made in December 1969 dropped Utah's share of these earnings for the quarter ending January 31, 1970 below the comparable period last year. Marcona's shipments and product mix in the first quarter were less favorable than last year and less than we anticipated for the fiscal year. For the year as a whole we expect Utah's profits to run well ahead of last year, although we do not now anticipate that the rate of increase will reach that registered by 1969 over 1968. So we face the 70's with confidence that the program on which we are launched will bring about increased earnings in the first half and confidence that the management has the ingenuity to meet the challenges that will come for the last half of the 70's. The problem changes when the present heavy outflow of cash becomes a heavy inflow of cash that we expect the new expansion programs to produce. Payouts in our business are relatively rapid and we face the prospect down the road of having to come up with new profit opportunities in order to put this cash flow to work as successfully in the future as we have in the past. In the last 20 years we have had no dearth of ideas that produced calls on our capital and none of us have had any experience in operating a company with surplus cash. We hope to avoid this experience by keeping the cash flow gainfully employed in new and promising ventures, and I think that we have the organization in place that has the capacity to do so. We feel that we have a plan that works and men who can work the plan. We have a good Board of Directors and indeed perhaps an unusual -15-