But again, we expect a strong year when it’s all said and done. We’re going to close out the year based on our guidance with mid-single-digit revenue growth, gross margin expansion, segment margin expansion, and we expect to have double-digit earning growth in a tough environment for the full year. And maybe Will, if you want to comment a little bit on the cadence of the quarter.
Will Stengel: Yes. Greg, it’s for, U.S. auto cadence of the quarter. It was mixed through the quarter. July was slightly up, as I think we said in our, prepared remarks, August was down low-single-digits, and we exited the quarter with September up low-single-digits. We did call out the NAPA EXPO, year-over-year compare. That event was in July of last year. By the time all the sales had processed, it’s probably, it’s not scientific probably impacting August. So, if you think about that adjustment, it’s probably mid-quarter, mid-to-end of the quarter.
Bert Nappier: And Greg, I’ll come back and give a little bit more color. You kind of talked about how things are looking as we start and maybe pull that up. As I think about this year on U.S. automotive, the full year, we started out Q1 with a little softer, weather impact there. And as we said in Q2, we really knew that our U.S. automotive business had more potential than we showed, and it’s a feeling we continue to echo. Q2 made some new moves with new president. Cost actions to further drive some of the improvement of — to offset the weakness on the topline. And the Q2 results were really a catalyst for the executive team to walk away and look at the things that were impacting our performance. We’ll share those perspectives.
But as we look at the fourth quarter with respect to U.S. AG or to the U.S. Automotive business, we know that we’ve got a tough comp coming up yet again. So, fourth quarter, for U.S. automotive was a 9.6 reported comp sales growth was 6.3. So, we have another fourth tough quarter ahead. And, all things considered, we expect the fourth quarter for them to be in-line with the third quarter.
Greg Melich: Got it. And when did inflation peak last year. And maybe you’ve even brought it out some more like, average unit price, if you think about mix.
Bert Nappier: Yes. So, our third quarter would have been the highest inflation comp for the year for that business and, Will mentioned that. We’ve got another tough comp on inflation in the fourth quarter. That’s going to be around 8% for the U.S. automotive business. So, the peak would have been Q3, but we still have a tough Q4 comp.
Greg Melich: That’s great. Thanks, and good luck guys.
Paul D. Donahue: Thanks.
Bert Nappier: We appreciate it.
Operator: The next question comes from Christopher Horvers of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Christian Oberle: Hi. Good morning. It’s Christian Oberle on for Chris. So, Motion organic trends have had been outperforming the ISM and, and industrial production as the, industrial economy had slowed. So, as you digest, the outsized share deals following the KDG acquisition, do those indicators become more relevant again? And as you look ahead, are there any end markets where there’s reasons to believe it should reflect positively or negatively?
Will Stengel: Yes, Christian. Thanks for the question. Look, those are two important data points. We monitor and track them closely. And, we’ve publicly said that it seems whether with KDG or post pandemic that, the correlation was less clear. Having said that, we still look at those indicators, and we’ve been encouraged obviously by the recent trends in particular industrial production. So, they’re certainly part of what we look at as we inform our views of the outlook of the business and, based on those recent inflections, we’re cautiously optimistic. There’s no specific tie with those metrics to a specific part of our business. I think it’s a good representation of the diversity of our business. And so, it’s something that we look at in conjunction with customer, vendor feedback, provide different other pieces of internal and external data. But we’re cautiously optimistic based on what we’re seeing both in the business and from a third-party data perspective.
