THE CFO From Kent Kleeberger Chief Financial Officer As I pen my first CFO letter, it is appropriate to reflect on the strengths that initially attracted me  to the company. DOLLAR TREE STORES, INC. • 2004 ANNUAL REPORT 5 Kent Kleeberger Chief Financial Officer I look forward to serving you in the future. Our most important goal is to grow sales and earnings. A key part of our strategy to accomplish this is to open new stores, better and more efficiently. We continue to refine our real estate processes and we believe we have opportunities and the tools to open new stores more productively. You may also  be assured that we will keep a watchful eye on our expenses and we expect to lower our store construc- tion costs through competitive bidding and value engineering. The results will be improved profitability Over the past three years, Dollar Tree has made substantial investments in infrastructure to build for the future. While these investments have challenged our operating margins over the past 18 months, we are well positioned to improve store productivity and improve upon processes. Major investments in POS technology and logistics have been completed. With the completion of our POS initiative last year, we now have visibility to product sales by store enabling us to get the right product, in the right quantity to the stores that can sell it. This will help drive store productivity and increase inventory turns. We com- pleted the last phase of our logistics network last year, opening two new distribution centers. Our logistics network is now in place to efficiently deliver product anywhere in the country. With these major invest- ments behind us, we expect to see operating profits improve, especially into the second half of 2005. We successfully completed our first year’s compli- ance efforts under the requirements of Sarbanes- Oxley legislation. It has come at a tremendous expense to us and other public companies. However, as a share- holder of Dollar Tree, you should feel encouraged that our efforts toward SOX compliance were no less than 100%. The fruits of our labor resulted in a “clean  bill of health” with no material weaknesses and no  significant deficiencies noted in our accounting and reporting processes that remained un-remediated. But the real benefit to Dollar Tree was the enhancement and, in some cases, the introduction of new financial controls and disciplines, which are often overlooked  or assigned a lower priority in high-growth environ- ments. Let me assure you that we will not rest on our 2004 efforts. It starts with the tone at the top, and  we will continue to focus our efforts to ensure that processes and policies are in place and under continual scrutiny to ensure the Company’s adherence to all statutory and GAAP requirements and the continued integrity of our financial reporting. and a significant increase in cash. We will continue  to self-fund our future store growth and infrastructure needs from internally generated cash. These attributes remain firmly in place today  just as they were back in July 2004 when I started here, and now I am even more convinced that we have the opportunity to grow at a premium rate  when compared to other retailers. Here is why . . . . • Plenty of room for future growth • A strong financial position with a cash rich  balance sheet • A proven financial track record • A great store economic model • Dollar Tree has a successful and experienced  management team