All comparisons are year-over-year unless otherwise noted.

Last Thursday, we announced our fiscal fourth quarter 2008 results; the replay of our conference call and a copy of our transcript can be found on the investor relations web site.  For the quarter we posted revenue growth of 10% on $16 billion in sales and 19% unit growth.  Operating income was $776M, or 4.9%.  EPS was $0.31 per share and cash flow from operations was $1.2 billion.

For the full year, we grew revenue 6% to $61.1 billion, generated $3.4 billion of operating income, increased EPS 15% to $1.31 per share, and generated $3.9 billion in cash flow from operations.  Cash flow from operations grew faster than both net and operating income. 

During the call we discussed our results, citing both regional and product highlights.  Then we placed particular emphasis on two areas - cost and growth initiatives.  Let me cover a few of the questions we are getting from investors.  Two key themes emerged.  They were costs and the pace of our progress against our key growth initiatives. 

Our expenses have grown faster than revenue and we are out of cost position relative to peers in some product areas, price points and regions.  This was the result of our products and supply chain not being optimized to most efficiently provide customers what they value.  As stated, we have a multi-billion dollar opportunity to reduce costs over the next several years.   As described during our earnings call, we're working on multiple fronts to become more competitive.  We are recommitted to reducing our headcount, but headcount in and of itself is not the answer either.  Everything we do is being scrutinized.  This includes our supply chain, and at a deeper level it includes how we design our products.  You will see more activity towards improving our competitiveness in Q1, and this process will continue throughout the rest of the year.

Second, Dell is taking action against several different priorities in parallel.  They are not meant to be sequential steps, but are step function changes to reignite our growth.  I hope you realize that we're building for the long-term.  Sometimes you need to make decisions for the short term that can adversely impact performance, but are absolutely the right for the long-term - as a result some of our actions won't be linear.  There have been a lot of moving parts as we integrate several acquisitions, work towards improving our sales force effectiveness and realign the rest of our organization against our key priorities.   Some of these changes take time, but the foundation is there and the changes are showing improvement.

Examine the BRIC countries where our revenue grew faster than the industry up 36%, and units were up 50%.  And look at retail where we had no presence a year ago; we have already sold one million units worldwide and are at a one billion dollar revenue run rate.  And in notebooks we won 72% of the product awards applied for in this category.  We have an amazing brand that we are just now beginning to leverage in retail, globally or through the channel. 

Michael said, "The acceleration in our growth is just a first step as we execute against the five priorities. We have a lot more to do to restore our competitiveness so that we can deliver long-term profitable growth."  There's more to come, and we look forward to updating you on all our priorities at our upcoming analyst meeting and hope to see you then.