We’re hopeful to perform to the high end of that guidance, that would — that would really mean we need to improve our general merchandise business and continue to do that during the quarter and continue to have a good traffic trends in our grocery business. We’re cautiously optimistic that we can make that happen. But obviously, the key word is cautious at this point. That’s how our consumer is acting and given the importance of Q4 to the trend of the company. We’re certainly operating in that environment. We’re aiming to grow. We are doing the things that we need to do from a product selection, from a pricing, from a promotion standpoint to do so, but we can only control what we can control. So we’ll continue to put a great assortment out in front of our members.
We’ll continue to price it effectively. Importantly, we’re not pricing for comps or pricing for value and for market share and for the long term of the business. No matter what happens in Q4, we will always do that. We’d love to have a better company next year, 2 years, 3 years from now rather than just hit any one particular quarterly number. So I think you can call us cautiously optimistic on the fourth quarter and on the future.
Edward Kelly: Great. And then just a quick follow-up. Any early thoughts on 2024? I mean there’s obviously growing uncertainty out there. I’m sure, as a company, you’ve got a lot of good underlying progress in the business, right? So I’m sure you don’t want to cut corners around some temporary period of deflation. Just thoughts on how you’re thinking about planning the year and how we should be thinking about your expectations? The Street is up about 5%, I think, next year with 1 less week, which looks a little high. But just any thoughts there?
Bob Eddy: We are incredibly bullish on the long term of the company. I think next year, aside I think 3 or 5 years from now, we are — we’ve been in a much better place than we are today as we continue to build our membership, capitalize on the market share gains, convert GM into a much better business and a lot of things we’ve talked about. As we get through this fourth quarter, we’re concentrating on the right assortment at the right value and executing well every day to give our members what they’re looking for. As we think about next year, I think you’re going to see a little bit of a continuation of some of these trends quite candidly. I think you’ll see a little bit more disinflation. I’m not sure you get to net deflation in the business based on what we know today, but we haven’t really finalized our plans for next year, our views for next year.
We are really just focused on the long term of the business and the short term kind of takes care of itself. So I can’t overstate how excited we are for the future and how bullish we are for the future. We really think we’re doing the right things for the long term of the company. And in the short term, we’ll manage through the dynamic environment that we’re facing.
Operator: Our next question comes from Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer Oppenheimer.
Rupesh Parikh: So just going back to your commentary on new stores. You indicated that your new stores are 30% above plan in the last 12 months. Just curious what’s contributing to that upside. And as you look at some of these newer states that you’ve entered, how those are performing versus expectations?
Bob Eddy: Yes. Thanks, Rupesh. Maybe I’ll start it off and hand it over to Bill Werner, who’s running that effort for us. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve done in this area. Each new store that we open looks better and performs better than the last one. And the team has done a wonderful job getting great pieces of where to put boxes on in places that are growing. We just opened Madison, Alabama last week. It’s done phenomenally well in its first week. And that’s really because we opened a great-looking box with a tremendous amount of members, a fantastic team serving those members. And a great assortment on the floor when those new members walk in. We’ve built a lot of apparatus around this accelerated new club opening schedule that we have.
We have an all-star team from around the chain that helps these new stores get ready to open and then and then come out of the box hot. We’re very proud of that team as they help their new team members and these new stores open up. We’ve got 5 more to come in this year. We’ll have a full slate for next year as well. We’re just very pleased with what’s going on. So Bill, what did I miss?
Bill Werner: No. I would just reiterate what Bob said, we’ve spent the last 5 or 6 years now building the muscle on how to open up a club store in a new market. And as you think about the success that we’ve had in the national market earlier this year, and then as Bob mentioned, with our first state in Alabama now just a couple of weeks ago, we’re starting membership from scratch in those new markets. And we’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of years, learning how to do it right. And it’s everything from how we sell memberships, how we tell people our story, how we build the team to make sure the members on day 1 have the experience as if they’ve been a member for 20 years, and we’ve done a great job with it. So we’re excited about the future. We have 5 more clubs here in the next couple weeks and through the end of this year, and we’re excited to get those underway too.
