Scott Thompson: So round it to 10%, okay for the first quarter. And then you know, we’re a pretty good size of the market. And you can see we’re down call it 2% to 3%. So you can do a little bit of math and say, what was everybody else down. And you should probably come up with everybody else excluding us, would have been down probably close to 15% in the first quarter. So as a preliminary look and based on the data we have today, I would say call it 3% call the rest of the industry 15%, down would be kind of how we would quantify the share gains. Then you asked specifically, white space, shelf space. Our gains come in two pieces. And the most important piece is slot velocity for what we’ll call it the installed base, how fast do we get sales from the installed base.
And that’s where the lion’s share of share gains come from, because we’re fairly well distributed. But yes, there is still some white space. And there’s at least a couple that come online in the second quarter which would be new space we’ll call it. And they were not in the first quarter and they’ll come in the second quarter. Then you asked about okay after that there’s some more. Yes, there’s still several other white spaces to work on. But really the secret to we’ll call it share gains and future success is slot velocity and making what we’ve got in the marketplace more productive both for us and for the retailers. That’s a win-win. When we’re talking about the US. If you talk about internationally, there’s a lot more white space in the international market where we’re not as well distributed across the world and every country is different.
Operator: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Peter Keith with Piper Sandler.
Peter Keith: All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Just regarding the FTC decision, I guess I was curious on what gives you confidence on predicting the timing of that by the end of the second quarter?
Scott Thompson: Yeah. If you look at and this goes back to the original disclosure of the transaction and first of all let me say we’re on our original timeline, that we originally disclosed when we started this journey or gauntlet ever how you’d like to describe it. And it’s based on, we’ve always said, look, if we need to go through litigation, we’ll go through litigation. And we’ve always kind of put that in the budget from a timing standpoint, because we’re very comfortable if that’s the road that we need to take. We clearly have given the FTC additional time, because those conversations have been constructive and productive. We’re dealing with high-quality people, who are taking their job very seriously and learning more and more about the industry.
And we think the more they learn about the industry, that’s more likely that we’ll have the meeting of the minds. But there’s certainly, no guarantees and we’re certainly not finished yet. But the timing framework has always been we assumed that we would have litigation and win through litigation. But I think the most important thing when we started the process was, it was important to do this what I’ll call right and get the right answer, as opposed to just maybe do it fast. And we’re using that principle as we work through with the FTC in all areas.
Operator: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Seth Basham with Wedbush.
Seth Basham: Thanks. Two-part questions, if you don’t mind. First a follow-up on your response regarding FTC, if we do need to litigate this do you still expect to be able to close the transaction this year? And then secondly, regarding your sales trends in the quarter, can you give us a little bit of perspective on the cadence and then how the second quarter started off? Thank you.
Scott Thompson: The answer to your first question is, yes. We still would expect to be able to close it within this calendar year. On cadence, I’m going to break up the cadence question in kind of two buckets which I don’t normally do. But this time, I think the two buckets kind of differed a little bit. There is a cadence of sales at retail okay, call those end user sales. And then there’s a cadence of sales wholesale, on how we get orders. And as I think if you go back and listen to the fourth quarter earnings call in Jan, when we disclosed it last time, we were getting mixed messages. So if you look at it from a retail perspective, end user there’s no question that January was a tough market in the U.S., so one because January was tough; and two because of weather.
Then February was positive. And I think probably comped positive February over February and was obviously a holiday period. And then I think March was down at retail. Then moving to the beginning of the second quarter, I would say that retail sales were flattish is what it feels like. Again, information is not too precise. If you’re talking about our orders and our sales, we’ll call it wholesale, we were actually up in January and started the quarter slightly positive as I think probably retailers were stocking up in anticipation of President’s Day, then our orders kind of flattened out we’ll call it, in February as they kind of were working through the stock and they were slightly down in March and then have picked up and are flattish in April, again in a non-promotional period.
And although flat is not a word I particularly like, I like it better than down. I like things that are different than flat to go up. Actually flat in our orders, in a non-promotional period would be better than we’ve experienced over the last call it three or four quarters. Generally the trends have been during non-promotional periods, orders have been slightly negative and then they’ve been positive during promotional periods. So I don’t know if it’s a green shoot or not, but that’s the best information we have as of today.
Operator: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Michael Lasser with UBS.
Michael Lasser: Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my question. Is your sales instead of being up low to mid-single digits this year are down low to mid-single digits, what would that mean for your profitability? And also if the transaction does not go through, can you give us a sense of how aggressively you would be in buying back your stock? Thank you.
Scott Thompson: Sure. Bhaskar and I will both work on that a little bit. I think first on the sales standpoint, it matters where the sales are. If the decline is in we’ll call it starter beds, entry-level product. That margin is not very high and probably is not too significant. If that decline is in high-end beds primarily Tempur, it would be very noticeable. Why don’t you want to give them a little bit more around that Bhaskar then I’ll take the capital allocation.
