Exhibit 99.02


         The Company incurred special items during the quarter, consisting
primarily of merger and restructuring costs, partially offset by income received
in conjunction with settlement of litigation arising from antitrust claims
against certain vitamin manufacturers for amounts overcharged in prior years.
Merger charges include such items as costs associated with exit and
consolidation of facilities as well as costs of integrating acquired businesses.
Restructuring charges primarily relate to decisions made by management to incur
costs to realign components of its business operations to meet current business
demands. On a net basis, these special items totaled $8.3 million ($4.9 million
after tax) versus $9.8 million ($6.4 million after tax) for the year-earlier
period. In the opinion of management, these items, by their nature, rarely have
predictable trends and are not truly reflective of ongoing operating results.
Therefore, the Company presents its results on both a GAAP basis (GAAP) and a
GAAP basis excluding these items ("adjusted").

         Management encourages readers to rely upon the GAAP numbers, but
includes the "adjusted" numbers as a supplemental metric to assist readers. It
should be noted that the items being adjusted from the GAAP results represent
actual income or expense to the Company. These items impact operating cash flow
available to support on-going operations. As such, these items are an important
component of the financial performance of the Company and any metric excluding
them will present an incomplete picture. Nevertheless, management uses
"adjusted" results to measure its performance, in addition to the GAAP results.
As the Company's core business is providing health care products and services to
the healthcare industry, management finds it useful to use a metric that is free
of charges and gains associated with restructuring, merger related activity and
litigation. While these may be recurring items for the Company, management
believes they are not reflective of the day-to-day offering of its products and
services and are related more to strategic, multi-year corporate actions that
tend to mask the trends and financial performance of the Company's products and
services. Management also believes that investors may also find an unmasked view
of the Company's core operations to be useful.