Chuck Grom : My question is on the LIFO charge. It looks like if it’s a few basis points of a hit, that would back into about $30 million to $40 million. And I’m curious, I know you don’t provide guidance, but knowing what you know now and if inflation holds at that, say, 6% level, would that be a good proxy for the charge, at least over the next couple of quarters?
Richard Galanti : Well, I think, yes, LIFO was a slight pickup just because the dollar amount was less than the $14 million last year in the quarter. It’s very slight. So if that continues, that would be good, and that would bode well. And you’d have — I’m guessing you’d have a lot lower charge than $423 million, recognizing the big pickup was in Q3. The big hit was in Q3 and 4 when we saw the beginning of inflation rising. If inflation didn’t go down, but it just stayed the same, in theory, you’d have no big charge. You have no additional charge. If it starts to go down from its peaks, that will have — there’ll be some LIFO income. Now mind you, some of that will be used for pricing as well. I mean, well, you know us.
Chuck Grom : Yes. Okay. So what would you do to have the absolute dollar amount for the LIFO charge in the quarter for us?
Richard Galanti : Yes. It was less than $1 million.
Chuck Grom : Less than $1 million. Okay, great. And then on the ancillary line, you’ve had real good success there in back-to-back quarters and you outlined gas profitability, e-comm, food court. Is there one that’s been more outsized over the past couple of quarters and that maybe we could think about over the next few quarters because it’s been a nice improvement?
Richard Galanti : Well, look, gas is just the sheer size of our gasoline business. It’s been the biggest piece of that line for a few years. We have a — it’s a $30-plus billion — on our $220-whatever-billion last year, we did in sales, I think a little over $30 billion was gas. So that’s the big kahuna among all that stuff.
Operator: We go next now to Michael Lasser of UBS.
Michael Lasser : Richard, between the 31 basis point core-on-core gross margin discussion — decrease for core on core gross margin, the discussion around giving up some shipping capacity to have a better price for your member, is the mindset of Costco right now as the economy enters a more difficult economic period, Costco is going to be stepping up price investments in order to gain market share?
Richard Galanti : I think we continue just to remain competitive. You’ve known us long enough when asked who is our toughest competitor, we look in the mirror, and we say it’s us. So I think that as we drive market share, part — we believe that part of it at least is due to the fact that we’ve continued to be very competitive. And so I don’t know if there’s any change in that. We — notwithstanding where our numbers come out, we’re always trying to push more into lowering the prices or keeping the price increases going not as high as they could have been. I think fresh foods is a good example of that of late, where, again, we’ve held the price points on certain items despite inflated costs, mostly in the protein area and a little bit in the bakery area.
Michael Lasser : And Richard, you’ve long talked about, the Costco model is driven, first and foremost, by sales, and the need to drive at least the mid-single-digit comp in order for the other parts of the P&L to work. So is the economy is entering a softer period where discretionary sales can be a little weaker and Costco’s overall sales are going to be a little softer, should we be modelling and prognosticating just a lower overall earnings growth for Costco during this time as when we go to these factors?
