Navdeep Gupta: Yes. Warren, I would say that we are very pleased with the strategy that we have of leveraging the Going, Going, Gone! concept as well as the warehouse locations. Like Lauren indicated the recovery on this on this product from a clearance perspective is significantly better than what we used to have in 2019. And we have called out that as one of the key structural drivers of our confidence of us being able to maintain a meaningful portion of the margin gains compared to 2019.
Operator: The next question today comes from Michael Lasser with UBS.
Michael Lasser: So the message that you’re offering this morning is that the margin degradation that you experienced in the third quarter is transitory in nature because it’s associated with having excess inventory that presumably will be cleared out by the end of the fourth quarter, and you will now have this moving into next year. Now next year, you might experience a softer overall demand environment such that you will have to increase your promotional activity to work harder to driving customers and this will offset some of the benefit next year that you’ll have from cleaner inventory. Is that the right way to think about it?
Lauren Hobart: Partly, Michael, but not all. No. The margin degradation, we expect to be clean going into next year. So correct that these were investments that we made to get our inventory clean and we’ll continue to do that. We’re not guiding to next year, but I would just point to the fact that we’ve had significant athlete growth. We’ve had growth in the number of athletes, over 16.5 million new athletes in the last 2 years and this year-to-date, 4.5 million new athletes joining, and they are driving transactions and our gold customers are growing. So I would not say that we’re expecting at this point in time, any sort of an overall demand change that would require a heavy promotional environment.
Navdeep Gupta: Yes, Michael, and I’ll add one more you have called out. One of the — yes. One of the structural drivers that we have talked about in merch margin continuing to remain significantly elevated is the assortment that we now have in our stores. And that assortment is highly allocated, high heat and typically not impacted by the promotional activity that might be happening. So that’s another factor that gives us tremendous amount of confidence as we look to 2023.
Michael Lasser: My follow-up question is objectively, DICK’s is going to put up one of the strongest results across retail and within sporting this retail in the quarter. Presumably, some of that is related to the unique content that DICK’S has, where it’s got a great assortment of footwear, there’s a footwear cycle going on. And that’s drawing in a lot of the traffic. This is happening at a time where back-to-school was good in part because kids hadn’t been in school or known to be — weren’t going to know to be in school ahead of time for the last few years. So is there anything unique given those set of circumstances that is — you would hold responsible for driving demand that may not persist into next year, especially at a time where the overall consumer environment is likely going to soften.
Lauren Hobart: Michael, you have essentially just laid out what I would say is our transformational journey over the past few years where we have really changed the allocation of products that we have, what we’re offering to consumers. We’ve got higher heat and more differentiated products. And at the same time, we’ve been working on our omnichannel athlete experience of elevating service in the stores, elevating our digital experience, elevating — having a product available close to the consumer when and where they want it. So there’s nothing unique about how we drove demand that won’t persist into next year. The back-to-school season happens to be a showcase of our very strongest categories in footwear, apparel and team sports. But nothing unique about this quarter that shouldn’t persist.
