Thanks Kimberley.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Betty Chen with Wedbush Morgan.

Betty Chen – Wedbush Morgan

Thank you good morning and my congratulations as well. I was curious Mike if you can maybe give us a sense of current run rate. It would appear that if we were to extrapolate from here it looks as if the second quarter that comps have not significantly improved over the first quarter’s comp rate. And I was wondering if you can kind of elaborate a little bit on that and perhaps sort of what are we seeing, even though I think Trudy you have mentioned we have seen some better reactions to some of the May goods and then also the floral set for June I know has yet to hear anything from that but any clarity will be very helpful.

Michael Scarpa

Well there is not much I could say. We were down 26.9% from a comp perspective in Q1 and we are projecting our sales base to be down in the low 20s. So there is some improvement. We have seen that improvement as Trudy talked about as we moved from month to month. But we are taking a conservative look at our sales numbers and making sure that we right size the organization for those conservative sales and that’s the way we are going to run it on a go forward basis. Our inventories are in line. And if we need to go out and chase, we have a supply chain that’s flexible enough to get us back into product but we are looking at it as if there is no improvement in the economy right now and that’s an operating discipline that we need in this company.

Betty Chen – Wedbush Morgan

And then in terms of that by the end of the second quarter where should we expect inventories to be and then any idea regarding tax rate? What should we be using going forward?

Michael Scarpa

Well, the inventory level we were very aggressive in terms of promotions in the first quarter to move through the inventory. As you may remember we weren’t really in a position to cut that significantly in first quarter purchasing but we have done that for Q2. We feel good that our inventory levels should be again in the mid 20 range for the end of Q2 which is where we want them to be based on our sales line. And from a tax perspective we got the benefit of…we got pension freeze that we implemented. In the first quarter we had the opportunity to revalue our go forward obligations and it generated $25 million in additional comprehensive income and that generated the tax benefit. I wouldn’t be anticipating any of those tax benefits in Q2 to Q4. As you remember in Q4 we put up a full tax valuation and so we are not anticipating any. There will be a small tax expense in each of the next three quarters.

Betty Chen – Wedbush Morgan

Okay thank you very much and the stores do look wonderful. Best of luck in the second quarter.

Trudy F. Sullivan

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Richard Jaffe with Stifel Nicolaus.

Richard Jaffe – Stifel Nicolaus

Thanks very much guys. Couple of quick questions, one is a question on payables and the dramatic increase year-over-year and then I guess a more broad question given some of the success of key items. Is there a thought about chasing those or building the inventory somewhat? You have had a dramatic decline in inventories last year and now again this year in the first go forward basis. Is there an opportunity to use some of your successes to drive the top line by building inventories on the success stories?

Trudy F. Sullivan