Operator: Our next question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski from Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead with your question.
Anthony Lebiedzinski: Yes. Good morning and thank you for taking the questions. And Woody best of luck in your pending retirement. Certainly a pleasure to work with you last few years.
Steven Woodward: Thank you.
Anthony Lebiedzinski: Sure. So first as far as just going back to the fourth quarter, just curious, as far as same-store sales, were there any regional differences that you can speak of? And as far as product categories, can you maybe just highlight what perhaps worked and what, you know, what were the biggest laggards in terms of product categories?
Mike Madden: Yeah. Anthony, in the fourth quarter, I would say from a region standpoint, things were pretty even across the board. There were really no geographic areas that were all that, you know, different than others from a merchandise standpoint. I think the big call out about the fourth quarter I think was we looked good in November. We did really well with our seasonal assortment. It performed very well in December or in November and then through Black Friday. And I think what we saw in December was the effect of a lot of cutbacks that we had to make earlier in the year in our assortment. So we kind of found ourselves in a position where the mix was a little off, just given all the cancellations and effects of really having to run that inventory down last year.
So we felt like our mix got a little off and we saw that in December. So what we’re doing this year to recover to that is really focusing on the seasonal by making sure it’s deep enough in the key items that we know sell instituting a lot of these lower price point items that Woody mentioned across the assortment and taking advantage of that time frame between Black Friday and Christmas where we felt like we just didn’t have the ammunition that we normally have. So that’s kind of the take forward. And, you know, I think we’ll be in a better inventory position, better merchandise mix position this year relative to last year.
Anthony Lebiedzinski: Got you. Thanks for that. And then in terms of the inventory, are you pretty much now flushed out of the higher cost inventory? How should we think about that?
Mike Madden: We pretty much are, Anthony. The freight costs had been declining all really all last year after it spiked early. And now we’re in the period where most of the buys that we have on the floor and in our DCs reflect that. So right now the freight looks like it will be a benefit this year as well as the distribution center cost effectiveness. Those two spiked at about the same time and affected the seasonal selling in Q4 and then bled over a little bit into Q1. And as we work our way through the rest of the year, absent any change in the supply chain environment that seems to be through.
Anthony Lebiedzinski: Got you. Okay. And then in terms of the merchandise margins, I think, Mike, you mentioned that so far, Q1 to date, they’re running about 150 basis points higher than a year ago. If you could just kind of help us understand as far as, you know, if everything goes kind of according to your plan as far as, you know, being able to hit on your goals as far as this rebalanced merchandise strategy, what’s kind of the potential improvement for merch margins?
