Kristin Wolfe: Good morning John, thanks for the question. Yes, you’re right – our comp store inventories were up 32% at the end of January, and as you noted and I think Michael responded to Jesse’s question, last year we were under-inventoried at this time at the end of Q4. At the end of Q4 last year, we were down 30% versus 2019, and so when you adjust these numbers for compounding, this means our comparable store inventories are still well below pre-pandemic levels. Last year, the combination of conservative sales and inventory plans plus significant receipt disruptions and delays meant that our in-store inventories in February and March were well below where they needed to be, but by April they had recovered, but this situation undermined our sales in Q1 as Michael described earlier.
This year, we deliberately increased inventory levels coming into the quarter – that’s what’s driving that 32% increase, and as we get into April, our comparable store inventories should be more in line with 2022, and as we move through the rest of this year, there may be variations by month but inventories will be similar to last year. That was store inventories, but let me shift quickly to talk about reserve inventories. A moment ago, Michael described how over the last couple of years, we’ve become more off-price in terms of the type of merchandise we buy, and a key enabler of this is how we use and expanded our reserve inventory. This provides us with the ability to take advantage of great opportunistic deals, even on merchandise that does not make sense to flow to stores right away.
At the end of 2022, our reserve inventory was significantly higher in dollar terms than it as last year, and this reflects the great buys our buyers have found. We feel very good about the values and the branded content we have in reserve, and this should help us deal our sales trend this year.
John Kernan: Got it.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Altschwager from Baird. Please proceed.
Mark Altschwager: Good morning. Appreciate the question, and great to see the improvement. Are there any particular categories that drove the upside that you delivered in the fourth quarter, and as the sales trends have continued into January and February, just any underlying shifts you’re seeing in consumer behavior? Thanks, and then I have a quick follow-up.
Michael O’Sullivan: Good morning Mark. Yes, in terms of categories, I would say for the fourth quarter as a whole, our footwear and our accessories businesses were our strongest performers. But I think it’s important to call out that the improvement, the month-to-month sequential improvement that we saw through Q4 actually was fairly broad-based and happened across all of our major businesses. Everything got better, and I think that’s mainly because–you know, when I go back and think about the key merchandising strategies that we really turned towards in the back half of last year, in particular the focus on value, we did that across all businesses, so that’s why I think we saw the improvement across all businesses.
