Sam Seow : And then just quickly, lastly, we saw cancellation rates pick up because of rising rates. Is there any thoughts around something similar happening this year or any reason things might be different as you look at your customer backlogs?
Aaron Erter: Yeah. Sam, look, based upon where we’re at now, I’m reflecting back on when I started roughly a year ago in the tumultuous market that we faced. We have confidence in what we’re seeing right now, hence, the guidance we’re putting forward. I think what’s different than last year is the strength of new construction that we’re seeing out there. So we come into Q3 very, very confident of where we’re at right now.
Sam Seow : And then any thoughts on cancellation rates?
Aaron Erter: We have not seen much in the way from a cancellation rate standpoint.
Sam Seow : Look, I think our guidance for Q3 underscores that confidence, and that is a difference as well.
Operator: Your next question comes from Paul Quinn from RBC Capital Markets.
Paul Quinn: Just wanted some — maybe some color just on the North American volume, that 5% reduction. Was there a meaningful split between what you saw the reduction in repair remodel and new home construction?
Aaron Erter: Yeah. Look, I think it’s still good directionally. We always have said that 65% is R&R, 35% is new construction. I think directionally, that still stands. But I did mention some of the areas of the country that are outperforming and one of them being Texas and that really correlates to new construction. But then conversely, Pacific Northwest is more or less going out and taking share from a competitor because we have the right value proposition. But just in summary, I would say, more of the new construction focused markets are doing better than what would be our R&R markets.
Paul Quinn: And then that contract or alliance that you’ve got that 6,000 members, it sounds like a big number, no idea how big that market is, if you could size that total market?
Aaron Erter: Size of the total market for R&R, I’m not sure I understand, Paul.
Paul Quinn: I thought you guided that your contractor alliance membership was total 6,000 members. In percentage of contractors you’ve got or total North America, what is that? How big is that market?
Aaron Erter: Yeah. I think we would have to have the denominator of how many contractors are out there, which we don’t. All I would say is we see sequential improvement here. So if we look last year at this time, I think we had roughly 4,000 members, and we’ve moved that with an on-purpose plan to 6,000 at all different levels.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Keith Chau from MST Marquee.
Keith Chau: The first one, just to cover off on channel risk. I mean one of the other building products companies out there, I think overnight was saying that the channel was actually getting pretty thin on inventory. So I just want to try and understand whether that’s the case of fiber cement, whether there’s any risk there? And as an extension to that point, Aaron, you’ve been in the business for a year now. Have you noticed anything changed significantly to the sales team. Obviously, you’ve got these initiatives in place to drive demand creation. But anything internally or how that sales team is being run, that’s changed that you’ve picked up over the last year that’s made a big difference.
Aaron Erter: I think number 1, we don’t see any — as far as inventories in the channel, it’s normalized to us. We don’t see any noticeable difference of it being stopped or thin. So that’s number 1. Number 2, as it relates to the sales team and look, we have great sales leaders across all of our regions, very, very good in alignment with our customers. Here’s the difference, I think that we’ve seen. Number 1, our customer integration keeps getting better and better. That’s not only our relationships with our customers, but also the data in which they’re giving us, which is helping us as it relates to helping them, right, to have the right inventory and where they need it. Just to give you a stat, we’ve taken our largest customers, we had about 30% of them that gave us data.
Now we’re closer to 70% this year. So that’s number one. The other thing, I think, that’s different is we’re getting more specialized from a sales standpoint. When I talk about investments, we’re making investments to get specialized in certain areas. So for instance, when we think about single-family new constructions, it’s putting people on that’s focused on some of those large builders, but also moving past the Top 25 to the Top 200 as well. So I think those are 2 of the noticeable changes that we’ve made within the last year that we’re seeing benefits from, Keith.
Keith Chau: And then just coming back to a point that was made on share gains in the Pacific Northwest. Can you give us a bit more detail on whether that’s in hard siding or whether that’s against vinyl or other substrates, whether that’s Trim or plank? Any color on that would be very useful.
Aaron Erter: Yeah. I’d just say very simply, it’s in the hard siding and it would be in the fiber cement barrier.
Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’ll now hand back to Mr. Erter for closing remarks.
Aaron Erter: Yeah. Thank you, operator. Just again, thank you to everyone. I appreciate the time. I want to again thank all of the team at James Hardie for making an excellent Q2. I appreciate that everything you do. That’s it. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
