In fact, again, because of the breadth of our offering we’re seeing I think a much stronger comparison, than a lot of the other companies that are similar. I think anybody quite like Brady, but are in similar products and similar product categories. So you take all these factors into account, we felt comfortable with our guidance and so we’re you know barring something new. I think we’re going to be good for the second half.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Makes sense. And just trying to peel back a little bit more, I guess, now that we’re almost two months into the quarter here. Are you able to comment at all just what you’re seeing quarter to-date in terms of kind of demand across your end markets or regions?
Russell Shaller: Yeah. So I would say December for us was a good weak. And we are not 100% certain if there wasn’t some distributor rebalancing and what have you. But January for us ended very well. And so if you know January is predicted the two months together, well I would say we’re just okay. But if January is predictive of the future we feel very, very good.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Makes sense. And in terms of just adding sales-generating resources, is there any anything else you’re doing to that end besides just adding additional headcount across your regions?
Russell Shaller: Yeah. So we do I’m going to kind of take out some of my closing comments. And we are actually in I think like everybody else, we’re looking at new sales tools, how to automate our sales tools. We certainly have some experiments with Generative AI which is both fascinating, interesting and occasionally confusing, depending on the answer that it comes up. But you know I can see absolutely in terms of investment for Brady, that sales augmentation tool. Because whenever you have a portfolio of thousands of different skews what are the most important things we can do and help our customers and getting them to the right skew quickly in a knowledgeable way. And I see the large language models and what have you as having a great opportunity to improve our interaction with our customers.
Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Got it. And just last one for me. Are you able to provide any just update on the industrial track and trace and what I guess are the next kind of mile markers or targets that we can be looking for over the next couple of quarters here?
Russell Shaller: Yeah. You know as I’m sure hasn’t been lost on you a couple of the big companies in the space on had a pretty bad quarter, last quarter in the year-over-year comps on. We’re definitely seeing some slowdown in some push out of projects and for us because it’s a much smaller percentage of our revenue. It wasn’t a tremendous headwind. And it actually I think is good for us, because we have some product launches coming up in the next few quarters. I do believe that the long-term trend of the industrial automation is fantastic, particularly with labor rates and labor availability. But right now, if there’s a little bit of pause and adoption with some of the end users, that actually works to our advantage as we get the rest of our portfolio shored up.
Unidentified Analyst: Thank you.
Operator: I’m showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Russell Shaller for closing remarks.
Russell Shaller: Thanks, everyone, and thanks for your time today. And again, we apologize about the brief interruption that we had. But I do want to end with saying that our first half of 2024 was strong. We’re executing our initiatives. I am incredibly pleased with the results of our regional reorganization that we put into place last year. We made progress — we’ve actually made more progress than I would have hoped on bringing the teams together, and we continue to identify opportunities to improve every single day. Our financial position is also incredibly strong, and our balance sheet provides us with flexibility to continue to invest in our existing businesses through R&D and sales resources, to remain committed to our dividend and to execute opportunistic share buybacks as well as M&A.
Our cash generation gives us the ability to fund all of our capital allocation priority simultaneously, which is exactly what we’ll do in order to generate shareholder value over the long term. I’ve been consistently impressed with Brady’s ability to adapt to ever-changing macroeconomic environments and technologies. And as I commented during the questions, certainly, generative AI will impact Brady, our customers and the types of solutions that we offer in the future. I’m personally excited with several of our trial efforts, which I believe will enable Brady to better serve our customers in the future. Our priorities remain consistent, which are: to continue to invest and grow our organic sales; to further develop our product offering and ensure we have innovative road map of new products in our pipeline; to execute operational efficiencies; to increase profitability; and to effectively deploy our capital to drive long-term shareholder value through organic investments, acquisitions and returning funds to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.
