviously maintain your guidance for the year on sales and earnings, your sales are currently still in the 3 to 4 -- well, they are still at the 3.1% range but you definitely sound more cautious. I guess the only thing that I can gather that would have changed since your prior guidance is really your diesel expectations or is there something else?

David B. Dillon

Well, let me take you through a little bit of the thinking. I’m not more cautious when it comes to thinking about the strength of our business. I’m actually feeling pretty good about where we are on sales and where the sales can be and the organization’s work there, so first of all, I take that as a really confident statement on my part. But when we look at the earnings, we looked at our own internal forecasts, that’s one of the reasons we told you that our first quarter was only slightly better than our own internal forecasts and plans. We thought that was important. We had some tailwind items in the quarter that we do not expect to continue later in the year and we think they are important enough that you shouldn’t get so bullish based on the earnings in the first quarter to extrapolate that out for the rest of the year, and just to give you some of those examples -- diesel fuel, you already commented on that you saw that, but look at retail fuel margins. We talked specifically about that and in the second or third quarter, retail fuel margins will be less this year by quite a little bit than they were last year, in our opinion.

Commodity costs, we think that there will be some swing back in those that take some of the tailwind out of the first quarter into the remainder of the year. And then on the economy and the customer uncertainty, we see that actually as continuing through the year. I don’t see that getting worse. I’m not sure I see it getting better. We don’t see any particular signs of it getting better but that is sort of steady as it goes. And then of course, LIFO, which we’ve already talked about.

W. Rodney McMullen

Certainly on the economy we are seeing things stabilize and in a few areas seeing a little bit better but not much. When we say a little, I mean, it really is a little.

J. Michael Schlotman

Karen, I think Dave’s comment about relative to our internal expectations is one of the important factors here as well. When you look at our internal expectations compared to the consensus estimates for the year by the quarter, really what we are saying is the first quarter consensus was well below our internal expectations, although the year for the consensus was within our range. And if you are wondering where we think you are too high, I would point to the fourth quarter.

Karen Short - FBR Capital Markets

Okay. Actually, I mean, I got -- the list that you just gave makes sense to me. I guess when I think of fuel margins, you already knew that fuel margins were unusually high last year and so you factored a normalized fuel margin into your guidance for the current year, so I guess I don’t count that necessarily as unusual. But looking to fuel margins a little bit, I guess I’m curious -- I think on one call, you had kind of given some directional impact on the impact on earnings from a change in margins and I can’t remember what quarter it was but I kind of got that about $0.01 change in gas margins year over year was about a six-tenths of a cent in earnings. So I guess the first question is can you tell me if that’s kind of directionally right? And then the second question is with margins very unpredictable, I guess I’m curious how quickly you can react to strong or weak gas margins as it relates to the rest of your promotional programs? Meaning, if you are suddenly seeing really strong gas margins, can you accelerate a promotional program within that period so that there’s kind of a neutralizing effect, or do the reverse if margins are suddenly much weaker?