Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. You may go ahead.
Simeon Gutman: Hi, good morning, everyone. I want to go back to this market share – or not market share actually sales versus margin. And I’m curious, if you can speak to market share, if that is a gauge you’re looking at how – what happened during the quarter. And is the decision around this trade-off is it market share dependent? Are there certain categories you’re looking at thinking about when to apply promotions or where to apply promotions?
Christina Hennington: So right now with total consumer spending soft in the discretionary portfolio, we are not going to chase short-term benefit at the long-term – at the expense of long-term. And so it’s always a balance. We’re always looking to drive both sales and profit. We’ve also been very clear that this year has — we put profit, on a high priority to recover from last five years. But as Brian said, the long-term gain — the long-term game has to be both.
Brian Cornell: Again, I’ll underscore the point Christina, just made. Simeon, I think you know, it’s all about the balance. And we’re always looking to balance our focus on sales, and margin and profitability. Early in the year, we talked about the fact that we were going to plan discretionary categories cautiously in this environment. And we said, appropriately. And I think that’s played out well for us. But at the same time, we’ve been leaning into categories, with strong demand in Food and Beverage, in Household Essentials, in Beauty. We know, today’s consumers still celebrating seasons. So we lean into Back-to-School, and Back-to-College and Halloween. And we know, they’re going to celebrate the holiday season. So, we’re leaning into those select categories, where we know the guest is looking for newness, affordability and they’re going to celebrate those seasons.
But that’s what we do each and every day, as a good retailer and is constantly a balance category by category of the focus on sales, on market share, on profitability. And I think as you saw in the third quarter, that’s the way that worked for us.
Simeon Gutman: And just quick follow-up, sortation centers. Do you have a sense of what the savings look like? Do you have enough scale and experience, with them to know what the savings will be? And is that a 2024 — do we start to see the savings next year?
Brian Cornell: Well, you’ve opened up the door for John Mulligan, to answer your question today and I’m really glad you did.
John Mulligan: Thanks for that, Simeon. I would start by saying, we remain incredibly excited about sort centers. And with that we have already started to see savings, flow through the P&L. We haven’t talked about it because I think — it’s been three years, but we are still early in the journey. I think there’s still much to do in front of us. We’re still optimizing routes. We’re still just getting into much higher capacity vehicles, which will create more density, which will create more savings. And then, what we’ve said over the next few years, we’ve got at least five more of these to open. And then, as we get the digital business growing again hopefully, that number goes up as well. So we’re still in the early days, but we remain very optimistic because we are seeing savings. It’s much faster than the alternative, and we know the next best alternative we are operating well below from a cost perspective.
Brian Cornell: Operator, we’ve got time for our final question.
Simeon Gutman: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from Chris Horvers with JPMorgan. You may go ahead.
Chris Horvers: Thanks. Good morning. and thanks for squeezing me in here and Congratulations to John. It’s been an incredible journey and I hope you have a wonderful retirement. So Mike, I’ll follow up on the operating margin question for next year. Michael, maybe you could talk about the puts and takes as you think about next year. Clearly, the consumer is the question. But as you think about shrink versus maybe some incremental promotion, when you’re not so lean on the inventory side versus what you might see from Roundel, and you also have the $2 billion to $3 billion cost savings program.
Michael Fiddelke: Thanks for the question, Chris. I think the punch line is, we’ll talk more about next year, after we get through a really important holiday season. So, that’s our team’s focus right now. And a lot of what will impact as we get there, will be some of the things that you listed in your question. But more to come as we turn the page to next year, once we get through a really important fourth quarter.
Chris Horvers: Understood. Thanks very much
Brian Cornell: Yes. Thank you. So operator that concludes, our Q3 call. I want to thank everybody for joining us. I wish everybody a wonderful holiday season, and we look forward to seeing you in March.
