Shaun Mara: Yes. Let me just piece — a lot of pieces to that question; [indiscernible] a little bit. So in terms of gross margin, while we’re talking about it because we actually had an over-delivery this quarter, so we’re happy about that. About 30, 40 basis points overall which is about $1 million, not a ton of money overall but gives us a little bit more flexibility going into the fourth quarter. As we look at the fourth quarter and we look at spending overall, our opportunity, we think, is to basically take advantage of some of the things that Geoff talked about in terms of the pillars he wants to spend money on. So we think we’re going to use that money to get the favorability to start work on the growth opportunities that Geoff talked about in each of those pillars overall.
As it relates to fiscal ’24, I think you are talking about that. I think at a high level, we just started planning for fiscal ’24. So it’s pretty early for us to have a discussion about ’24 but when we look at that right now, we think sales will be at the high end of our long-term algorithm. EBITDA growth will likely be in the high single digits. Couple of things I want to point out, though, to the group one, as it relates to sales, shipments and consumption should be more aligned now that we’ve lapped the kind of abnormal fiscal ’22 builds. And as it relates to gross margin, it’s a little too early to get in specifics but we’re going to see the progression from first half to our second half this year, Q3 and Q4 is a good setup for fiscal ’24.
You’re going to see sequential improvement from fiscal ’23 to ’24, not back to full potential, I would say. We feel really good about the first half gross margin versus this year. And I’ll just say what we expect to get back to the algorithm where EBITDA is greater than sales growth, we’re not going to see all the gross margin improvement drop to EBITDA. We’re going to invest incrementally in consumer communication, marketing and capabilities and again, that will be consistent with the growth pillars Geoff talked about in his prepared remarks overall. So one more point on ’24, just before I forget, fiscal ’24 is a 53-week year for us. So we’ll have an extra week. That’s about 1 point in both top and bottom line as you guys start building your models out.
So with that, that’s kind of how we’re thinking about the next couple of quarters, years. I’ll turn it to Geoff in terms of the Quest investment specifically.
Geoff Tanner: Yes. I mean if you take a step back, we continue to be really excited about not just the delivery from Quest but by its potential, consumption up 24% in Q3 and as I mentioned in the scripted remarks, we think the brand has had a ton of growth runway in front of it. Brand awareness is very low compared to a number of peers which suggests that the brand just has continued runway pushing on innovation which has been the lifeblood of its success. Continuing to push out on distribution and we feel really good about the results that we continue to get there. And as I mentioned, what you’re going to see is a step change in marketing on the business because the awareness is low compared to where a brand of this size should be.
And so that will be looking at the media mix, creative as well as stepping up our investment on the brand more towards our targeted levels. So we see nothing about runway in front of this brand despite its size and despite the success that it’s had.
Joe Scalzo: Yes. Pam, does I answer a lot of pieces to that question. I’m not sure we got to all of them. Is that — do we cover those?
Pamela Kaufman: Yes, that’s helpful.
Operator: Our next questions come from the line of Rob Dickerson with Jefferies.
