Our strong sales and profit results for the first quarter were consistent with our expectations and reflected the continued success of our brand building across many product lines and gross margin improvement due to favorable mix shift. The breadth of our product line as well as global new product introductions are integral to our consistent performance and will be important contributors to our performance in the future.

Our fourth quarter and full year sales came in above expectations on a reported and constant currency basis. This performance demonstrates the capability of our sales and marketing organization to execute our global plans and drive broad-based growth of our portfolio of leading-edge eye care products. While our reported earnings were negatively affected by two unexpected events, our underlying performance was reflective of higher gross margins, carefully managed spending and a lower tax rate.

Merck has been hopelessly disappointing. The profit development is significantly below forecasts despite higher sales.

It's a savage profit warning for the UK, with numbers for 2006/07 likely to shift materially below current expectations. You are probably looking at cuts of between 30 and 50 percent.

Investor expectations about profit gains at brokerages grew stronger.

What we're going to try to do heading forward is to match profit expectations that are out there ... not to exceed them, ... to invest that money back into, hopefully, accelerated growth.