Thank you, Ally, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended December 31.

With me on the call today are Hillenbrand President and CEO, Ken Camp; and Chief Financial Officer, Cindy Lucchese.

During the course of today's conference call and the question-and-answer session that follows, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements that are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the securities laws regarding future events or the financial performance of the company. We caution you that these statements are only our view of the future and that actual results may differ materially.

We also alert you to the risks described in the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, such as our annual and quarterly reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. We do not undertake any obligations to update or correct any information in forward-looking statements.

Now let me provide some information regarding our call. We've scheduled 1 hour, and we'll start with prepared remarks from Ken and Cindy that should last approximately 20 minutes.

Ken will start with an overview of the business for the past quarter. Cindy will follow with the financial results, then Ken will wrap up the prepared portion of the call.

After that, we'll move directly to Q&A, where we'll be joined by Batesville President, Kim Dennis; and Process Equipment Group President, Joe Raver, who is joining us remotely from Switzerland. If you have follow-up questions after the call has ended, please don't hesitate to call me at (812) 931-5001 or e-mail me at [email protected].

Now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Ken Camp, Hillenbrand's President and CEO. Ken?

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today.

After the market closed yesterday, we released our earnings announcement and filed the 10-Q. Both documents are available on our website.

And as you can see, we had another solid quarter in our growth businesses with double-digit increases in revenue, net income and earnings per share. Our top and bottom line results were strengthened significantly as a result of our acquisition strategy to diversify the company's holdings into various growth industries.

Beginning with the K-Tron acquisition in 2010 and followed by the Rotex acquisition in August of 2011, the Process Equipment Group now represents 37% of our total Enterprise revenue and just about 1/3 of our total EBITDA. Diversification is also evident in our geographic reach, with about 15% of our revenue now coming from outside the United States.

We've posted annual double-digit revenue growth since our first acquisition in 2010 and perhaps more importantly, we've achieved annual double-digit organic growth in those businesses that we've acquired. They've also been attractively accretive, with those businesses adding $0.09 to our EPS in the first quarter alone.

Based on the success of this strategy to date, we had a 10% increase in Enterprise revenue at $232 million, 15% growth in net income and a 14% increase in year-over-year earnings per share. Our ability to generate cash remained consistent at $27 million in Q1, even with the volume challenges in the Batesville business that we'll discuss later.

In short, we continue to execute on our established growth strategy and we're pleased with the results of that strategy. Because we continue to attract new listeners to our conferences, I'll take some time to give background in each of our platforms, starting with the Process Equipment Group.

As you've seen in the past 7 quarters, the Process Equipment Group continues to perform at exceptional levels, generating $86 million in revenue in Q1, which is 68% more than last year. While a significant amount of this increase came from the addition of Rotex.

In total, the Process Equipment Group has recorded 20% organic growth across the board during that time.

As many of you know, the one element of the Process Equipment Group strategy is to broaden their product offerings to meet their customers' increasing preference for system solutions not just equipment alone. This means that they will sometime sell components that carry a lower margin than their core machine product lines, partly because they currently purchase some of these components from some other suppliers.

When this happens, it can have the effect of reducing the gross margin percentage, while increasing the total number of gross margin dollars. And we all know dollars are the only thing the bank lets us deposit.

As a result of the execution of this strategy, the Process Equipment Group's consolidated order backlog grew 8% sequentially to $129 million. And their backlog currently represents approximately 1/3 of the platform's annual revenue, revenue which is comprised not only of machine sales but also of the sales of ware parts.

Another part of the strategy in the Process Equipment Group is to expand into new geographic markets by taking existing products to new customers. Although this initiative is relatively new, the group's brands are being well received and the early results are exceeding our expectations.

Pennsylvania Crusher, Gundlach and Jeffrey Rader, were operating as 3 separate businesses with minimal coordination among them. After a year of developing a base in Lean practices, the Size Reduction leadership team has developed plans to consolidate some operations and manage the group as a single company with the 3 well-known brands.

That work is well underway, including realigning production to improve efficiency, reduce cost and complexity and better serve their customers.

In the case of Rotex, we're very pleased with their performance. And in fact, they're adding new orders to their backlog at a very rapid rate.

They too have embraced the principles of Lean business and are using those techniques to eliminate bottlenecks and expand their production capability without adding brick and mortar.

Taking a look at Batesville. Despite the continued growth of our Process Equipment Group businesses, their strong performance wasn't enough to completely offset the headwinds faced by the Batesville business, where cash flow remains robust but growth has been difficult to achieve.

As you all know, the Batesville business is the original Hillenbrand company, with the mission of providing earnings and cash to fuel our growth strategy. Despite the challenges of competing in a nongrowth industry, Batesville continues to do just that.

The most significant driver, which affected Batesville's 9% drop in revenue for the quarter, was a decline in the total North American death rate. Although the mortality rates for pneumonia and influenza is currently high, total deaths for the quarter are significantly lower than expected.

The basis of which is, as yet unexplained. The cremation rate is also estimated by us to have increased by about 160 basis points, which is higher than the long-term trend of 120 basis points we've observed in past years, but a bit lower than the spike that we saw in 2009 and 2010.

Such a decline in deaths in a short period is unusual. And if history's an accurate indicator, the industry should expect to see total deaths return closer to the norm as the year plays out.

One additional factor in the quarter's results is the decision by many customers to purchase some inventory in advance of Batesville's fiscal 2012 price increase. Typically, customers will use this inventory in Q1 as their demand increase.

With the drop in total deaths, it's taking them a bit longer to use up the inventory they have on hand. Since the casket industry volume is based on factors outside our, or quite frankly, anyone's control, we focus our energy on those things where we can have an effect.

For example, even with these challenges, we believe that Batesville has maintained relative market share in the somewhat volatile and more competitive environment, and our mix during the period has remained much better than what we expected given the volume.

The leadership team effectively manages their manufacturing capacity to meet market demand by maintaining an adaptable, high-quality and high-velocity supply chain structure. In addition, as the industry leader, Batesville can use the flexibility of their balance sheet to support the small, independent funeral homes that are working hard right now to remain profitable in this challenging environment.

This allows Batesville to maintain the important and long-standing relationships they have with funeral directors.

In an environment where cremation rates continue to grow, the Options by Batesville Cremation business is well positioned to serve evolving consumer needs. Options is the hands-down leader in the cremation products industry and has been growing steadily at rates well above the growth rate of cremation.

The other 2 Batesville growth businesses, Batesville Interactive and Endura Vaults, although starting from a very, very small base at their beginning, are growing at a combined rate in excess of 75% a year. Compared to the casket market, these young businesses are relatively small.

However, in an industry where change comes very slowly, we're pleased with the acceleration of their progress.

Over a period of a more than 100 years, Batesville has developed and maintained their brand as the leading manufacturer of burial caskets. In these growth businesses, Batesville is continuing to build on that brand strength with a methodical, relentless focus on providing products and services that will allow funeral directors to help families make the most meaningful choices to honor their loved ones, and also to help those funeral directors maintain an acceptable level of profitability.

Now I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Cynthia Lucchese. Cindy?

Thank you, Ken. Overall, we're pleased with our first quarter results.

We achieved double-digit revenue growth, had healthy 40% growth margins and increased net income by 15%, which resulted in first quarter earnings of $0.50 per share.

Now let me take you through the details. Total first quarter revenue grew 10%, 9% on a constant currency basis.

The key driver of these strong growth numbers was the Process Equipment Group, which delivered a 68% increase in revenue and 65% on a constant currency basis.

Now an important metric to discuss is organic growth, which we define as the year-over-year comparison of revenue on a constant currency basis, with all of our acquired companies included in the base year. We believe this is important because it shows comparable performance not only for the core Process Equipment Group, but also the year-over-year growth in newly acquired Rotex.

As Ken mentioned earlier, the organic growth for Process Equipment Group was an attractive 20%.

In addition, for the seventh quarter in a row, and in fact, ever since we purchased K-Tron, the Process Equipment Group's backlog grew, reaching a total of $129 million at the end of the first quarter. This represents an 8% increase over the fourth quarter of 2011.

Now as you may recall, future revenues associated with the Process Equipment Group is strongly influenced by order backlogs. On a quarter-by-quarter basis, we expect to see some volatility in this number, particularly when we ship very large orders.

However, we are more than pleased to see the continued strong growth in our order backlog.

Batesville revenue was $14 million or 9% lower than the prior year driven by a decline in volume, lower total deaths and an above average increase in cremation rates resulted in fewer burials year-over-year. Some customers chose to buy ahead in advance of the annual price increase that became effective in October, and that certainly factored into the volume decline but to a lesser degree.

Gross margin for the Process Equipment Group -- or pardon me. We continue to see a shift in our revenue mix with Batesville now representing less than 2/3 of Hillenbrand's revenue compared to a bit more than 3/4 this time a year ago.

We expect to see the proportion of revenues from the Process Equipment Group grow given their strong growth fundamentals and our acquisition strategy.

Now turning to gross profit margin. Our gross profit margin was 40.5%, a decline of 270 basis points over the prior year.

Batesville's margin declined more than 300 basis points to just under 40%. While increased fuel and steel prices impacted margins, the big driver was really the lower volume.

Now I'd also like to give you a sense of how to think about their margins for the remainder of the year. Remember that the Batesville business has always been seasonal, with the second fiscal quarter of the year typically yielding the highest revenues and therefore, the highest gross margins of the year.

We expect this to be the case this year as well, and we also expect Batesville gross margin percentage for the full year to remain strong and above the 40% mark.

Gross margins for the Process Equipment Group declined by 270 basis points compared to the prior year. This was due to higher large system sales in this quarter, which typically include more outsourced components that generate lower gross margin.

Now in addition, we saw some customers last year begin to upgrade their technology coming out of the economic downturn. These upgrades included higher-margin technology for weighing and controllers.

We typically have a steady volume of this type of business from year-to-year, but we experienced a higher mix of this type of business last year as companies ramped up production. For the balance of the year, we expect Process Equipment Group gross profit margin percentages by quarter and for the year to be just slightly lower than last year.

For the quarter, operating expense as a percent of sales increased to 26% from 23.3% in the prior year. The difference is almost entirely driven by a $2.5 million backlog amortization.

And that represents the final charge that we'll report for the Rotex backlog. In addition, we had $2 million of long-term incentive comp expense related to the income tax benefit that I will discuss in a minute.

Our adjusted operating expense to sales ratio was relatively flat at 23.6% versus 23.3% in the prior year. More importantly, we were pleased to see this ratio improve for both of our business platforms, as well as corporate showing that our Lean initiatives are yielding positive results across the organization.

The reason you'll see a slight increase on a consolidated basis is because our Process Equipment Group is now a larger piece of the overall Hillenbrand business. Remember that the operating expense to sales ratio for the Process Equipment Group is typically in the 20% to 30% range, in large part due to their business model, which has a high engineering component.

Now the Batesville platform typically has a ratio of 15% to 16%.

Keep in mind that the low operating expense to sales ratio that Batesville achieved as a result of many years of applying Lean principles in the business. While this is well ingrained in the Batesville platform, we've just begun this journey for the Process Equipment Group.

Another driver in the difference between the operating expense to sales ratio for the group is the ongoing amortization expense from the intangibles that were established as a result of the Rotex and K-Tron acquisition. This represents about $4 million of noncash expense each quarter, with about $1 million of incremental expense for Rotex this quarter when compared to the prior year.

For the full year, we would expect to see a consolidated adjusted operating to sales ratio in the 24% to 25% range. Other income and expense was about $3.5 million unfavorable to the prior year, primarily due to the absence of interest income from the Forethought Note.

This same variance will also impact us in the second quarter since we collected that note in April of 2011.

Although we expect interest income to be about $6 million unfavorable on a full year basis, it's important to remember that we redeployed that cash into the purchase of Rotex, an asset in line with our strategic goal and one that we believe will provide greater returns to our shareholders than the previous value of interest received.

Also included in this line item is the income from our investments in private equity limited partnership, which now have a book value of about $14 million. While our ultimate goal to prudently liquidate these assets, they're highly illiquid, difficult to sell even at a big discount.

So as a result, it's most prudent for us to maintain them through dissolution, which should occur over the next several years. The related income or loss can be relatively lumpy and certainly unpredictable.

So some years we experienced gains, some years we experienced losses.

Last year, we had about $6 million in total income from these investments but the amount varied greatly each quarter. $600,000 of income in Q1, $3 million in Q2 and $1 million each in Q3 and Q4.

We didn't have any gains in our first quarter this year. And if these were to continue to the end of the year, it would ultimately yield about $0.06 of unfavorability to earnings per share in 2012 compared to the prior year.

During the quarter, we recognized the $10 million tax benefit by determining that we will now permanently reinvest certain international earnings that we've previously expected to repatriate. As a result of our acquisition of Rotex, we identified the need to retain these earnings overseas to support the continued growth of the Process Equipment Group and begin developing a plan to integrate Rotex into our existing international structure.

As a result, our expected tax rate this quarter was actually a tax benefit of 4.5% versus an income tax expense rate of 35.9% in the prior year. We expect our ongoing effective tax rate this year to be in the 33% to 34% range, excluding the impact of this first quarter tax benefit.

We've excluded the tax benefit in our calculation of adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. Now as we like to say here at Hillenbrand, cash is king and our results in this area again were positive, as we continue to deliver strong operating cash flow quarter after quarter.

Operating cash flow was $27 million, right in line with prior year. Net income increased 15% over the prior year to $31 million, with EPS growing 14% to $0.50.

On an adjusted basis, net income declined by 7% and EPS by 9%, as the strong growth from Process Equipment Group was more than offset by lower Batesville volumes and reduced interest income from the Forethought Note and limited partnership investment. Adjusted EBITDA was $48 million, a 6% decrease compared to the prior year.

Now note that earnings from the Forethought Note are not included in EBITDA, however, limited partnership gains and losses are included in this number.

So now I'd like to turn to guidance. We are reaffirming our revenue guidance and continue to expect 2012 global constant currency revenue to exceed the $1 billion mark, increasing between 13% and 17%.

When we first provided guidance last quarter, forecast for exchange rates indicated there might be little, if any, impact on revenue in 2012. However, given the recent strength in the U.S.

dollar, there could be a negative year-over-year impact if currency forecasts hold. This forecast suggest foreign currency translation could negatively impact revenue by approximately 1% in 2012, which would result in global revenue growth of 12% to 16%.

We will provide updates to you in our quarterly releases, if warranted by any forecast changes.

Now as a result of the tax benefit that we've recorded this quarter, we are now increasing our earnings per share guidance by $0.12 to $1.87 to $1.97. We are reaffirming our adjusted earnings per share guidance, leaving it unchanged at a range of a $1.82 to $1.92.

Our adjusted EPS guidance excludes tax benefit that we recorded in the first quarter, as well as backlog amortization, antitrust litigation, business acquisition costs and sales tax adjustments.

Now we typically experience our largest quarter in Q2 due to the impact of seasonality at Batesville. However, this year, we expect adjusted EPS in both Q2 and Q4 to be somewhat equal.

In line with historical trends, we still expect Batesville to have their largest quarter in Q2. However, we expect Process Equipment Group to have their largest quarter in Q4 due to the expected timing of shipments currently in backlog.

And as we discussed in many of our past calls, the Process Equipment Group can experience lumpiness from quarter-to-quarter when sizable jobs are completed and shipped. Like most years, we have a few unusually large orders that will impact our quarterly revenue.

I will update you on future calls however, if our expectations changed.

For now, I'll turn the call back to Ken for his concluding remarks. Ken?

Hillenbrand is a patient, prudent company with a long-term view of the future. When we met many of you at industry events, including our Investor Day conference in December, we reaffirmed our commitment to an acquisition strategy that is clearly serving us very well.

We're continuing to explore 3 levels of acquisitions. First, we're interested in pursuing tuck-in or adjacent acquisitions that support the growth strategies of one or more of our operating companies.

Through these relatively small acquisitions, we intend to increase our ability to offer system solutions, support geographic expansion or add value to a product line or process.

The second level would be a transaction to add an operating company to the Process Equipment Group. Rotex is a prime example of a business that provides access to another dimension of the industries where the Process Equipment Group already operates.

The third type of acquisition in our future is to add a company which has the ability to be the beginning of a third platform. No one should assume that mentioning this implies a signal that a platform acquisition is imminent or that it isn't.

It's simply is us being transparent about all elements, which could be part of our acquisition strategy.

Also our criteria for acquisitions haven't changed. We want to continue to build Hillenbrand as a global diversified manufacturing enterprise, with an emphasis on diversification to balance risk and growth.

It's also critical that an acquisition candidate be culturally compatible, successful in its industry, poised for growth and able to leverage our core competencies and strategy, Lean business and talented element to accelerate that growth.

As we announced last week, Scott George has joined Hillenbrand as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development to drive our acquisition strategy. He's an exceptionally talented M&A executive with 30 years of experience.

And Scott was integral in both the K-Tron International and Rotex acquisitions as our primary outside acquisition advisor. So he knows us and our strategy very well.

We're very delighted that Scott's part of the Hillenbrand executive team and I'm sure you will get to meet him at some future event.

Over the long haul, the goal is that our strategy will result in double-digit growth in revenue and profitability. As always, our focus will continue to be on strong cash generation that strengthens our balance sheet, enables us to execute our strategy and allows us to pay an attractive dividend, which as you know, increased in December for the fourth consecutive year.

It's a hallmark of our commitment to being careful stewards of the company and providing meaningful value to our shareholders.

Now for our Q&A session, we'll be joined by Kim Dennis, Batesville's President; and the Process Equipment Group, Joe Raver is also participating remotely from Switzerland. So there may be some differences in sound quality and we hope that everything will be clear on both ends.

We're ready to take your questions. Ally, would you please open the lines?

Ken, in your prepared remarks, in discussing the Process Equipment and with regards to the backlog being up 8%. You talked about broadening your product offerings and that may be pushing down gross margin percentage a bit.

Was that in reference to the backlog as well? Did some of that backlog revenue likely to be lower gross margin going forward?

No, it really wasn't. That certainly wasn't a big driver in there.

I just wanted to alert investors to the fact that as we, particularly in the K-Tron business, do more system selling, there are times where part of that system which we will sell involve some things we'll buy from others. But that is not a big driver and they're certainly not the primary driver in the backlog.

The big drivers are simply the business opportunities are robust and our company's are taking care of it.

Yes. And I would just quickly add to that, Dan, that I did mention in my remarks that we expect gross margins for Process Equipment Group on an annual basis to be just slightly lower than they were last year.

So pretty much in line.

Fair enough. What are you seeing in terms of trends so far into Q2, only a month in obviously, but in terms of caskets and casketed deaths versus the double-digit decline in unit volumes in the first quarter?

Well, obviously, we can't give any information on what the actual results were during that period, for obvious reasons. But as we look at -- we look at Center for Disease Control and what they're seeing and our teams have some pretty robust capabilities there.

We have not yet seen the spike that one would expect in what is a big flu year. Although somewhat contradictorily, the CDC is seeing a high mortality rate, meaning that when deaths are reported, a large percentage of them come from pneumonia and influenza.

So that could be an indication that whatever strain is there has a certain level of mortality and morbidity. But that has not turned into a larger number of deaths.

For those industrial folks who are on the call now that you just have to get used to some of these discussions, about death trends and death rates. I think what that could imply, although the numbers aren't in yet from CDC, what it could imply is that while the flu is having some effect, that underlying things or other conditions which caused greater numbers of death are not present.

There's a lot of moving parts in trying to predict what's happening in deaths and one of the biggest ones is the increases in the effectiveness of healthcare. As healthcare gets better especially emergency care and treatment of heart disease and cancer, life is being extended.

One of the things that you often hear us say in this type of environment is that, while the death numbers can bounce around from time to time, ultimately, they move back toward the norm. Demographics are very powerful here.

And whatever happened short term, doesn't imply a pass for any of us. It's merely a deferral in time.

Kim Dennis is here, the President of Batesville. I don't know if I covered the things that you guys are seeing or if you want to add something to it.

Yes, I think so. And, Dan, I know one of the things that we've discussed before and that we do continue to look at is what are the long-term trends.

And if you were to look back historically, over the last 3, 5, 10 years, you would see very consistent trends around how, for the full year, deaths really kind of return to the norm even though we see a spike in this from quarter-to-quarter or even several quarters in a row. Typically over a 12-month period, those return to the norms that we've seen over -- very consistently over the last 10 years.

Understood, appreciate it. And then obviously, Ken, you typically managed your capacity very closely.

Are you looking at taking out incrementally additional capacity given the short-term declines, or do you feel like you're at a reasonable level right now?

Well, we don't let short-term movements over a couple of quarters make those decisions but we do project long-term. In fact, Kim is taking some actions there recently.

I'll let her explain them.

Yes, you may have seen that we did make some adjustments to our capacity and as we -- we constantly assess the amount of capacity that we have versus what we think the long-term demand for the industry are versus our capability to have flexible production to adjust to seasonality and those types of things. Our recent adjustment to capacity may have been more visible because it affected a shift.

But we, very frequently, adjust our capacity through overtime, down days, Saturday production, short shift, long shift, all those types of things to accommodate demand. And we do that very consistently, so that we maintain a very consistent level of inventory and customer fill rates in the marketplace.

First question just on the Process Equipment Group and the increase in outsourced components. I wondered, is that a trend that we would expect to see in the next couple of quarters as well or is it more of a seasonal trend?

Or is it impossible to know, I guess?

Well, Joe Raver is on the line from Switzerland and I'll let him -- he's the President of that group, I'll let him answer. Joe?

Clint, well, a couple of thoughts. One is, this is a trend, a trend towards larger systems sales that we've been experiencing particularly K-Tron over the last couple of years.

And so we expect to continue to see more larger system sales going forward. Historically, those have been a little bit lower margin because we have more buyouts, where we're buying some components from other people.

Also part of our strategy is to acquire different parts and pieces of that system over time and K-Tron has a history of doing that. So as Cindy mentioned earlier, we don't expect big impact for the balance of the year.

And while this isn't part of our strategy going forward, we work very hard to maintain the margins that we currently have going forward. So I wouldn't expect a big shift in margin for the group over the coming year or even farther into the future given this strategy.

Clint, it's Ken. One of the points also, we look at the margins on, for example, our core machines and on our ware parts, which is a significant part of those businesses in the Process Equipment Group.

And those margins, absent the little spike last year for updating to the latest load cell technology and controllers in the K-Tron business. Those margins remain very, very solid.

What you're seeing is just the added sales of some of our buyout products themselves have a slightly lower margin.

You guys saw a nice backlog growth during the quarter. Just any other additional color that you can maybe share with us on how your customers are -- the demand that you're seeing from them either by geography or either by just maybe, as Joe referenced a second ago, maybe the size of the equipment or the amount of purchases that they may be considering given the volatility that we've seen in the headlines, especially Europe, during the quarter?

Joe?

Yes. Clint, it's Joe again.

We saw some of that volatility in Europe as well, and we're working with customers to try to help them be able to meet capacity and run their businesses as well as possible. The thing that we've really experienced some upside on is the geographic expansion, which we've talked about over the course of the last few quarters as part of our strategy.

So we've experienced good growth and expanding to new geographies. We also constantly work to identify attractive end industries and target those industries with solutions that will help them be more efficient.

And so we've seen some positive moves in the food industry, we've also seen some positive moves in energy. And so -- we've seen it across a variety of industries but it's the emerging middle class, the emerging economies where we've been having more success over the last few quarters and we expect that to continue.

That's helpful. And then, I guess, switching over to the Batesville segment, just a couple of questions there.

I think you guys have covered a lot of the color around the volumes. I wonder if the one comment that, I guess, seemed new was your comment both in your filing last night and in your prepared remarks around seeing some of your customers buying in advance of the price increases.

Is that something that you typically see them doing in the months leading up to October?

Clint, it's Kim. Yes, this is something that we typically see in the fourth quarter of each year.

I will say that we saw a good amount of it this year. And typically, as Ken mentioned, that inventory bleeds off pretty quickly in the first quarter of the year because we see that spike in deaths and the spike in burial.

This year, just with the death rate down, the bleed off of that inventory was slightly lower.

Okay. Understood.

So was the price increase, any -- just comment on maybe how that has been received by your customers. And the advanced buying, is that skewed at all towards some of the larger publicly held companies?

No, no. And the price increase that we implemented was very consistent with what we have seen across the board from other competitors in the marketplace, and has been very consistently applied.

And generally, well implemented across the board as well, both with independent customers and our national customers. So there was not anything out of the ordinary with this year's price increase, not from a competitive standpoint nor an acceptance standpoint with customers.

And I would assume any advance buying is going to be done by either the larger public companies or even just the larger homes in general.

No, actually not the case. This was -- the advance buying is typically done by our independent funeral directors.

Okay. That's helpful.

And then last question, I know it's small but just any idea of how much revenue we might expect from the Endura this year?

Well, Clint, it's Ken. I'll help a little bit with that.

Certainly, more than last year. I've said many times, I'm not too happy with how -- with the pace at which that is going.

And as my guys will tell you, even to my face, because they know I'm frequently pleased but rarely satisfied. And I have been pleased with the way the Endura team ended last year and is starting this year.

I think they're getting some good traction. This is a slow to change industry.

We don't break that revenue down. When it gets to be big enough that it's a real needle mover, then we'll probably start doing something about chunking that out, so you can see it.

But right now, we don't. But my outlook has become much more bullish, I guess, I should say on that.

Currently, a small business but one with a -- well, I believe is a great future.

Cindy, I was wondering, Batesville casket sales were down $14 million year-over-year. I was wondering if you have that dollar breakdown between volume, price and currency?

Yes, sure. It's about -- volume is about $14.6 million.

Rate mix together are a positive $700,000. And then the FX impact was basically, it was just $100,000 and that was negative.

Okay. And then occasionally, you will talk about, in dollar amounts, about the impact of fuel and steel in the quarter.

We did -- fuel and steel this quarter were not big drivers. As big of drivers as they've been in the past so we did not identify specifically what those were.

Okay. So the higher raw material costs are really not that big a factor, it was mainly the lower volume?

Yes, yes. That's right.

As we go quarter-by-quarter, we're getting -- remember last year, we had several quarters where the comparison year-over-year was pretty negative, when you look at fuel and steel but now we're getting into a more consistent market.

Ken, I was wondering -- I know that you said as yet unexplained decline of the death rate. I mean, have you all -- or do you think there's any truth that the warm weather, that a lot of retailers kind of have complained about in terms of stocking the right kind of clothes in their stores.

Do you think that warm weather may have had an impact on the mortality rate?

I have to tell you I don't know. I will tell you when -- we're quant people here and when there's some anomaly in this, we begin to look for all sorts of things but not quite as far as global warming.

But one of the big drivers that we have begun to observe, although it's very difficult to quantify, you can see it in medical reports or articles, is that improvements in healthcare have been really significant over the last decade or so. As described to me by a cardiologist not long ago, he said in the past, a 50-year old that had a heart attack at a hospital had a 50-50 chance of making it.

Now, the EMT system, people just having an aspirin available, all those kinds of things seem to be extending life. And as a guy who's, as I described, on the back 9, although as someone who was wondering if that was really an 18-hole course or not when they look at me.

You start to think a little differently about that. So I'm actually very happy and I think we all are about the changes in healthcare.

But ultimately, what it does is it makes challenging for us quarter-by-quarter and year-by-year, to figure out what's likely to happen. But the end result is going to be the same.

And of course, we've left out of the discussion the demographics, which are when the baby boomers, which I'm on the leading -- of which I'm on the leading edge, beginning to meet our demise. Just looking at birth and immigration rates, that's going to make a big difference in funeral service.

I don't know if it's going to be this year, I don't think it's going to be longer than 5. But it's one of those things that we try to keep a close eye on.

But as you know, with your experience in this business, it's hard to do much about it. To get a handle on it short term.

Absolutely. It's just -- it's been -- it seems like the weather has been so anomalous from October through January, that you start -- you look for anomalies in the data, so do I.

And I'm just wondering if that maybe -- who knows, we'll see. Anyway, changing gears to the process side.

You commented that based on the backlog and the timing of orders that you expect the fourth quarter to be seasonally strong. I'm just wondering just with the addition of Rotex and with an additional 3 months of K-Tron, just sort of how the year is breaking out.

How should we think about the seasonality of the full 12 months? First quarter through fourth quarter in terms of the seasonal strength and weakness of the group overall?

Jamie, it's Joe. I think the driver is not really seasonality in the movement of revenue from quarter-to-quarter.

It's really more along an economic cycle or the size of specific jobs. And so we'll have some jobs that can be a $10-million job and that has a big impact on a quarterly basis, if one of the companies has a $10-million job, that's going to shift in a particular quarter.

And so really what we see is, if there is any seasonality, it's sort of swamped by the economic, the strength of the economy and just the size of orders and how they move and impact the quarters. Does that make sense?

Yes. Absolutely.

So I mean, in other words, what you're saying is when you guys commented on the, first, the expected strength of the fourth quarter, that was based on the specifics of what's in your backlog rather than broader seasonality. Okay, I got that.

Joe, you're online from Europe, what's your sense of kind of the attitude of your customers vis-à-vis the broader economy? I mean, are people as nervous as they were this summer or people kind of getting numb to the headlines?

Well, think people are certainly numb to the headlines. There's no doubt about that.

No, I think recently with some of the actions of the European Central Bank, some of that movement we've seen from Germany in that regard. I think there's certainly been an easing of the concern that a lot of people have here, and I think there's a lot more confidence that the euro will stay intact and the European Union and the Eurozone will muddle through.

Still some long-term structural issues that need to be solved. But I think everyone has taken a little bit of a breather and feel like there's been some relief in the last several weeks.

So I think the mood has improved. We saw a little tick up in the Purchasing Managers Index in December.

So I think -- it's not rocketing up but I think certainly, the mood has improved here in Europe.

Given the strategic importance of your non-casket business and the very important announcement on the 23rd of Scott's coming with you folks,it seems reasonable to me to look at the timetable of the K-Tron and subsequently Rotex acquisitions. And given that Scott and Joe looked at 700 companies and therefore, this is -- are in motion.

Do you have any comments as to your expected timetable for future acquisition, corporate development activities, which could play a very important part, I think, or is it too early to ask the question?

Well, John, what we do is make a practice of limiting our comments on acquisition partly because a comment for could end up -- if we give a hint of something that's in the works, it could end up not coming through and then people are disappointed and feel misled. Or if you get into practice of commenting on it.

When we're saying, there's nothing, then when there is, you kind of have the implication there of lawyers tell us about announcing that. But I will say that you could certainly -- we didn't entice Scott George here because he needed something new to do or because he wanted to move to a little town in Indiana.

We are -- and will I also tell you that our efforts, the work that we're doing and in talking to and evaluating lots of businesses around the world, it's certainly undiminished. And as soon as I know something, you guys will know as well.

Once again, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again in May for next quarter's call.

Have a great rest of the week.