Greg Klaben - VP, IR Ken Kannappan - President & CEO Pam Strayer - SVP & CFO.

Dave King - Roth Capital Partners John Bright - Avondale Partners Tavis McCourt - Raymond James Greg Burns - Sidoti & Company.

Good afternoon. My name is Bobby and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 fiscal year 2014 conference call. (Operator Instructions). Thank you Greg Klaben, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference..

Thanks very much Bobby. Welcome everyone to Plantronics Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2014 Conference Call. Joining me today are Ken Kannappan, Plantronics President and CEO, and Pam Strayer, Plantronics Senior Vice President and CFO.

The information presented and discussed today includes forward-looking statements which are made under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The risks and uncertainties related to such statements are detailed in our most recent 10-Q and 10-K in today's press release.

For the remainder of today's call, we'll be providing only non-GAAP metrics related to gross margin, operating expenses, operating income, net income and EPS. We have reconciled these measures in our earnings press release and in our quarterly analyst metric sheet, both of which are available on the investor relations page of our website.

Additionally, after the conclusion of today's call, the recording of the call will be available with the information on our website. Unless stated otherwise, all comparisons of the fourth quarter fiscal 2014 financial results after the same quarter and the prior fiscal year. Plantronics fourth quarter fiscal 2014 net revenues were $209.1 million.

Plantronics GAAP diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter was $0.65 compared with $0.67 last year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter was $0.74 compared with $0.71.

The difference between GAAP and non-GAAP EPS for the fourth quarter consists of charges for stock-based compensation and purchase accounting amortization, both net of the associated tax impact and tax benefits from the release of tax reserves. Please refer to the full reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP in our earnings press release.

I would like to remind you that we will be holding an Investor Day at our new manufacturing plant in Tijuana, Mexico on June 25th. For more information please contact me.

Finally I would like to also note that a change in our naming convention for two major revenue categories beginning next quarter we will begin reporting revenues for consumer as a single category comprising mobile, gaming and entertainment and clarity revenue. We will also begin referring to office and contact centers enterprise.

There is no change in the reclassification of revenues within enterprise and this change reflects larger opportunity being driven by Unified Communications and our evolving solution for how and where people work. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ken..

Thank you Greg. At fiscal 2014 we achieved record revenues of 818.6 million, record operating income of a 166 million and record earnings per share of $2.85. I like to highlight five key takeaways from our fiscal 2014.

First, the year was a year of investment and our organization scaled for significant anticipated growth driven by Unified Communications. We opened our new manufacturing plant in Tijuana which is significantly more efficient by consolidating operations for multiple facilities into one.

Recently we were named the Best Place to Work in Mexico for the fourth consecutive year. We just invested in our workspaces around the world to enable what we refer to as smarter work feedback from the employees and customers and partners visiting our locations, it has been overwhelmingly positive.

Literally 1000s of visitors, many of them seeking to emulate the technology and productivity that we have achieved. We continue to build our R&D capabilities opening a software center in Austin. We just went live today on an upgraded ERP system from improved global processes and scaling.

We have invested heavily in UC over the past several years and as a result operating expenses grew faster than revenues. Fiscal 2015, we’re planning for future profits to grow at a rate similar to revenues and anticipating an improvement in operating margins as the year progresses.

Our second point is with 27% growth in revenue in fiscal 2014, Unified Communications continues to be our key strategic focus. Revenue from our UC product portfolio represents 28% of our OCC revenues up from 24% the prior year.

We believe that we are in a very beginning of the long term growth opportunity with the vast majority of the UCC opportunity still in front of us. Third our long term expected growth rates in the size of the UC business remain unchanged and we continue to believe that we’re in very early stages.

Our combined markets are expected to grow approximately 13% per year. This is identical to the growth estimates that we provided last year, the only difference being the five year time period beginning in calendar year ’13 versus calendar year ’12 last year.

This growth rate is being driven by increased headset usage and as a result of the use of Unified Communications Technology. We anticipate more modest growth in the near term similar to recent growth rates. However, we’re seeing evidence that UC will begin to pick up.

Greg will cover additional details of our market growth expectations later in the call. Fourth, we have consistently returned substantially all U.S. cash for our shareholders and repurchases and dividends and we anticipate continue to return sizeable portions of U.S. cash to our stockholders in fiscal 2015.

Today we announce a dividend increase from $0.10 per share per quarter to $0.15 to balance our payout to 1/3rd of free cash flow going as dividends 2/3rds of repurchases of domestic U.S. cash flow. Fifth, we remain as confident as ever in our leadership position in the enterprise headset market and the growing UC market.

Our continuing innovation breakthrough’s and contextual intelligence, some other features and enhancements in our UC portfolio, whereas to maintain a premium position at fiscal ’14 and we have the opportunity to strengthen that position fiscal ’15. Today we just won a Partner Innovation Award from Avaya at their International User Group Conference.

In fiscal 2015 we will focus on these key goals and we will, one, deliver profitable growth by delivering compelling communications experience and help customers improve efficiency and ease of use across the enterprise. Number two, extend our brand to be relevant to a broader addressable market.

Number three, extend our consumer reach to become the indispensable interface users turn to with connected experiences through their day. Number four, scale for growth by improving operational effectiveness and flexibility of the value chain. And number five optimize our culture through innovation, productivity and employee well-being.

We’re well-positioned to achieve these goals and let us to continue to increase long term stockholder value and cash flow generation. With that I would like to turn the call over to Pam to go over our Q4 results..

Thanks Ken. I will start with the key points for getting into the detail for the quarter. First our financial results were better than expected with our revenue coming in at the high end of our guidance and earnings per share exceeding guidance.

I’m also pleased that we did better than expected for operating margins in the quarter with our Q4 operating margin coming in at the low end of our long term target range of 20% and we achieved better than that for the full year with operating margins of 20.3%. Second we’re planning for profit growth commensurate with revenue growth in fiscal 2015.

As Ken mentioned fiscal 2014 was the year of investment, we invested in our infrastructure, people and products to scale for growth ahead of anticipated UC growth. While operating expenses grew faster than revenue in fiscal 2014 we were expected modest margin improvement for the full fiscal year 2015 as revenue expenses grow at similar pace.

Third, we remain committed to returning cash to our shareholders. Today, we announced a 50% increase in our quarterly dividend from $0.10 to $0.15 per share per quarter. In fiscal 2014, we returned to a total of $103 million to our shareholders through share repurchases and quarterly dividends.

Essentially all of our domestic cash generation was returned to our shareholders.

The share repurchases for the last fiscal year totaled 1.9 million shares, the dividend increase for fiscal 2015 is in-line with our philosophy of returning approximately 1/3rd of our domestic cash generations to our stockholders in dividend the balance being share repurchases.

We expect to continue our current approach at pace to share repurchases while being prepared to be opportunistic. Our Q4 revenue results were driven by strength in OCC and better than expected growth in mobile. We experienced modest growth in core OCC and another quarterly record in UC net revenue. Geographically the U.S.

was the strongest and the only geography to grow year-over-year. Fourth quarter net revenues were 209.1 million representing 2% growth over the prior year which is a tough comparison given that we have the positive effect of the China hands-free law last year.

For a better understanding of this impact when it's excluded from the results, our year-over-year growth would have been approximately 8%. Non-GAAP operating income of 41.7 million is flat compared to Q4 last year. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.74 it's $0.03 [ph] higher than the prior year increase of 4%. Now I will cover revenue in more detail.

Total net revenues for the fourth quarter of 209.1 million were up 4.9 million or 2% compared to the fourth quarter of last year all of which was driven by 10% growth in the Americas. Revenues in our Europe and Africa region declined by 2% and our Asia-PAC region by 24%. The following are key product line comparisons to Q4 last year.

OCC net revenues of 150.5 million were up roughly $7.8 million and 6%, UC was the driver for that growth while core OCC was up slightly compared to the prior year quarter. UC revenues of $43.6 million were up 6.8 million or 18% over Q4 of the prior year. Net revenues from mobile products were up in the U.S.

offset by declines in China resulting in last year-over-year performance. The strong demand spike in the prior year due to the China hands-free adoption provides a tough comparison. Excluding the spike last year, our mobile revenues increased 26% year-over-year.

Non-GAAP gross margin was better than expected at 53.5% up 120 basis points compared with last year’s gross margin of 52.3%. Average product margins increased by 80 basis points due to product mix primarily due to lower mobile revenues. In addition freight was lower than historical levels this quarter.

We had built-up our inventory levels with the end of Q3 and beginning of Q4 in preparation for the Chinese new year supplier shutdown. These higher inventory levels meant that more economic or shipping methods could be used.

Non-GAAP operating expenses were 70 million up $5.2 million compared to Q4 of last year due primarily to additional headcount investments as well merit increases. In addition marketing litigation and travel cost all increased. As a percentage of revenue operating expenses were 33.5% up 170 basis points in the prior year of 31.8%.

Our non-GAAP operating margin was 20.0% down from 20.5% in the prior year. Our effective non-GAAP tax rate for the quarter was 25.5%. As a result all these items are Q4 non-GAAP net income of 31.8 million was 4% higher than a year ago yielding non-GAAP EPS of $0.74 per share up $0.03 from last year’s Q4 results.

Now for a balance sheet and cash flow highlights. We finished the quarter with $436 million in cash and investments in our balance sheet and generated over $49 million of cash flow from operations during the period. Off the $436 million in cash and investments at quarter end, $17 million was domestic.

We used $28.9 million to repurchase shares during the quarter. DSO was 60 days, up from 57 days at the end of Q4, the prior year. The increase was due primarily to the timing of billings within the quarter and a reduction of our offsetting reserves for products returns. Net inventories were down 10.3 million or 14.2% versus a year ago.

Inventory turns are up to 6.9 compared to 5.8 in Q4 of last year. Turning to our capital expenditures, our Q4 investment was $13.3 million or 6.4% of net revenues. Large expenditures include (indiscernible) facility improvement and equipment in Tijuana [ph] for our operations in Mexico.

We are making good progress and investing in our infrastructure to scale the future growth. Our building consolidation in Mexico is complete and our new ERP system has just gone online. This new system will be instrumental in supporting global profits, improving global data and analysis and reducing our cost of maintenance from the system.

Depreciation expense on a GAAP basis for Q4 was $3.8 million and was down slightly from $4 million in the fourth quarter of last year. Turning to the outlook, We believe total net revenues for our first fiscal quarter ending in June will be in the range of $205 million to $215 million.

This forecast assumes gross margin to be in the range of approximately 52.5% and 53% lower than the current quarter margins due to an effective increases in freight and E&O expenses as we revert back to more typical quarter spend pattern in those areas as well as some product mix in terms of higher UC revenues and higher mobile revenues compared to Q4.

Depending on revenue mix and other factors we believe our GAAP operating income will be approximately $31 million to $35 million and non-GAAP operating income of approximately $38 million to $42 million.

The GAAP reconciling items we expect in the first quarter include appropriate $7 million in stock based compensation expense and purchase accounting amortization before tax.

Although this result in the non-GAAP operating margin which is just below our long term targeted range, we expect to make up for this one higher profitability in the second half of the year. Our guidance expects that we were (indiscernible) approximately 1.5 million on GN litigation in Q1.

As a reminder we’re including GN litigation cost as part of our non-GAAP results based on our policy for non-GAAP reporting. The GN litigation is in discovery phase and the impact to operating income from the associated legal expenses is particularly difficult to forecast. Actual expenses can vary significantly from our forecast.

Also know that the reimplementation of our ERP system and the current quarter may reduce revenue visibility and possibly impede short term expense management. Included in our non-GAAP guidance is a $2 million benefit to operating expenses which we will receive as part of a binding agreement with one of our competitors to this litigation.

The litigation involves the alleged infringement of our patents for ear bud technology to improve the fit of Bluetooth headset. We expect to receive a $2 million patent benefit per quarter for the first two quarters and the third and fourth quarters the benefit will be $1.6 million each.

Our non-GAAP tax rate for the quarter is expected to be 27%, and we’re anticipating a full year tax rate of 27% based on all the above in the first quarter we expect GAAP EPS of $0.54 to $0.61 per share and non-GAAP EPS to be $0.65 to $0.72 per share on average diluted shares outstanding of approximately 42.9 million.

Our full fiscal year 2015 plan reflects operating margins up slightly from fiscal 2014 and for capital expenditures that are approximately 30% of revenue. With that I will turn it over to Greg who will cover the long term market model update for the year..

Thanks Pam. At the beginning of every fiscal year we update our total addressable market and growth expectations for the subsequent five years.

Working with industry analyst firms across (indiscernible) and strategic analytics in addition to our own estimates we updated the average compound annual growth rate expected for our markets from calendar year 2013 to calendar 2018.

I will walk you through the total addressable market and if you haven't already seen our new IR presentation with these slides they are available on IR section of our website.

Note that it's mentioned earlier, we will be changing office and contact center, the category to enterprise and there is no change in the classification of revenues within this category and it refers to enterprises of both sizes.

We will also begin reporting revenues from our consumer product lines as a single category called consumer comprised of Bluetooth, gaming and entertainment and clarity products. I will start with slide number 13 in our IR deck.

We cited [ph] our total addressable market at $2.3 billion as of calendar year 2013 growing to $4.3 billion in calendar year 2018 for CAGR of approximately 13%. This is the same growth rate we had forecast last year for the five year period ending in calendar year 2017.

The enterprise market is estimated to be $1 billion in 2013 growing to $2.3 billion for CAGR of 17% to 18%. This is higher than the CAGR we provided last year of 16% to 17%. The consumer opportunity is estimated to be 1.3 billion in calendar year 2013 growing to 2 billion in the calendar year 2018.

The compound annual growth rate for this period is expected to be 8% to 10% which is higher than last year’s range of 7% to 8%. The next slide number 14 shows the enterprise opportunity in greater detail. The UC market is expected to grow from 300 million in calendar year 2013 to 1.5 billion in calendar 2018, a CAGR of 38% to 40%.

It's a very slight decline from last year’s model. Before enterprise, CAGR is expected to be 1% over the same time period. Higher headset attach rate is driving our revenue opportunity and slide 15 we estimated that the current headset attach rate to 425 million knowledge workers globally is currently approximately 6%.

The estimated attach rate in 2018 is forecasted to be 13% to 450 million knowledge workers. On the next slide number 16, we have our assumptions with the UC market which are mostly unchanged just updated to reflect calendar year 2018.

The forecast for active UC voice licenses is 94 million with an attach rate expected to be 60% with a total install headset base of 56 million headsets. In 2018 the forecast is for 22 million UC audio devices sold and an ASP which is consistent with our prior model. Our total market size is $1.5 billion.

Factored into the assumption of the market size for 2018 are replacement revenues to the installed base of UC headsets users which is estimated to be less than a third of the total market revenues. Our expectations are -- we maintain market share, the UC market had a level similar to today over the next five years.

Note that our definition of UC narrower than some other companies and that our definition of voice license requires a voice capabilities have been activated and in use not simply licenses sold.

As UC becomes an increasing portion of enterprise revenues we anticipate that at some point in the future we will discontinue the revenue breakout between core enterprise and UC as we did today, both because it becomes less relevant and because it is increasingly harder to accurately measure whether our headsets are being used in UC environment.

I would also like to note that we’re anticipating more modest growth rate for revenues for the fiscal year 2015 as compared with the five year growth rate in our market model.

We’re now providing fiscal year 2015 revenue guidance but do emphasize that while we expect continued growth in UC revenues in fiscal 2015 we do not currently expect an acceleration UC revenues in the fiscal year. On the consumer side we’re also currently expecting more modest growth rate as compared with the market growth rate.

With that I will open the call for questions..

(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Dave King from Roth Capital. Your line is open..

I guess first off in terms of the guidance for revenue, I guess I’m just curious how we should think about that by segment and from your prepared remarks it sounds like UC should be kind of a similar growth rates what we saw this quarter and then traditional OCC or enterprise I didn’t catch, if that should be similar or not? And then on the consumer side I think from your comments Pam it sounds like maybe that’s a little bit higher than it was.

So there should be some sequential growth there but maybe in that context you can tell us how much the China hands-free stuff contributed in the year ago period or the year ago June so we can think about that somewhere. Thanks..

Sure. So for the guidance for next quarter we do expect mobile to be a little bit higher portion of total revenues going down our gross margin a little bit. We don’t typically give any more detail into the revenue line now but I would agree that the UC growth rate expectations will be similar to what we experienced this quarter..

Okay and then I guess as we just more big picture, as we think about that UC growth rate it has slowed a bit obviously in over the past few quarters and it seems like it maybe tracking at a little bit of a slow rate than the industry or certainly striking slower than what the forecast you guys have in there from some of the industry people in terms of that 38% to 40%.

And it looks there may have been some share losses over the past couple of quarters.

Can we talk about what might be going on there both from an end market perspective and then competitive front and then how we should think about why that should reaccelerate?.

Sure. Well first of all actually we think we’re competing well in the market. It is difficult to get good or accurate data and I will just kind of comment on that a little bit. The major players don’t necessarily provide public disclosures of the number of active voice proceeds [ph] that are growing.

Our primary competitor disclosed the data on a different basis than we do and then there are a number of people who aren’t disclosing any data. So it's a little difficult to say. For sure there are timing issues that involve some larger customers and when they happen to roll things out.

Our general sense is that we are doing very well in the market and are not losing any fundamental market share. I think that if we look at some of the issues in the market that happened over the course of last year and obviously when Jabber became free from Cisco that created a little bit of a slowdown in the market as people started to evaluate.

There has certainly being some macroeconomic concerns that have been out there in the market related to that.

I think that many companies have gotten serious about moving forward that they have started to look at their infrastructure and say do we really have all the pikes [ph] that we need, the necessary Wi-Fi bandwidth everywhere across our organization in order to ensure the quality of voice necessary to do these deployments.

My sense actually is that the momentum is significantly built. The tone that we heard at Enterprise Connect and the Lync Conference and really across the Board at major events, it's been that people are really gearing up to move forward.

Now that’s not to say that I think these are all going to occur this year, the cycle time is pretty long for proof of concept pilots and deployments. But I think that the activity is really picked up in terms of people getting serious about moving forward with it..

And then I guess just lastly sort of a clarification and this maybe for you Greg in terms of the slide 16 of the presentation, it looks like or I guess maybe what does that assume in terms of ASPs.

It looks like it's around the $68 level or so and then you know is that how do you come with that assumption is that based on the industry guys? Is that you guys are assuming sort of ASP and how does that compare to kind of your current ASPs in UC?.

It's slightly down from what we’re experiencing today but it's in-line with what we had with the assumption last year’s model at about $68 per device. So there is not much, since it is a combination of our own analysis as well as (indiscernible)..

Okay and is that similar to what you guys currently have as an ASP in your own business today?.

It fluctuates from deal to deal but it's generally in the range what we’re seeing today..

Your next question comes from the line of John Bright from Avondale Partners. Your line is open..

Harvesting investments is what I’m hearing from you on this call. I think in your prepared text said that you’re going to grow our earnings as same as your revenue. I assume that has a plan of growth in your expenses that if your revenue accelerates then that can even mean greater margin expansion.

Is that fair?.

It is to some degree.

Let me just say that it's probably a little bit more towards the back half of the year than it is in the front half of the year and if -- I am not really anticipating things to get wildly ahead of our expectations but if it does we have been working pretty hard on some strategic growth plans that we’re not yet investing in that we’re prepared to invest in because we are expecting this UC market to begin to hit and when it does we wanted to be prepared and really thought through plans to invest wisely.

So we do intend to just let that lag the rate of gross profit growth but that doesn’t mean not to have some incremental investment for future growth opportunities..

Well let me connect some dots on there, I will try to connect some dots, maybe you can help me. About between the industry expectations, I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks Ken that you are seeing the evidence of a pickup in UC that kind of goes to the when will the meaningful acceleration of UC happen.

So when I try to reconcile 13% industry CAGR, evidence in pickup yet more modest growth rate in FY ’15, help me connect those dots if you will..

Sure. So the cycle time in my mind for many companies when we hear about these things is better than a year in terms of when large deployments happen. Now that doesn’t mean everybody, some of them can be faster but in general I have got to go through a proof of concept that can be anywhere from let’s just call it two months to four months.

I have got to go through a pilot that’s probably another three months sometimes 4 or 5 months. Then I got to plan my deployment that’s probably another 2, 3, 4 months and then I’ve to actually deploy and that can be anywhere from three months to a year and half and I would say generally 6 to 12 months.

Those aren’t perfect times, they vary, every company is different and certainly larger companies on the longer end, smaller companies are often on the faster end. But the momentum that we’re seeing build is at the front end. Some of that I do think will hit towards the latter part of this fiscal year. Some of it I think will hit the following year..

This is a simplistic question, Ken, but I know a lot of people ask it.

Is there something fundamental you can point to that people can think about that is a driver or the decision to move the UC?.

Sure. Very, very simply it is a much better tool for communications and collaboration and let me just try to explain that within this. Right now if you look at a legacy phone system it is a blind system in which I make a phone call to you with no knowledge of whether you’re there or not.

I don’t know if you’re in a meeting, I don’t know if it's a good way to reach you. I’m going to leave that voice message for you. 70% of those calls today in business do hit voice mail. You may call me back much later, you don’t understand exactly what I was thinking. It's clear to me but it wasn’t clear to you.

We have played tag, the cycle time of the business becomes slow, it takes several days for us to resolve that item. Imagine instead in a UC world I can see right now that you’re in a meeting, you’re in a conference call. I can IM you right now and ask you a question during that meeting and it pops up, I can see that you’re now available.

I can ask you if we can escalate to a call or a video call. I can just boom, click and add right in Greg Klaben because there is a question on the model that we have.

I can automatically have a conference call in which we’re sharing PowerPoint presentations or white board or other creative spaces and not only can I do this but I can do this without the rigidity that we have right now with fixed phones and office spaces across $750 of change.

Everybody understands that teams are more effective when they are co-located. The rigid phone structures well that’s where your office is prevents you from having the flexibility easily move teams as things grow and move in businesses. It creates a rigidity that makes it hard for people to collaborate as well as you like them to do.

It results in separate spaces that are less efficient, most businesses today are trying to shift to improving their internal collaboration because we have many different subject matter experts and how we get them to work together is absolutely crucial and so they are changing their plans within their business.

Unified Communications opens that up, it also opens up the opportunity in that context through densification which in our case is saving us about $3 million. Finally people are not just working at the office, working -- an activity, it's not a location anymore.

And so at the end of the day I can make people as effective just like they are in their office. Their phone is ringing, everything is operating normal whether they are in their office or whether they are somewhere else.

So the value proposition is a superior solution at a vastly lower cost than what they are paying today just in terms of the communication solutions provided you’ve the infrastructure and place. But, it is of change, you directly have the right infrastructure in place to make that change.

Is that helpful?.

It is. I’m going to the drivers behind it to the cause the organization to make that decision. One of my thoughts has been that internet going to voice-over-IP causes an IT department to examine their needs and that’s what brings the decisions and that’s accelerate (technical difficulty) attach rates.

But I was looking for your thoughts or what are industry trends that might be fundamentally moving that so that we can watch those accelerate, we can expect that to happen to Plantronics..

Okay well so there is a few things behind this. I mean in all honesty first and foremost is the absorption of more and more young people into the workspace who have grown up accustomed to using instant messaging. Who are accustomed to using Skype video conferencing or bunch of other tools and expect to have that type of tool.

As the ecosystem is moving and for example as we have many large companies use this and you as a company are trying to interface those companies and all of a sudden all the other vendors they are competing with you are open federated with that company and do all these tools and you can’t -- its pretty awkward and so there is a growing realization among most corporations, I think the last pull I saw was a 98% of the Global 1000 firms are planning to go forward with UC and the question has been the timing.

So I believe, again if you go to these conferences and you talk to companies, almost everybody is planning to go forward. The issue I think that is holding people back now is one of proceeding with the fit to their business which includes again making sure the infrastructure is in place and able to support it.

That’s a very comparable item at least in most developed markets.

There are some places and particularly for remote operations where the pipe is not adequate to support voice and by that I mean the availability of high bandwidth but beyond that most of the infrastructure is in place, most companies are beginning to either make decisions on the vendors if they want to pick or have already made largely those decisions and I think that they are in the process of moving forward.

Now that only refers to large enterprise market. It's going to take more time as we move pass that into the SME and SMB more likely hosted markets to take place..

Your next question comes from the line of Tavis McCourt from Raymond James. Your line is open..

So after five hours, how is the ERP working?.

Well it's early days clearly or early hours but we appear to be live and working..

I just wanted to go through some of the puts and take that you mentioned to think about for this year.

So what was the gross amount of the IP settlement if that’s what it was, the yearly booking sounds like a counter-expense this year and does that flow into 2015?.

I don’t believe the word is closing, the gross amount..

It's 7.2 million..

All right I guess I’m been [ph] corrected..

7.2 million for the full fiscal year ’15 and there is nothing else because of the next --.

Yes it's completely a coincidence we don’t plan it that way but as it happens it will wind-up offsetting a fair amount of the legal expenditures that we will have on the other matter so that it turns out our financials will actually be fairly reflective, not exactly but fairly reflective of the real business..

Got you and that’s what I wanted to check on, so obviously legal expenses are hard to determine but you have any insight on to how long the discovery phase could last?.

It's hard to say but I suspect that first phase is probably between this quarter and a little bit more it's going to be largely over with we will be moving to other phases..

Got you and then Pam on the below the line items, what should we be thinking about for tax rate for fiscal ’15 and this quarter seemed to have an elevated other income, what kind of a reasonable going forward rate for the non-operating income?.

Yes so for the tax rate last fiscal year you should model it at 27%, that’s what we’re using. For the income below the line there were some small unusual items that went in there. I don’t have them up on top of my head but they were maybe 3 or 4 that were individually immaterial items that we don’t expect to recur..

And is the higher tax rate I guess this will be two years in row, is that related to geographic mix?.

Yes it's very much impacted our geographic mix and last year we had some differences from them as a result of the one time warranty adjusted we made but yes 27% reflects our expectations there 27% with -- when we entered FY ’14..

And then the last question on your UC business as it stands today. I imagine just as in the corded world, the wireless estimates carry a higher ASP and margin than the corded.

But are you seeing a higher percentage mix in UC of users taking wireless and if so is that something that you would expect to continue, is that something that’s financially perhaps as meaningful as kind of the overall adoption rate in and of itself?.

So just to be clear in UC we get a higher ratio of corded rather than wireless and just the way to think about this is that in the non-UC world we primarily sell to people we talk a lot and many of those people who talk a lot therefore it's very important product for them and they are willing to pay for it, they are willing to pay for mobility and the company is willing to invest in them as a result.

UC extends us into a lot of people who don’t talk as much and for them it's not as important and for the company it's not as important to invest in the solution for them if you only spend 10 minutes or week on the phone listening to one voice mail or something like that.

So on the one end we get incremental lift and on the hand that includes people for whom the category is less important and hence you get a higher mix of corded..

And then final question, Pam on the amortization related to the ERP which I assume starts this quarter.

Is that baked into this quarter’s expense or is it a half quarter this quarter and then follow through the next quarter? Or is it small enough where it's not worth even worrying about?.

Yes I think it's built into our guidance for Q1 and we will be approximately half the quarter, so yes it's built in there and yes I guess that answers the question..

Okay and then despite that you expect margin expansion back half of the year assuming revenues grow like you think they will?.

Yes, we have been modeling that additional depreciation expense all along. So that’s taken into account..

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Burns from Sidoti & Company. Your line is open..

So just looking at the mobile business down a little bit year-over-year but still pretty strong considering the tough comp you’re coming off against. Can you just give us some color, are you taking, you would share in the mobile markets? I know you’ve lost a couple of new products.

Was it selling? Are those new products into a channel? Just any kind of color you can give around the strong mobile in the quarter..

Sure. I think that what we saw globally is that the independent brands gained a lot of share and that included very much Plantronics. We had very, very good share gains both the last couple of years. In addition and I’m referring here primarily to our existing business and voice, Bluetooth if you were or mono Bluetooth.

At the same time clearly we entered into the stereo and we have seen growth there which of course by definition include share because really we were pretty small. And yes there is a little bit line fill in that but I don’t think it's a huge number relative to the performance..

(Operator Instructions). Your next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore from Northland Capital Management. Your line is open..

(Indiscernible) for Mike Latimore. I guess looking at the UC business, I mean within UC deployments is the mix of headsets to handsets in that business, I mean is that about you expected a year or so ago or is there a little bit more resiliency that you’re seeing in desktop phones..

Yes there is a little bit higher mix in headsets than we were planning on initially and that’s probably continued to rise..

Okay.

And then I mean how do you view the macro-environment in the U.S? And what sort of improvements have you seen there and maybe how that compares to what you’re seeing in EMEA or Asia-PAC?.

Sure. Clearly the U.S. has strengthened some. We believe that a lot of that really relates to business investment decisions rather than individual decisions. In other words we don’t think we have seen this kind of sharp spike in voluntary turnover that you tend to see in robust labor markets.

But we think that we have seen interest in business investment which is helped us in the market. I think it's clear that Europe -- the growth is kind of anemic right now.

It's certainly not looking like the recession condition or anything like that but it's not being as robust as you know given what happened in December, that we saw in the March quarter and I think there are concerns about Asia-Pacific in terms of a slowdown.

Certainly in Russia on the B2B side you know the events there are taking a bit of a hit on economic activity at present..

Okay.

And just finally just a clarifying question, was the legal expenses that you had guided for the first quarter, was that a 1 million or what was that?.

1.5 million..

1.5 million..

And just to be clear that was not legal expenses that was legal expenses specific to GN..

Okay, specific to GN. Okay, all right. Thank you very much..

There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Klaben I will turn the call back over to you..

Thanks again everyone for joining us today. If you have any follow-up questions, we will be available afterwards..

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect..