Item 7A. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK

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The Company’s exposure to market risk for changes in interest rates relates primarily to our investment portfolio and long-term debt obligations. We place our investments with high-quality credit issuers and, by policy, limit the amount of credit exposure to any one issuer. Our first priority is to reduce the risk of principal loss. Consequently, we seek to preserve our invested funds by limiting default risk, market risk, and reinvestment risk. We mitigate default risk by investing in only high-quality credit securities that we believe to be low risk and by positioning our portfolio to respond appropriately to a significant reduction in a credit rating of any investment issuer or guarantor. The portfolio includes only marketable securities with active secondary or resale markets to ensure portfolio liquidity. We believe an immediate 100-basis-point move in interest rates affecting our floating and fixed rate financial instruments as of April 30, 2012 would have no material effect on pretax earnings.

In the past, we have used derivative instruments such as options and futures to hedge against the volatility of gasoline cost and were at risk for possible changes in the market value of those derivative instruments. No such derivative instruments were used during fiscal year 2012, 2011, or 2010. However, we do from time to time, participate in a forward buy of certain commodities, primarily cheese and coffee.

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