And so that’s part of – that’s a factor in all of this. Yes, the backlog for – some of the backlog for tool storage was down. So we liquidated some of that, but we still have backlog in those areas. So it’s a complicated answer, I think. You might have some of that. But on the other hand, we couldn’t fulfill it as much. We couldn’t have liquidated as much as we would have had we had full – had been able to roll in the way we had planned to roll in our production plans coming out of the SFC.
David McGregor: Okay. Just a couple of other questions for you, Nick and Aldo, the trucks, I would love to get your sense if your organic growth was down 5.7%. What do you think the truck sell-through was?
Nicholas Pinchuk: I sort of know what it was, and it was better than that in the quarter and for the year, generally is better. This all tends to come out in the wash though – in the long run. But in the fourth quarter, the trucks were not down. We’re substantially. They were still down, but not anything like the Tools Group.
David McGregor: Down low single digits?
Nicholas Pinchuk: Yes. Sure. I mean so you would say maybe the – you don’t know, but they’ve kind of liquidated some things. So part of it is delivery – if you pick a particular product and you say a shift to that product, we do have inventory, but the point is sometimes you don’t have that product and you have to make changes in the factory, sometimes we couldn’t even deliver what they wanted.
David McGregor: Let me just shift to credit for a second, if I could. And Aldo, you normally share the breakdown on originations between finance receivables and credit receivables. Would you be kind enough to do that for us again this quarter?
Aldo Pagliari: You see the receivables, the originations were down, and that was more than offset by contract receivables. And similar to the results of the Tools Group, EC originations in the United States were down more than what we saw internationally. It was actually up in terms of EC originations. So that kind of gives you some of the blend.
David McGregor: Okay. And I guess within those origination numbers, can you distinguish between merchandise versus franchisees flipping RA and DC?
Aldo Pagliari: Actually, I was pleased to say, I know you’re asking, David, actually, in the quarter, there’s less than what would be the typical mix of what we call transfers, RA transfers where they transfer items from the revolving accounts over to EC. There’s actually less of an effect of that. But for the full year, it’s very consistent with where we expect it to be. So there’s been no signs of franchisees using the credit company to finance their operations by moving things from their revolving accounts across I think that’s what you’re after.
David McGregor: Yes. And do you get a sense that there’s an opportunity here to maybe I mean, you’ve got a very high-quality credit portfolio. I don’t think that’s ever been a doubt. Certainly, certainly, that’s our sense. Do you get a sense there’s maybe an opportunity here to relax a little on the credit standard in order to reinvigorate demand?
Nicholas Pinchuk: No.
David McGregor: It was a nice tight answer, Nick.
Nicholas Pinchuk: Well, if that was me.
Aldo Pagliari: If you think about what we said, people are lacking confidence to some degree for big-ticket items. I don’t think the way hold is to discount the interest rate you’re going to charge those to provoke a sale. So we’re not into the – discounting isn’t usually our style. It doesn’t mean we might not come up with creative promotions and bundling and things like that. But I don’t think discounting is the way.
David McGregor: And so what’s the take on the regional kickoffs? Just help us think through first half that you’re seeing in regional kickoff.
Nicholas Pinchuk: I think we usually comment on the kickoffs usually in the first quarter call. But in general, and we tried to shift the kickoff at the last moment for – we took a different approach to kickoffs this time. We saw this problem. We try to concentrate on shorter payback items that seemed to go reasonably okay with those items. And then we established a little more program in February and March, thinking that if we kind of stretch the kickoffs into other months, then we would be able to have better adjustments to the current situation. So that’s sort of what we did in the kickoff. I was at one in Las Vegas and turn yes, they usually send me the Deadwood, South North Dakota. This time, I got to go to Las Vegas. And we had the Canadian guys there. That seemed to go okay. They seem to be positive. The franchisees don’t seem to be daunted by this. They just report what they see.
