I welcome all of you to our annual employee meeting. As the CEO of Colton Produce I enjoy taking time to reflect on our past performance and set goals for the upcoming year. Our expansion into the Canadian market combined with the recent reorganization of our frozen foods division has boosted company revenue. Despite this, we failed to meet our projected earnings. We need to face the facts. Satan really hurt our 4th quarter profits.

Some of you may have heard the saying "the devil is in the details". In this case, the actual Devil is in our details -- assuming the terrifying form of a 17% drop in our compound annual growth rate.

I see some of you rolling your eyes out there. You are probably thinking "last quarter he blamed new federal quality guidelines and now it's Beelzebub? When will this guy quit making excuses?" I just have to call it as I see it folks, and I refuse to waste time speculating about possible management mishaps when Lucifer is clearly to blame.

We are not certain why our company has drawn the burning gaze of the Great Horned One. We have consulted with several religious leaders and received varying feedback. But we have concluded that this has absolutely nothing to do with our most recent management retreat to Las Vegas. What is certain is that our stock price cannot tolerate another quarter of Satan's merciless wrath.

I also realize that some of you are hesitant to place blame on a specific deity, especially when our company boasts employees from every major religious group. Why aren't we blaming Osiris, Iblis, or even Crnobog? If there is one thing I learned at Harvard Business School it was to clearly recognize the cloven hoof prints of El Diablo on our SEC Form 10-Q report. Our failure to follow generally accepted accounting practices is nothing if not a mark of The Beast.

As for you atheists, we'll see how long you can maintain disbelief as you to watch the value of your 401K plunge faster than the spirits of the damned as they are consumed by the burning lakes of Hell.

Why is it that people are willing to attribute famine, demonic possessions, and even acts of terrorism on the Fiery Underlord, but hesitate to assign blame when foreign competitors begin edging us out of the low end perishable goods market? Folks, this is just another weapon in Old Scratch's arsenal!

Like he once encouraged Eve to take a bite out of the apple, Satan now temps shareholders to take a bite out of the executive compensation plan. Don't be fooled by the Prince of Darkness! To paraphrase a wise French poet, "the greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing shareholders he isn't responsible for a lagging product distribution schedule."

So, what do we plan to do about this? It is too early to announce anything definite, but I can hint that we have opened talks with a certain 'fallen angel' investor. We are slaving away to finalize an agreement for meeting forecasted sales revenue in exchange for some long term commitments by our executive staff. Believe me when I tell you that we are all putting our souls into this negotiation.

I share this grim news while still maintaining a very optimistic outlook for the upcoming year. We will continue building a solid international foundation to enable our execution of long-term strategic plans and the realization of tremendous growth opportunities. I just urge you to have a contingency plan should these efforts be hampered by economic repercussions from the U.S. housing market slowdown, or the malevolent influence of Satan's dark minions.

With that, I'll turn the stage over to Jack, our VP of Sales. I believe he has regrettable news to share about the loss of some key customers and an uprising of the flesh eating undead.