By James Caldwell, PWTorch.com assistant editor

WWE reported declining fourth quarter financial results today and the company is attributing the decline to three main areas: PPV business declining, poor foreign exchange rates from international business, and excessive staffing costs.

WWE CEO Linda McMahon, CFO George Barrios, and COO Donna Goldsmith hosted WWE's quarterly conference call with investors this morning to explain the company's results and discuss future changes to help the company return to profitability.

CFO George Barrios spoke repeatedly about the company not being able to control current economic conditions, which had an adverse effect on the company's finances and growth.

The key factor out of WWE's control, which was repeated several times, was unfavorable exchange rates converting money earned internationally into a weak U.S. dollar. WWE estimates $4.0 million of revenue was lost from unfavorable exchange rates.

As far as PPV business goes, WWE acknowledged the across-the-board decline in PPV revenue from fourth quarter 2007 to the same period in 2008. Linda McMahon said early in the conference they were considering cutting the number of PPVs to 12 per year. Later in the call, George Barrios said they had no intention of changing the PPV structure.

WWE believes they stabilized PPV business in the first-half of 2008, but they were alarmed by the 11 percent drop in revenue during the fourth quarter.

Barrios said that trying to predict the future of whether the economy will turn around to help boost PPV business "isn't a winner's game." They're going to keep focusing on what they can control, which is "really interesting storylines on the shows." (Apparently that means more McMahons all the time on TV.)

For the third key area of cutting office staffing, WWE talked about restructuring their international offices. They closed offices in Brazil and Canada, and are "centralizing" international operations in the U.K., Mexico City, and China. U.K. is being leaned on heavily for marketing and international distribution.

Donna Goldsmith said they took the U.K. office and made a "conscious decision for people there to manage the globe." Barrios said the "total investment internationally hasn't changed in people or dollars."

In other words, WWE is still retaining similar number of international office staff, but realigning their work force to work more efficiently from centralized offices.

There were plenty more items of note from DVD business, home video, Mattel vs. Jakks, etc. that I will report on throughout the day from the WWE Executives conference call. This was a summary of the key takeaway points from listening to the conference call.

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