So we think that weather story will help us a little bit. The hot summer will help us as we move through the beginning of Q4. And then we’ll move into a normal weather pattern as we as we go through Q2 and the rest of the year.
Christopher Horvers: Got it? And then — okay, got it. So the 7% was total. So the comp side of it [ph] for me was more like a 5%, I guess. Is that right? And then as you think about ’24, any other high level comments? I know you don’t guide. Jamere, you talked about some LIFO tailwinds that, persist early, and then probably turn to some year-over-year headwinds. Anything else to think about in the P&L in terms of SG&A per store, or other comments on gross margin and so forth? Thank you.
Jamere Jackson: Yeah. So as we think about FY24, I think there are a handful of dynamics that you need to sort of wrap your mind around as you build your models. Number one, we’re forecasting a very consistent and resilient DIY business. And Phil and Bill talked about some of those dynamics as part of their prepared comments. The second dynamic that we’re focused on, as Phil alluded to, is an improving growth profile in our commercial business, again, we were very pleased with where we exited the fourth quarter. I believe we got the momentum going into the first quarter and next year. I think the third dynamic that you mentioned is around LIFO. We’ve got $59 million of LIFO that we expect to largely get back through the P&L.
So as you’re working your way through your modeling, you can expect most, if not all of that, to come back to us this year. And then from an expense profile standpoint we said longer term SG&A will grow in line with sales. We are an investment mode, particularly in IT in some of the areas that are underpinning some of the growth initiatives that we’re talking about. So that’s how I focus. And then the last one I just mentioned is just on — from an international standpoint. You’ve seen us post our international numbers. This morning, we’ve got two years, quite frankly, where the business has been on fire. And we’re very excited about the growth profile in our international business. So as you think about where we are, we feel good about the growth prospects going forward.
We think, from a margin standpoint, we’ve made tremendous strides in gross margin excluding LIFO. And we’ve got a consistent, resilient domestic DIY business, which still is the lion’s share of our businesses as we move forward.
Christopher Horvers: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Michael Lasser with UBS. Your line is live.
Henry Carr : Hi, this is Henry Carr on behalf of Michael Lasser. Good morning, and thanks for taking our question. We’ve been hearing about elevated levels of deferred maintenance and weak car counts in the industry. When thinking about returning to a sustainable high single digit or low double digit growth in commercial, how are you factoring in this occurrence, is it a reaffirmed goal? And is there any way to quantify it?
Bill Rhodes: Yeah, we don’t have terrific data on that. Obviously, we’re in our commercial customer shops all the time. And we’re hearing the same things. Frankly, we’ve been hearing it since about February that car counts are down, particularly for people that are in the tire business. And as you know, when a technician takes off a tire, it provides a whole another opportunity for sales. You get a chance to see what’s going on with the braking systems and chassis systems and the like. So we don’t have a great history on what are the exact members, but we think it is — has been a softer environment. I think some of that has to do with the economic challenges that we’re seeing. We haven’t operated in the commercial business at this level for a long period of time.
So we don’t know the cycles like we do in the DIY business. But I think our belief is when economic pressures happen we get trade down from DIY to DIFM or sorry, from DIFM to DIY in certain cases. And I suspect that’s what we’re experiencing now. How long will that last? You tell me what the economic cycle is going to look like. And again, we have a lot of discussions about short term sales performance. Our focus is not on the short term sales performance. Our focus is on what are we doing in our business to make our business better competitively? And how are we going to grow sales and share profitably over the long term?
Henry Carr : Thank you. And just as a quick follow up, I believe the mega hubs came in at 13 in fourth quarter, and if I’m not mistaken that might be a little bit short of where you were targeting for ’22 to ’25 for full year, fiscal year ’23. Are most of these openings just going to roll into 2023? Is there another way we should think about it? Thank you.
Bill Rhodes: You want me to do Jamere’s performance review in public?
Jamere Jackson: I was just going to say, did he pay you to ask that question? So obviously, store development falls under my purview. We are short of where we need to be and when Phil and Bill talked about things that we need to execute better on, certainly what we’re doing from a store development standpoint, fits squarely in that category. As I said, last quarter, we got 20 open this past fiscal year. We would have liked that number to be closer to 25. But what I’ll tell you is that our pipeline is very strong as we move into FY24. And we’re committed to get to the 200 number. So you’ll see us start to accelerate that mega hub target. And it’s important for our business. It’s important not just for the commercial business, but also for the DIY business, because of the outsized growth that we see in our mega hubs. So we’re working our way through it, and we’ll get better as we move forward.
Henry Carr : Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Your line is live.
Seth Basham: Thanks a lot, and good morning. My question is also on the commercial business, just in terms of where you’re not getting as much share, as you expected. Is it in more in the national accounts versus [indiscernible] security accounts? Are there any specific regions that are underperforming your expectations?
Philip Daniele: Yeah, I mean, there’s — the national account versus what we call the UDS account or the general repair shop down the street, the business growth between the two has been pretty consistent. Frankly, I will say within some of those national accounts, I think it’s been more around two segments that have not performed as well for us recently. One is the used car market, kind of the buy-here, pay-here, growth has not been as good and the used car markets that are sold within new car dealerships, those markets haven’t been as good for us. And like Bill mentioned earlier, the groups that deal with tires have been softer. We didn’t have a great winter. Those tire changes, going from a summer tire to a winter tire and vice versa, didn’t happen like you would normally expect.
