Steve Lawrence: Yeah. I’ll just emphasize one point that I think was embedded in what Carl said. Probably one of the best things that we can do to help combat this because, he’s right, it is a problem that everybody is facing, is to staff our stores and make sure we’ve got people there who are helping out the customers, who are around. And that’s something we’ve been committed to, and I think that’s been a help as we’ve been navigating some of these shrink trends that people have been fighting against.
Jacquelyn Sussman: Got it. Super helpful. And speaking of staffing stores, as you start the holiday season, are you seeing just any pressure on wages or labor hours? How are we thinking about that in terms of potential SG&A spend in the quarter relative to your pre-COVID trends? Thanks so much.
Steve Lawrence: Yeah. Certainly, if you look at our hourly wages versus pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, they’re up for everybody. We feel like we’ve done a really good job of keeping pace, if not maybe doing a little better in terms of the increases. We’re not having any trouble getting help candidly. We’ve got a really good energized team of people that are out there. We feel like we’re appropriately staffed. But yes, definitely, wages are up versus where they were pre-pandemic.
Jacquelyn Sussman: Great. Thanks so much.
Steve Lawrence: Thanks, Jackie.
Operator: Our next question is from Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Nathan Friedman: Yeah. Hi, there. This is Nathan Friedman on for Seth. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I think you mentioned that your average ticket was trending higher year-over-year in this quarter. And I know that you mentioned being more promotional and having some higher clearance. But just curious what kind of trends you’re seeing. Is there like any evidence of trade-down within your categories? Any color here would be appreciated.
Steve Lawrence: I’ll start with the trade down question. We haven’t seen — that’s one of the things we talked a little bit about on the last quarter’s call was last year — last quarter, we thought we saw a little bit of trade-down from our lower end consumer into maybe a lower end retailer in terms of trip consolidation. We haven’t seen that this quarter. Conversely, we also haven’t seen any trade-down, we think, from other retailers into us. So I don’t think we’re losing customers. I don’t think we’re necessarily gaining any trade-down. That being said, one of the things that I think is helping us with that is, we’ve done a really good job over the past four or five years in regards to building out our better, best end of our assortment.
So what that really allows the customer to do is to trade down within our store. So building out the higher end bats and gloves that Carl was just talking about, if a customer doesn’t want to spend $300 or $400 for a Marucci bat, we have other options for them to trade to versus having to go to another retailer. So we think that’s helping us on that front. In terms of AUR, average ticket, our biggest challenge was more traffic. The average ticket was basically flattish, up slightly for the quarter. We continue to see AUR growth year-over-year and over a multiyear period. We anticipate that that’s going to continue. It’s not huge. It’s low-single digits. We think that will continue into Q4. And the promotional activity that we think is going to impact that, we have baked into our guidance.
Nathan Friedman: And my second question is, you mentioned some things associated with supply chain and vendor allowances that offset 12 basis points of shrink this quarter. I guess that would suggest that your supply chain tailwind benefits may be slowing down as you start to lap these tougher comparisons. One, is that true? And second, how are you thinking about the puts and takes here in fourth quarter with supply chain and your tougher — sort of tougher merchandise margin comparisons as well? Thanks very much.
Carl Ford: Yeah. It’s a good question, Nathan. So first and second quarter freight benefit was on around about 90 basis points each quarter, and we’ll have more detail in our 10-Q. But in the third quarter, it’s about an 80 basis point tailwind for us, so a little bit of lessening there. We talked about — we didn’t really start to see that benefit from a freight standpoint until the first quarter of this year. So we’re expecting tailwinds within the forecast that we — or the guidance that we put out there. We’re expecting tailwinds from a freight standpoint in the fourth quarter. But I think what you’re starting to see just beginning in the third quarter with that 10 basis point kind of drop-off, going from 90s in first and second quarter to 80 basis points in the third quarter, it’s a tailwind, but it’s beginning to lessen. But we really didn’t start to see the full weight of freight savings until first quarter of this year.
Nathan Friedman: Appreciate the time and happy holidays.
Carl Ford: Thank you.
Operator: We have time for one more question. Our next question comes from Cristina Fernandez with Telsey Group. Please proceed with your question.
Cristina Fernandez: Good morning and thank you for taking my question. I wanted to see if you can clarify on the sales guidance, you kept the comp range within the prior range but lowered the total sales outlook. So is that performance of new stores, the timing or the 53rd week? Can you clarify why that’s lower?
Steve Lawrence: It was primarily a reflection of what we’re seeing happening with the new store openings. We’ve had some — we’ve lost some sales where they slid out a week or two here or there. So that certainly impacts a little bit. Also, what we discussed on the call in terms of the performance of kind of the legacy heritage markets, new stores versus kind of the newer markets, so that’s the combination of those two things which drove that delta.
