William Boltz: Yeah, Seth. It’s Bill. And so just a couple of things here. As I said, we are seeing probably more of a moved-on pre-pandemic levels of promotions, specifically in the appliance area. These are largely vendor-supported. But we want to make sure that we’re there obviously and we’re part of all that. As it relates to the overall, the industry remains pretty rational and pretty stable. You want to make sure that at certain times of the year, you’re out there with the relevant offers and that you’re doing the things that you need to do. So whether that’s in the spring or this Black Friday, we’re excited about having some of those offers out there and working within the guardrails and the profitability targets that we’ve established.
But all-in-all, it remains, I think, relatively rationally. The consumer looking for value. And so we’ve got to find different ways to highlight value and those are the things that this team is doing and value can come in lot of ways outside of just a reduction in price. You can highlight it through new and innovative products, you can highlight it through a special offer, if that’s what comes out or you can do it through a vendor funded promotion. So those are the things that we’re trying to take advantage of.
Brandon Sink: And Seth, this is Brandon. I would just add, the adjustments that Bill was talking about, that we’re making, as the consumer is changing as we’re moving through the year, our go-to-market strategy, all of that’s fully embedded and reflected in our updated outlook and confidence that we’re able to achieve our flat gross margins for the year.
Marvin Ellison: And Seth on the low-price guarantee, our research just indicated that we needed a more simplistic straightforward message to the customers about our value. We had something that was a little too cute, call it a price promise that I think was a way too ambiguous, and we just decided just to keep it simple and stand by the fact that we will support the lowest price in the industry on the products that we sell. We just launched it. We think the timing is perfect, going into holiday season where you have a slightly cautious consumer looking for value. And so you take everything that Bill said about the definition of value and the fact that we’re going to put media behind this Lowest Price Guarantee, we hope that sends a message to the consumer that they can always expect the lowest price at Lowe’s.
Seth Sigman: Okay. Thank you for that. That’s very helpful. I did have one follow-up on capital allocation, specifically share repurchases. Just based on what you’ve done year-to-date, where leverage sits today, how do you think about the pace of buybacks from here? Should we be thinking about that starting to slow into the fourth quarter and even over the next couple of quarters based on the demand backdrop? How do we think about that?
Brandon Sink: Yeah, Seth. This is Brandon. So our capital allocation priority is unchanged. We’re going to continue to invest in the business, in high return projects, targeting a 35% dividend payout ratio and funneling the remainder to share repurchases. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we do expect funding share repurchases through operating cash flow here in the near term and expect modest, if any share repo in Q4, also expect to be in line with our stated leverage target at the end of the year. So we’re also looking at our debt towers, paying those off as they mature. We had $500 million this past Q3, we have $450 million coming due in 2024 and we remain committed to our BBB+ credit rating and expect to manage our leverage according.
Seth Sigman: Okay. Great. Thanks, and have a nice holiday.
Brandon Sink: Thank you, Seth.
Operator: The next question is from the line of Michael Lasser with UBS. Please proceed with your questions.
Michael Lasser: Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. Given the importance of sales to the PPI initiatives, if you’re looking at, call it, another down 5% comp next year, do you start to become more aggressive with promotions or other actions in order to start to drive sales because you get a return on it in other ways?
Marvin Ellison: Michael, we’re not going to get into 2024 at this time, we’ll speak more specifically about that on the Q4 call. What I will just repeat is PPI is perpetual for a reason. We’re going to keep doing it, it’s sustainable, its ongoing and we’re going to be agile. We’ll take the necessary steps to make sure we’re running a really sound business, thinking first about driving service for the customers and giving our associates a great place to work. But other than that, PPI will be in place irrespective of top line and we’ll adjust it accordingly.
Michael Lasser: Okay. My follow-up question is, Marvin, as you look at your sales by market, by region and tie to the underlying housing characteristics and dynamics in those markets, where are you seeing better trends and where are you seeing worst trends such that informs how you think about how the rest of the cycle is going to unfold from here? It’s likely at some point, hopefully, housing turnover is going to pick up that could bode well for home improvement demand. But if it comes with a corresponding tick down in home prices, that could be not so good for home improvement demand.
