Jay Schottenstein: I’ll have the second part first. Yes, it’s more of a — we’re not providing specific revenue guidance in that color. It’s just to make the point that we can expand operating rate, leverage expenses on just that level of modest sales growth next year based on how plans are coming together. And then quarter-to-date, it’s comps are similar. So we’re providing guidance at similar on top of the 5% we just achieved in Q3. Right now, we’re only a few weeks into the quarter. We’ve got only about 20% of our revenue in the big weeks really to start now, but we’re within the guidance, expecting similar type results for the brand. And I think on operating leverage, I think, look, this year on the low to mid-single-digit comps that we’re guiding to the year, we’re going to expand operating rate by 100 basis points to 150 basis points.
As we get to early next year, provide color and guidance specifically for 2024 in March, we’ll provide some level of expected leverage on varying revenue results. Again, the initial color is just to make the point that we see opportunity to leverage and expand gross margin, expand operating rate by leveraging expenses across the P&L, not just in gross margin like we’ve been able to do in the back half of this year. And that’s, again, just an early indications and early color on what we have — our line of sight into ’24. We’ll provide more specifics on investor meeting.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jonna Kim with TD Cowen.
Unidentified Analyst : This is Katie on for Jonna. I just wanted to dig in a little bit to the intimates category and how you’re thinking about Aerie’s brand positioning there as well as the performance within intimates. I know you mentioned market share was pretty consistent across bras, I believe. And then just briefly — I’m sorry if I missed this, but can you talk a little bit about traffic trends through the quarter?
Jen Foyle: Great question. I mentioned we’re holding our own in the intimates category as far as market share with it’s an $80 billion opportunity and we’re only just scratching the surface here. I will say that when we launch new idea, so SMOOTHEZ is now a cornerstone of our business, and we added on to that category in Q3, we win, right? So the customer trusts us in this category. They love the way it feels on their body. It totally represents our brand platform. So more to come there. I think we have now a jumping off point to really sort of compete on our terms. And it’s just — again, it totally fits the bill as far as what Ares up to on a day in and day out this is what we do, right? We make women feel great about themselves and SMOOTHEZ does that.
So more to come there. Look, the bra business has changed. It’s not what it used to be. And the one thing I can promise you is the design team and the merchant teams are constantly thinking of new ways to entertain this customer and we have so much in store for the future that I really believe that we’re going to really compete again on our terms. That’s what counts. How it fits into the bill of our brand platform and how we show up with product categories and more to come. But I can’t share all my secrets. I guess that’s what I’m saying. But I think there’s lots of opportunity as far as the market space. It’s been underserved, and we’re going to serve up to our customers what she’s demanding.
Jay Schottenstein: Traffic was healthy throughout the quarter. We saw positive traffic across brands and channels, so both in stores and in digital. And this is sort of kudos to the team. Within our profit improvement work, we’re not looking at reducing marketing expense, but we’ve done a ton of work to optimize how we’re spending media to drive healthier and more qualified traffic. And then we’re actually seeing significant benefits to digital conversion, especially really conversion in both channels, but the work that David and team are doing on the digital side to convert that traffic and make AB testing, making continual changes to our customer journey and how we’re messaging the customers we’re seeing the digital benefits. So we’ve got a lot of work happening on driving healthy traffic and then a lot of work happening on converting that traffic, and we’re seeing those benefits to the back half and believe that’s going to continue into next year as well.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Corey Tarlowe with Jefferies.
Corey Tarlowe : Jen, you talked about our growing customer fleet either file, excuse me, I believe it’s now over $10 million. Could you maybe provide a little bit more color as to what you think the major drivers of that are? Perhaps contextualize the growth that you’ve seen in this customer file and how that’s benefiting the overall enterprise?
Jen Foyle: Sure. Sorry, let me just reiterate that both brands are customer file groups. So really exciting to see AE take a position on growth as far as not even just their comps, but their file and Aerie grew nicely. Both brands are just really dominating on a 360 approach to marketing. So not only are we spending on performance. In fact, when we spend on performance marketing, we ensure that it delivers a return on investment because it’s an easy game to go out there and overspend on performance and dominate. It’s not that easy to have a 360 approach to marketing, right? So that means when we think about what we did actually, coincidentally, but not so when we had installations in the meatpacking district in Aerie, and in AE, we took over that district in New York City.
