But it’s going to pressure on the higher side because we’re increasing placements, not trying to get anything, not trying to use legal more than necessary or than in the past. And again, the other element is currency effects for Cabot’s legal expenses, also kind of worked against us in this. So made the legal look a little bit higher from that point of view. So just a bunch of different factors there. But as we mentioned in our Q as well, it’s — the increase was related to volume and which is going to continue, I would say, given we’ve been buying at higher levels.
Robert Dodd: And then just on the U.S. volume, I mean, obviously there can be lags, etc., but to the point in the slides in the presentation, I mean, there has been tremendous growth. And you did hit a really high number in the U.S. Your guidance for growth overall, I mean, is there anything you can tell us about where you expect the U.S. to be this year? I mean, do you think you can break $1 billion? Or any color on how much of that growth or how much of the overall growth is going to come from growth in the U.S. given the returns are better right now?
Ashish Masih: Excuse me, I mean, I assume you mean about purchasing. So we are allocating — yes, and of course I figured. We are allocating, as we said, majority. And by majority I mean not 50%, 51%, but 80% of our capital to U.S. right now. And I think that doesn’t change unless market dynamics change in Europe suddenly. And it can from a spot market point of view. A lot of our purchasing in U.S. is heavily flow and U.K. it’s heavily flow as well, Europe is less flow based. So we have a good line of sight to kind of how those flows are going. Now those flows can increase, decrease, but we do expect U.S. to be the predominant place where we deploy our capital. And in terms of guidance or expectation for the year, I would stand by what we said back in February, which is we expect to exceed the 2023 number, which was just north of $1 billion of deployment, $1.37 billion or something like that, I think.
So, $1.74 billion, sorry. Yes. So, yes, it’s majority going to be U.S.
Operator: Thank you. At this time, I’m showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Masih for closing remarks.
Ashish Masih: As we close the call, I’d like to reiterate a few important points. We believe Encore is truly differentiated in our sector with a solid track record of operating results and superior capabilities. As the consumer credit cycle continues to turn, the U.S. market is seeing the world’s strongest supply growth. With 2024 off to a strong start, we continue to apply a disciplined portfolio purchasing approach by allocating record amounts of capital to the U.S. market which has the highest returns. When combined with our effective collection operation, we believe this approach will enable 2024 to be a turning point in our operational and financial results. Thanks for taking the time to join us and we look forward to providing our second quarter results in August.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may now disconnect.
