Curtis Valentine: I think the only other note Kendall, on the new stores for this year is they’re going to be back half loaded about two thirds are going to open in the second half of the year.
Kendall Toscano: Got it. Thanks for the help.
Jack Sinclair: Thank you.
Operator: And thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Krisztina Katai from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Krisztina Katai: Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to ask about the customer strategy. So you have a lot more insights into overall purchasing patterns then you even did a year ago. So I wondering if you could quantify maybe how data is helping you in driving increased traffic or customer frequency? And just how do you think about the uplift opportunity, especially as you’re gearing up for a loyalty program launch?
Curtis Valentine: Well, we’re still fairly immature in that space, right? We talk about kind of low double digits of identifiable customers and high double digits, call it, 19% of our transactions that we can identify. So we’ve got a long ways to go there. We’re really excited for the opportunity with loyalty and getting the test out there in the middle of the year. But we’ve got a long ways to go on our ability to do that. I think the team has done some early work, some good work around some personalization testing. We’ve done some vitamins retargeting and things like that. We’ve gone after organic and attributes within segments of our customers. And so this year and part of the investment in loyalty about getting the foundation and the data foundation right to be able to really do that at scale. And so we’ll be working hard on that this year, and we’re excited for what that could do for us down the line.
Krisztina Katai: Thank you for that. And I was just wondering if you could give a bit more color in terms of what your actual mature stores are doing from a comp perspective. You obviously have a waterfall benefit. But just wondering how mature stores are comping versus the newer ones? And if there’s any update on the waterfall benefit that we should keep in mind for the next couple of years? Thank you.
Curtis Valentine: Yeah. No problem. So again, we’ve talked a lot good momentum in the newer markets and strong comps, especially in those places where we’re not as established. They start a little lower and they’re seeing a really strong comps. So it’s contributing to our comp for sure, and the mature stores are comping well. I won’t get into specifics per se. I think the only other thing to think about is just the newer stores, again, at a little bit lower volume as they start not as impactful on the comp base as the mature stores. So that will impact that kind of spread between the new and the comp stores or the mature stores.
Operator: And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Kelly Banial from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Kelly Banial: Hi. Thanks for taking our questions. Wanted to go back to the discussion of gross margin, I believe your long-term plan there was kind of for a flattish gross margin. You clearly see some opportunity to take that up this year. But I was just curious if you could talk about if anything has changed long term? Do you see more opportunity to continue to take that up? And maybe can you just help us understand the opportunity? I think you called out shrink and promotional optimization. Maybe you could just elaborate on the factors driving that this year and maybe long term?
Curtis Valentine: Sure. Well, long term, I think we’re still thinking about it stable from holding our margins steady. I think what we’ve got going on a little bit right now is really just a little bit of a shrink story. So we had a rough second half from a shrink perspective. Ops team has done a really nice job late in Q4, kind of getting that back in line. And so we feel like there’ll be some opportunity, particularly in the second half as we lap those numbers next year on the shrink line. So that will be a driver of it. And then we do — we have merchants who have done a nice job. So we continue to optimize promotions and manage the mix of the business, and that will have just a little bit of carryover from what’s been working for us in 2023 in the first half of the year.
I think the last piece is that the supply chain pressure we’ve experienced in the second half from the expanded square footage, we’ll lap that through the first half of the year, and then that pressure will ease as we get into the second half.
Kelly Banial: And can I just also follow-up on the guidance range? It’s a pretty narrow kind of range for the full year. I was just curious if you can kind of talk about the puts and the take. I mean at the low end of the comp range, is that really — can you still get to flat earnings on that kind of comp? Maybe just help us think about how your — how you plan to manage that.
Curtis Valentine: Yeah. I think, again, we’ll have to — we had a little bit of gross margin expansion. We’ll have to work hard on the cost side, as we’ve mentioned, and look for opportunities to offset some of the pressures we’re experiencing. It does get harder, obviously, as it goes towards the low end of the range as you’re starting to deleverage against some of the fixed costs, but we feel comfortable with the guidance and the ranges we have out there and being able to deliver.
