Leland J. Hein – President & CEO
Well. Things have changed. If you look at the big players and whoever you throw into that group, we have all grown nicely so maybe we’ve gone from 25% market share to 28 or 30. So it has consolidated but pretty slow rate when you look at us, MFC and Granger combined, there’s others I know. But our growth is probably 10% if you add us all. Takes one time to consolidate the industry. It’s always been competitive and I think it’ll remain competitive but I think there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity out there. We think that the opportunity is as good as it’s ever been. That’s why we’re so focused as Leland J. Hein – President & CEO talked about staying close to our customers using our same day store model to grow our business and take market share.
Willard D. Oberton – Chairman
Alright good. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from the lineman Adam Omen with Cleve and research. Your line is open
Adam Omen – Cleve and research
Hi guys. Good morning. Can we go through the cash flow outlook for next year. Pretty good job this year i guess doing doing cash conversion i guess. And I think that you’re thinking about Kafex. What are you thinking from the inventory side??
Daniel L. Florness – Chief Financial Officer
Our Kafex will drop as we go into the new year. The number i expect to be setting out in our annual report a number of around 150 plus surmise 5 million. & I think we’re positioned well. I think we’re in a good position to manage the working capital needs. The biggest component we need there will be more on the AR side than in the inventory Because I expect our business to keep growing nicely. And i think it puts us in a great position to generate very very strong cash flow. And our operating cash flow this year was even high by our norm as we basically had operating cash essentially in line with earnings. Part of that was the fact that our friend in Washington D.C strive to continue the bonus depreciation and a few other things there so we didn’t get that tax bill coming. And that defers that off. But really a strong cash flow year and I think we have a great position for next year. Because a lot of those investments are in the rear-view mirror rather than the wind shield.
Adam Omen – Cleve and research
Okay thanks. And then clarification on the financial times, that’s still not clear to me. We had 2% of your rear growth in December on FTE. And i was wondering how you think about that ? You know the first half of the next year we’re going to bounce back to the 10-15 % that was mentioned earlier. We’re gonna remain in the single digits and wrap back up at the store level. You know the total head count growth on the FTE basis. Your view in December, we stay there ?
Daniel L. Florness – Chief Financial Officer
Yeah you really have to discount a lotta what the year over year numbers are in November and December. Because the November & December of tthe year ago, as we touched upon that earlier, we were in this massive wrap up stage and we kept the hours just dialled up. Because we wanted to get our sales people out of the store, selling. And this year as we managed through it we were able to dial down the part time hours. In November and in December and that prized EFT and one of the reasons I put that bulletin on page one was really to talk about ‘ hey on the headline it looks like we dropped our hours, our numbers at the store. Our FTE did go down as we dialed down the hours but we actually added people. And so coming into January & February that will dial back up because we have the need.
Leland J. Hein – President & CEO
And when we looked at trying to normalize taking note to people going home from the holidays and all that we’re in the high single digits. I think we have 8-9% more selling energy if everybody was at work all week long. And that’s a little lower than we want but it’s in the neighborhood. Makes sense Adam??
Adam Omen – Cleve and research
Yeah so we kinda get back to that normalized 8-9% then maybe grow from there as you have need
