Kurt Barton: Exactly. Yes. Thank you. There is not a pronouncement, anything of material. And I’d just point back to how consistent each of the quarters were in 2023. So there’s really no meaningful shift in there.
Zach Fadem: Got it. Thanks for the time.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Chris Horvers with JPMorgan. Chris, your line is now open.
Chris Horvers: Thanks. Good morning, everybody. I wanted to follow-up on the sort of discretionary question that was posed earlier by Karen. As you think about what you saw in the fourth quarter, you’re hearing a lot of retailers talk about a very late Christmas season. And I recognize it’s a small portion of your mix. But in some of those seasonal categories, let’s say, fashion apparel and footwear and toys, did you see any sort of like deterioration? And then similarly, if you look at the data around pet inflation that’s been very strong, but it does seem like there’s some unit degradation and some sort of sacrifice same streets and the accessory business. So can you talk about those two buckets in terms of how that behavior has changed, I guess in the back half of the year in the fourth quarter?
Hal Lawton: Yes. Hey Chris, and good morning. Thanks for your question and for joining the call. First, we were very pleased with our Q4 business in general. As I said and Kurt, absent the storm, we were still at the high end of our comp expectations and we would have still had positive comp transactions for the quarter regardless of the storm. And we were also very pleased with our seasonal businesses. They performed in line with our expectations. And then in the last week of right before Christmas, for us, when we have a winter storm like that, it drives more footsteps into our stores, and they end up shopping the entire lifestyle when they’re in there. So we saw excellent performance that week. And in holiday-related items, whether it’s in apparel, whether it was in decor, candy, toys, tools.
It was a solid, very solid close to the year for us on both, as I said, not only just on demand-driven store-related items. And then on pet, we are seeing unit growth and double-digit comps across all categories in pet, whether it’s dog, whether it’s cat, whether it’s hard goods, whether it’s consumables, whether it’s food, whether it’s sundries or accessories. Certainly, the food is outpacing the other categories, but all categories in our pet business are seeing very strong growth.
Chris Horvers: Very impressive. Thanks very much.
Mary Winn Pilkington: So we’ve hit the top of the hour, but we’ll let the call go just a few minutes longer because our prepared remarks were longer.
Operator: Certainly. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Forbes with Guggenheim Partners. Steven, your line is now open.
Steven Forbes: Good morning, Hal, Kurt, Mary. I wanted to focus on member cohort trends. So you mentioned, I think, during the prepared remarks, retention rates right among the high-value customers. I was curious if you could expand on retention, repeat behavior sort of in aggregate across the member cohorts as a whole and whether you’re seeing a difference in behaviors right, between those members acquired over the past three years versus those members acquired 2019 earlier.
Hal Lawton: Yes. Hey, Steven, and good morning. This is a great new story for Tractor Supply. What I’ve seen historically in my career in retail is it takes time when you have a new customer for them to ramp up through your high-spending cohorts until they become kind of a mature customer. What we’ve seen is the customers, as you mentioned, I said in my prepared remarks, that we’ve had tens of millions of new customers shop us in the last three years. The majority of those have continued to be active shoppers with us and a huge portion had become Neighbor’s Club members. That cohort is basically shopping us, and we’re seeing purchase frequency, average ticket, number of categories shop total spend in the year, very much in line with our kind of long-time core customers.
So they’ve ramped up very fast. And that’s why when we say things like our Neighbor’s Club is outperforming our overall comp, our total company comp, even at 75% penetration. And even with the growth we’ve had, that’s why I think it’s so exceptional because historically, in my past, as you see your membership program becomes such a large portion of your sales is a tendency revert to the mean, right, revert your overall comp. And I think the data set you can see both that we’re providing also an underlying data just shows you how fast those customers have ramped up and become core customers for us. And it’s what gives us confidence as we head into 2023.
Steven Forbes: Thank you. Best of luck.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Peter, your line is now open.
Peter Keith: Hi, thanks. Good morning, everyone. One thing that we’re hearing in the channel right now, and it’s kind of a funny dynamic for Farm and Ranch, but that the chicken category is on fire. And certainly, there’s been some well-publicized discussion of price increases with eggs. So I guess I’m wondering, is that a kind of an emerging trend that chickens have perhaps reaccelerated for you. And is that a category that actually could be big enough to move the needle as we look at 2023?
Seth Estep: Hey, Peter, this is Seth. Thanks for the question. Yes, when we look ahead to this next year, we are incredibly excited about our poultry business. And just to go back to some of Hal’s comments earlier, I would just say even in Q4 for us, poultry was a primary driver. We have €“ unlike some maybe commentary you’ve heard elsewhere, we have not seen the entire year over the course of the last three years, any slowdown in our poultry business. And when we look ahead to this year, we think it could be another record year for us. Our stores are setting chick days here over the coming months. When we look out to our center court activity. We look at poultry being a predominant driver for us. And when you couple those things with our pet business, you couple those with our live goods business, all the sustainability things that customers are looking for right now is they’re looking to find value, to grow those things on their own.
We’re looking at poultry to be just absolutely another banner year and our team is incredibly excited for that. So we definitely agree with the commentary you’re hearing out there, and we think we’re in a position to continue to take market share in this category.
