Sales Quotations

We don't have any doubt that, in one way or another, the taxes on sales to non-Indians are going to be collected by New York. The question is: How soon?

We believe that January sales may have been even worse had Microsoft continued its marketing push, and believe that sell through was helped in part by deep discounting of new releases during the month. January marked the fifth consecutive month of software sales decline, and we expect a return to double-digit sales declines in February, with an accelerating rate of decline in March.

We believe that Hurricane Isabel could negatively impact September sales by approximately 0.5 to 1.0 percent. Retail stock prices have historically declined during hurricanes 54 percent of the time but usually recover quickly.

While many companies use multiple logistics cost measures, the primary metric chosen can have a significant impact on how logistics cost performance is viewed. For example, those companies using logistics costs as a percent of sales as their primary measure and who operate in industries such as chemicals and other commodities saw that cost ratio fall in 2005 due to strong upward pricing power that impacted the top line, even though logistics costs also rose. Other industries had rising logistics costs with flat or declining prices for their products, driving up logistics costs as a percent of sales.

While management will likely continue to guide conservatively, we expect 2006 outlook will be at least in-line with (analysts' consensus estimate of) $4.18. JC Penney's stepped up branding campaign, which kicks off March 2 and includes a temporary NY store, should drive some sales and more importantly position them for market share gains as industry rationalization frees up share.

While January numbers were good and encouraging, I don't think we want to read too much into them in terms of the rest of the year. There is still a lot of negative economic news out there. I think that's reflected in the retailers' forecast for sales growth in 2006.

Whether this customer drives in, phones in or clicks in, you as the dealer must develop an instant rapport with that customer and give them all of the information necessary to purchase from you. What you want to avoid is putting that younger buyer through a more traditional sales process from the past that when they finally weed through everything, they disconnect and go somewhere else. To succeed today, you must make sure these customers have the same experience on your lot that they had over the Internet.

Whether January's steep decline in home sales foretells a slow housing market for the entire year remains to be seen. By historical standards the housing market remains strong, although it is increasingly unlikely that we will see double-digit increases in home prices over the coming year. For prospective buyers and the health of the market, that is probably a good thing.

We expect we will recover nearly all of the resulting lost sales during the next few months.

We feel that the incentive is at the right place right now to keep sales brisk.