And then, as we think about the second half, in addition to price cost using we see additional benefit from category line reviews coming online in the second half, and that’s really — the combination of those things is really what’s giving us confidence in gross margins for the full year, and that’s what you’re hearing reflected in our tones being and our tone being a little bit more bullish about that for the year.
Thomas Moll: Thank you. I’ll turn it back and appreciate the insight.
Erik Gershwind: Thanks, Tommy.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Ken Newman KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Ken Newman: Hey. Good morning, guys.
Erik Gershwind: Good morning, Ken.
Kristen Actis-Grande: Good morning, Ken.
Ken Newman: Good morning. Sorry if I missed this in the prepared remarks, but I’m curious if you could just quantify, what the UAW headwind was to ADS this quarter. I think you mentioned last quarter it was a low-single digit impact and any color you have on how we think about that volume normalizing here into the second fiscal quarter?
Kristen Actis-Grande: Yeah, Ken. So the first quarter impact from UAW hard to precisely pinpoint it, but what we did similar to what we had looked at in the Q4 call, when we shared what we’re seeing in September, we’re really looking at the end markets that we know are either directly auto-related or are kind of adjacent to auto, so things like primary metal, fabricated metals, places where we see machine shops and job shops selling into and when you look at the growth rate that we saw in those end markets kind of relative to the broader business, I size the impact at kind of the high end of low-single digits, and that would be both on a sequential and a year-over-year basis.
Ken Newman: Okay. And maybe just a clarification there. Go ahead.
Kristen Actis-Grande: Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Ken.
Ken Newman: Yeah. Maybe if you could just also just talk a little bit about the normalizing cadence here into 2Q?
Kristen Actis-Grande: Yeah. So we had originally indicated an early 2Q pickup related to UAW and we did the guidance, Ken. And while we were pleased that we saw the strike resolved earlier than we had expected, we really didn’t see a snapback at all in the customer base. A lot of that, our understanding is it has to do with the high inventory positions and a resulting inventory burn down at the end of the calendar year. So what we’re hearing on the ground from our customers and from the field, from our suppliers that we expect that to start to improve in calendar Q1, not sure how much of it is immediate in January or maybe kind of second half of calendar Q1, but that’s definitely — that improvement is definitely contemplated in our full year guidance.
Ken Newman: Got it. And then just my clarification question there is, is there any good way to parse out how much of auto is at the core customer versus the national account? Because obviously, the core customers where you’re kind of seeing the big volume headwind here this quarter?
Kristen Actis-Grande: There’s not a great way to do it. I mean, generally, what I’d say is, we see a lot of our core customers map into fabricated metals, primary metals and machinery and equipment. So what I would probably feel confident in saying core is more weighted in those end markets than national accounts, but there’s no perfect kind of rule of thumb as how I think about that.
Ken Newman: Got it. That’s helpful. My second question here is, I think your prior guide suggested, call it, 1 points to 2 points of price in fiscal ’24. It sounds like you’re expecting another price increase here into the second quarter. Just high level, is there any real change to the pricing outlook as we think about the top line? And how do you think about the contributions to price and price cost as we just move through the year? Obviously, if that cap will be a little bit easier on the price cost side.
Kristen Actis-Grande: Yeah. So I think we will see a very slight improvement in price expectations for the year, Ken, like within that 1 point to 2 point range that we gave for the contribution to growth from price, I’d say we’re feeling more comfortable in the upper end of that range because of the pricing action that Erik had discussed here in calendar Q2 and that is one of the things within price cost that’s giving us more confidence in pushing up and being a bit more bullish on the gross margin projection for the year.
Ken Newman: Understood. Thanks. I’ll get back online.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question today comes from Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Stephen Volkmann: Hi. Good morning, everybody. Sorry to be a little bit annoying with the short-term question here. But Kristen, you gave some sequential thoughts around how the year progresses but you didn’t really comment on second quarter sales relative to first. Usually, that’s kind of flattish, but I know you have a bunch of growth kind of initiatives that maybe start to kick in? Just any thoughts on sort of how the year progresses on the top line.
Kristen Actis-Grande: Yes, Steve. So I’ll take that one. So for the second quarter, what I’d say, if you look at the ops debt, you’ll see that December, we were below our historical month-over-month decline, which is typically about 8% from November to December. So we’re off to a slower start in the second quarter. And I’d say, it’s driven by the things Erik highlighted in his prepared remarks, particularly the extended shutdowns and the clamping down in spend that we really saw accelerate in December. Historically, if you look at Q1 to Q2 ADS sequentially, we are down slightly. And then I think given what we saw in December, it’s likely that, that would be the case. But I’ll say it’s really too early to tell at this point. It really depends how fast that ramp comes back online in early calendar Q1, like, this time last year, we saw a sort of a surprising dynamic with December, and then we saw a really nice snap back in January.
