Decline Quotations | Page 4

Given the significant decline in our stock price over the last few weeks, the company believes that the purchase of its stock represents a very attractive investment.

GM's sales have declined year-over-year in nine of the last 12 months, saved only by the employee pricing campaign this summer.

Global Services results are disappointing, especially a $2 billion drop in its backlog in the fourth quarter. And a 9% decline in new contract signings? That means that the biggest IBM unit is losing more business from its backlog than it is signing.

Global protein sector challenges continued during the past quarter. High poultry inventories depressed retail poultry prices and contributed to declines in pork pricing in the US, although US pork industry volumes increased over last year. At the same time, extraordinarily high US live cattle costs in relation to finished box beef prices, combined with a continued lack of access to major Asian export markets, limited our beef operating results.

I definitely believe that the so-called American decline is greatly exaggerated.

Given the huge decline in consumer confidence, this (gain in spending) does not seem unreasonably weak, especially with consumers' real after-tax income growth slowing too.

Given the historically slow pace of change for dividends, the growth in dividend payers since January 2003 has been remarkable. Unlike the prior 20 years when the number of paying issues actually declined by 25%, since the start of 2003 the number of paying issues within the S&P 500 issues has risen by 10% to 386. For the remainder of 2006, we expect a continuation in both dividend increases and initiations among S&P 500 constituents, resulting in another double-digit gain in dividend payments.

Given that the expected pace of the recovery has been scaled down over recent months, sharp declines in stock prices are having a negative effect on consumer and investors confidence,

Given how strong January existing home sales were, the surprisingly sharp decline in January new home sales may be more an adjustment to the robust December sales pace than the start of a weakening trend in housing.

French unemployment is stabilizing. We see further declines in the jobless rate.