A – Billy Gifford: Well, certainly we’ve highlighted for you Bonnie that we’ll be investing behind the NJOY brand as we expand distribution and have equity spending. I think the other thing is, look, the economy is very dynamic right now, and we’ve highlighted for you that the adult cigarette consumer is under extreme pressures, and we want the flexibility to adapt to them and be there for our consumers if necessary. So I think we’ll see how the economy progresses and we’ll see how the adult cigarette consumer returns to, if you will, more of a comfortable position from an economic standpoint.
Bonnie Herzog: Okay, I guess that makes sense. I mean, you have flexibility with some of your investments. So I’m curious, just Billy, can you give us a sense of how much you expect your investment to step up this year versus last year?
Billy Gifford: Yes, I won’t go into details just for competitive reasons. Certainly we’ll be, as I mentioned, really enhancing the brand equity to increase awareness amongst both adult vapors and adult cigarette consumers, and then we’ll be looking for distribution. So both, filling distribution gaps, as well as improving the visibility of ACE in stores where it’s currently distributed and then expanding to new stores.
Bonnie Herzog: Okay. And then just maybe one final question for me, just on the relative price gaps which continue to widen. I guess I think it’s now the widest it’s been for maybe 15 years. I know I’ve asked you this before, but given it keeps widening, I guess I’d like to hear how your strategy might be changing, given the costs you just mentioned on the consumer and then what the deep discount manufacturers are doing. Just curious to hear how flexible you might be with your pricing promo strategy and then certainly, your strategy behind leveraging Marlboro Black to potentially minimize down trading. Thanks, Billy.
A – Billy Gifford: Yes, thanks. And I’ll be careful to not talk about future pricing, but I think you can see like going from first to second quarter. We highlighted for you some areas of where we thought additional investment was necessary and you saw the significant result of those Marlboro increasing a tent sequentially. So we want that flexibility, but I would remind you that the RGM tools, so that price gap that you’re seeing is on a national basis, and the RGM tools that we have in the advanced analytics allows us to monitor that price gap down to a very, very low level and we can be efficient with spend and even move spend around if necessary, around the U.S. So that’s how we’re thinking about it. From a standpoint of Marlboro itself, you see it continues to grow in the premium segment.
It’s performing very well. And as I highlighted for Pamela, we’ve seen instances of this in the history of when the consumer is under pressure that you see discount grow, you see premium from a total industry perspective, and then you see that moderate through time.
Bonnie Herzog: Thank you.
A – Billy Gifford: Thank you.
Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Vivien Azer with TD Cowen.
Vivien Azer: Good morning.
A – Billy Gifford: Good morning.
Vivien Azer: So I’d like to start on your oral tobacco margins, please. Quite nice to see some year-over-year improvement given kind of the multiyear degradation we’ve seen in support of on! So Sal, I was wondering, can you just comment on how we should think about margins for oral tobacco in the back half? Thanks.
