Mike Mathias: Hi, Jay. Thanks. Yes. Just to confirm the cadence of revenue that applies to our Q1 guidance. So coming out of December and ICR, we talked about quarter-to-date, at that point, we were negative 3% brand revenue. But we did message that January we saw some uptick in trend at that point. That continued through the rest of the month, letting us to a minus 2% brand outcome for the fourth quarter. And then that trend actually has continued through February. So the combined January, February result here has had some consistency to it, which is giving us confidence in this flat to up low single-digit guidance. And then for gross margin, yes, we’re looking for a range of similar to last year — or not range, but our guidance of similar to last year income on that flat to low single-digit revenue implies some gross margin improvement.
I think we’re still looking at some freight headwinds from last year that we recaptured obviously, the air freight in Q4 and some other freight headwinds, expecting some of that to come through in the first quarter again. So definitely some improvement — a bit of improvement assumed in our gross margin within that similar to last year income guide.
Jay Sole: Yes, okay. That’s very helpful. Thank you.
Operator: The next question is from Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.
Matthew Boss: Great. Thanks. Jen, maybe could you elaborate on early spring selling trends that you’re seeing across categories? Maybe if we touched on both the American Eagle brand and also Aerie?
Jen Foyle: Sure. Hi, Matt. How are you? As I mentioned on my last answer, it’s nice to see comps in both brands. We’re getting better quarter-over-quarter starting in Q3. So I’m excited about that. Look, it’s early on, it’s February, but I have to say that there’s a lot of encouragement from the teams. AE, I’d like to reflect on American Eagle for a minute. First of all, we’ve really assembled a world-class team here. I’m very proud of the work they’ve done. And we’ve been up to really rightsizing that business. And during these tough times, it allowed us to do so while also protecting our bottom line, as you can see. But we’ve been up to building a profitable base, a healthy customer base. I think that’s the most important thing I can articulate right now in the American Eagle side.
We had a lot of customers in the past that only came to our brand once, and they were promotional customers. We’re up to getting the best customers in our brands. So starting with American Eagle, I think we’re really here. I think we’ve right sided the business, and now we’re looking for growth opportunities. So early on, Matt, we launched 24/7, and another new line, 77. But let me take a step back to say that women’s, we’re starting to see a nice turn here I think we’re getting into the right balance of the assortments, and I just really want to highlight that it is about the balance. Denim had been a little softer, but we saw the trends happening out there and other bottoms. And I think the teams did a nice job adjusting and really going after, and we’re starting to see some nice results there as well as just outfitting.
Now we’re seeing great tops come to life. Our tops business has turned around in women’s, which is so exciting to see. And then in Men, just going back to we’re learning, men’s, that customer is a little slower to take off. But I like some of the early reads in our new 24/7 athletic business as well as 77 is a little bit of a surprise, it’s premium denim. We really worked on it. We wanted to perfect that line. We believed in a higher-priced business. We own denim as a company and why not service a new customer? And early reads have been spectacular. So we have two new potential growth vehicles for the company as well as it’s just nice to see women’s that business round out that — and all that I can say is, because of our test and scale and our logistics platform and our ability to get goods here, we’re pretty pleased on how we can chase these goods and get back into business on the American Eagle side.
