Jim Sanderson: Okay.
Joan Hilson: It would be 7% to 8% for the high guide. Negative. Negative 7% to 8% on the high end. Now, remember, in the fourth quarter, just to give you a little color on that, our revenue position, not in the comp, but we have that extra week, which we have stated is $80 million to $100 million. In the UK, as you mentioned, international — the UK is cycling the strikes from last year, so that’s reflected as they have a better comp than North America relative to that, as well as recall the UK sale of the locations for the watch showrooms, and so that is removed from the base as well.
Jim Sanderson: Understood. So a lot of moving parts there.
Joan Hilson: Yes.
Jim Sanderson: A follow-up question.
Joan Hilson: Yes, exactly.
Jim Sanderson: Yes. Just a quick follow-up question, just following along on the recovery of the engagement cycle, how do you foresee the recovery of the engagement average transaction value and unit profitability as this recovery in engagements takes place? And that’s given the changes in demographics that you’ve called out, maybe changes in consumer preferences that are different today than pre-COVID.
Gina Drosos: Hey, Jim. I think the big change will be in units. So we’ve seen couples progressing through the milestones that we’ve identified. We see a statistically significant, growth in people getting to that last stage, which is when they choose to get engaged. So units is where we would expect to see an increase. ATVs have been pretty stable for us across lab-created and natural all year. We’re bringing innovation that we think appeals to multicultural customers. Yellow gold is a great example of that. They tend to have a preference. Brand names is another example. We haven’t seen anything that would indicate that a shift toward more multicultural engagements would cause a significant difference in ATV. We’d expect it to be very similar to what it is today.
The one thing I would say is that, we do know among Hispanic customers is that they tend to have a preference for natural diamonds over lab-created. And so, that’ll be an interesting trend for us to look at going forward.
Jim Sanderson: All right. Thank you very much.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: This is Melanie on for Lorraine. I just had a question about the promotional landscape, specifically for Black Friday. I know you said Black Friday came in in line with expectations, but how were promotions across the different banners? And anything else you can provide on traffic and price points for Black Friday, Cyber Monday? And then still on promotions, what are you embedding in 4Q for the holidays? Thanks.
Gina Drosos: Sure. So, it’s been a different holiday season. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen consumers shop early, in part due to supply chain challenges. They came into the market to make sure they could get the holiday gifts they wanted before they sold out. This year has been quite different. We’ve been predicting for a while that holiday would come quite late. Usually, the earliest shoppers for jewelry for holiday are women buying at lower price points for gifts and for themselves. We saw that as the primary customer during Black Friday weekend. Promotionality was very high on those lower price point goods. We were competitive in that context, both through the way we’re able to do targeted promotions, given our CDP and our personalization capabilities, but also we offer a great value through our sourcing and our vendor relationships.
So as we move through December, we would expect to continue to see a high level of promotionality. I think that will come up into higher price points as independent jewelers are still trying to clear some of the inventory they had from last year. We have a very healthy inventory, so our level of newness is excellent. One of the encouraging things that we’ve seen is that year-to-date, our newness is selling 30% faster than it did a year ago. So, that’s what consumers tend to look for in this kind of an environment. They look for a great value, which we can provide because of our sourcing capability, and they look for innovation. And we think that’s an area where we will really stand out. So all of that to say it was very promotional in Black Friday at lower price points.
We think it’ll be promotional for the rest of the season, and we’re ready for that.
Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Ms. Drosos for final closing comments.
Gina Drosos: Sure. Well, thank you everybody for being on the call with us today. In closing, as a company whose purpose is to inspire love, we are committed this holiday season to doing our part to enable people to express love to each other in these difficult times. I’m proud of and very appreciative of our team who brings our purpose to life every day. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a lovely day.
