And so we’re making it the less, when sales went down – gallons – the price per gallon went down, we made a little more. I think that equation, while it’s still true, is not the driver of the bottom line of gas. Everybody seems to be wanting to make more on gas, which allows us in our view to make a little more and still be even more profitable. We’ve seen our competitive spread versus our direct competitors at every location on average improve over the last couple of years to now be in the – I want to say to 30-set range per gallon, mid-30s is the average, which is up. It’s an average and it can range from 10 to 45. But at the end of the day, we feel good about our competitive position, it’s increased and we’re still quite profitable down a little bit from a year ago, but nonetheless quite profitable.
Greg Melich: That’s helpful, thanks. And then my follow up is on cash. I think you finished with $13.7 billion. I think the last time you got to 2013 was when you had a special dividend in 2020. What are your thoughts on how much cash you need or want? And especially now that there is a positive interest rate on holding cash, because that would make you more interested in keeping it, than you pay more tax, just how do you think about?
Richard Galanti: Well, I think, look, at the end of day, we’ve done four special dividends in the past. It’s part of our DNA. At some point, we may do that again. Again somewhat like the answer to the other question about membership fees, it’s probably a question of when, not if, but we’ll let you know. Certainly with earning 5%-ish on that money instead of a clear percent-ish on that money, does make it a little harder to do. But we’re not selling the kind of earnings multiple, but we earn 5% on our assets. So, at some point, we’ll do something and we’ll have to wait and see.
Greg Melich: Got it. Thanks and good luck.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Kelly Bania with BMO Capital Markets.
Kelly Bania: Hi, thanks for taking our question, Richard. Just wanted to ask, I think I’ve asked this many, many times, but it seems like another huge quarter for executive membership growth of almost 1 million more this quarter. And just curious if you could talk about the profile of that member today that’s either upgrading or starting out as an executive? What’s the characteristics of that customer? And any changes in how that executive member spends in their first year in that upgrade, compared to the prior years?
Richard Galanti: I was joking you’re going to say, first of all, they are very smart to be an executive member. Look, I think we are over the time, we’ve done a better job of communicating the value of the executive member. So, we clearly get more people to sign up that way in advance and we see that over time a regular member over the first few years will buy more every year and executive members start at a higher level and will buy more every year from that higher level. So that’s really the profile that we’ve seen. I don’t have any specifics on how old the member is. I know that when we look at age characteristics of new members, we’re still – everybody used to be concerned 10 years ago, how we going to get millennials when we have an older average customer and all that and we did with things, with items, with things like organic.
We’re doing the same thing now. We’re still getting whether it’s Gen Z or Gen A or whatever the next is, we’re getting our share of those new members when we look at the profile of our members.
Kelly Bania: Thanks, and Richard, I may have missed this, but did you quantify the extra week impact in terms of EBIT or EPS or anything for us?
Richard Galanti: No, it’s – I mean, the simple math would just say it’s 16, 17 of our quarter is equal to a 16-week quarter. That’s about as good as we can do.
Kelly Bania: Okay. Thank you.
Richard Galanti: I think that particularly on net income it takes the 16% or whatever percent number down to 9% or something, and that’s just simple math.
Kelly Bania: Perfect.
Operator: Okay. We’ll take our next question from Oliver Chen with TD Cowen.
Oliver Chen: Hi, Richard, inventories being well-positioned, what are your thoughts about where they are now and versus – and also how we will model them going forward relative to sales? And then as we look at overall, ticket trending negative, that compare starts to ease. So does that imply that one flexion on partly the nature of the ticket comparisons overall? The same question is for e-commerce, as you anniversary some of the headwinds, can we expect the comparison to help as well? Thanks a lot, Richard.
Richard Galanti: Sure. Inventories, as I mentioned, we feel – the merchants feel very good about our inventory levels right now. Are there a few departments are higher than they want, a few that need a little bit more sure. But overall, they’re very good. Look at our fiscal year and inventories stood at just under $16.7 billion and payables stood at $17.5 billion. So I think this – running above 100% on that simple ratio is something new. We used to be – we used to enjoy running 90% to 95%, it fluctuates, but overall, we feel good about our inventories, where they are now. And in terms of supply chain, things coming in on time, we feel good about that as well. Now as it relates to – as we, excuse me, as we anniversary the inflection of when we saw some weakness, I think a couple of quarters ago, I mentioned that will help your big-ticket sales, I said, well, at least in a few several more months we’ll anniversary this weakness.
So certainly that’s going to help. I would like to think that not just that thing that’s going to help, but – and the same would be commerce. I mean, we’re – again one bright spot in this virtually all e-commerce, not nearly always – is nearly always e-commerce was the appliances that – and I think we’ve done a better job also of showing the value of these items online, not just the price the item within our case includes delivery and warranty and things like that more so than some of our competitors. And showing great value there.
Oliver Chen: Okay. Thanks, Richard. Just a couple of short ones, would love any thoughts on Instacart. It seems like it’s a great partnership that you’ve had for a while. Also another question we have is, EV charging play a role and how you’re thinking about future services for customers? Finally, China, any – it’s a smaller percentage of total, but it’s an important market for the long-term. I mean lots happening there. Has anything changed the value proposition or the geopolitics? Thanks.
Richard Galanti: Okay. Yes. I had the second and third, what was the first question? Oh, Instacart, I know they just went public. So we’ve gotten a lot of questions. At the end of the day, we were good partner with them, they were good partner for us. We used them throughout the U.S. and Canada. And as sales are growing, we’ve added over the last – during COVID, we added some non-food items that still can be carried in the car, if you will. And we’re doing, I think prescriptions with them now. And so, no, it’s – a good relationship and it has been for a while. Yes, I might add, though that with regard to those sales, we include that in our warehouse sales, not our e-commerce sales, because it’s their employee or their employee coming into Costco to shop, purchase at the register and then take it to the customer.
