Return on Invested Capital

We believe that it is important for a business to manage its balance sheet as well as it manages its statement of operations. A measurement that ties the statement of operations performance with the balance sheet performance is Return on Invested Capital from Operations, or ROIC. We believe that if we are able to grow our earnings while minimizing the use of invested capital, we will be optimizing shareholder value while preserving resources in preparation for further potential growth opportunities. We take a simple approach in calculating ROIC: we apply an estimated average tax rate of 35% to the operating income of our continuing operations with adjustments for unusual items, such as restructuring charges and goodwill impairment charge. We exclude these unusual items from our calculation of “Operating income after taxes” because we do not believe such items are representative of expected future returns. Therefore, we believe decisions to allocate resources should not be influenced by such items. We apply this tax-adjusted operating income to our average capital base, which, in our case, is our shareholders' equity and debt. The estimated average tax rate represents an estimated blended statutory tax rate for the markets in which we operate.

Title	Type	Size
Return on Invested Capital Q4 2009		11.9 KB
Return on Invested Capital Q3 2009		59.4 KB
Return on Invested Capital Q2 2009		59.3 KB
Return on Invested Capital Q1 2009		59.0 KB

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