Rene Gulliver: Yeah. Thanks, Jesse, for the question. It’s Rene. Yeah, there’s no question the competition is having an impact. Tim outlined a number of initiatives, whether it’s bundling and some of the other things that he talked about, just some improvement in our marketing, our target marketing and that sort of thing. And we’re seeing certainly the benefit of that in Massachusetts. And we’ll continue to do that, those types of things. But that will help us recoup some of that lost revenue and get the average ticket up. So that’s only part of the margin story, though, right. We also talked about these delays are obviously having an impact on us and the inflationary pressures are — we don’t want to downplay those, because we’re certainly seeing that as everybody is seems to be.
So those are other factors aiding gross profit. Now, will inflation come down when we start to recoup some of that? Not sure. What we can control obviously, is what we do in terms of hitting the competition head on. And that’s the type of stuff Tim outlined.
Jesse Redmond: That’s helpful. And do you see the competition continuing to increase in those markets? I know there’s much more social equity stores to be opened in Illinois and yeah, there’s more stores opening in mass. Or is that a trend that you see, can you see the trend stabilizing and potentially see it accelerating? How do you see that evolving as we head into 24?
Tim Shaw: Thanks, Jesse, this is Tim. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot more social equity licenses that have been issued minimal around the areas that we have our retail operations in specifically, Illinois. Bringing our manufacturing facilities online and bringing our award-winning products with a lot of pent-up demand in that state is going to help offset some of our margins and capabilities to have a feather in our cap at our own dispensaries. As we’ll keep some of our specific brands like Betty’s at our own dispensaries and not in the surrounding dispensaries and flood the market where we don’t have operations. So we really believe that will bring customers back, bring more transactions to our facilities, and help with our bottom line.
Jesse Redmond: And will that Illinois manufacturing primarily focus on edibles? And specifically getting Betty’s up and running first?
Tim Shaw: To start, that’s where we have focused in our Phase 1 build. Yeah, we are focused on our lab and kitchen operations. Not just Betty’s, our Bubby’s has really taken great trajectory in both markets that it’s in. Our Vibations drink mix also. So we’re going to be focused on our five high-margin products out of the kitchen, and really getting those across the state of Illinois. Our sales teams actually already hit the streets and has a great traction, with a lot of the big guys and smaller operators are ready and willing for our products for their shelves. So we’re excited.
Jesse Redmond: And last question on Illinois. Can you remind us of the — what your best guess is now, in terms of timing on the cultivation facility and when we might see a first harvest out of there.
Tim Shaw: It’s really been electrical gear and things that have held us back. And I think we’re just about over that hump. We’re about a month out from completion on the Phase 2 for our cultivation, barring any more issues with the supply chain. We see late Q2 our first harvest.
Jesse Redmond: Okay, thank you very much.
Operator: [Operator Instructions].And it appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. West, I’ll turn the call back to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Steve West: Thanks, guys for joining us. If you have any questions, you know how to reach me. I’m at IR in MariMed and we are open for business — for questions. Thank you very much.
Operator: And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending.
