Joseph Hogan: Yeah. John, you know, third quarter is I call, our most non linear quarter, and it’s the most difficult to predict. And it’s because it know three major components to it. One is obviously the seasonality of our European business because of the vacation base or whatever, and the way that comes back is not always consistent. And in this case, it did not come back in the way that we had hoped it would. Secondly is you count on a big China teen market. And we did well in China, I feel, from a growth standpoint, but it wasn’t to a point that it could offset a slower rebound overall from a European standpoint. And the last thing is, in the United States, that lack of adult cases I mean, we did well on teen that lack of adult cases when we went into September was really felt. And so it’s those three key variables that I think, is how we came out of this differently than what we anticipated as we went in.
Jon Block: Thanks, guys.
Joseph Hogan: Thanks, John.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Anderson from Evercore ISI your question, please.
Elizabeth Anderson: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question. My question is so if we think about obviously we’re talking about consumer weakness and sort of the cyclicalness of the business. If we think about sort of the headcount reduction and the SG&A spend can you help us parse out a little bit more about the cuts and how to think about how to sort of preserve margin as sort of we’re seeing weaker demand and then how you need to invest again on the upcycle in order to continue to push penetration in what’s obviously a very largely underpenetrated market over a longer period.
John Morici: Hey, Elizabeth, this is John. So as we go through our planning process, like we do every year, we’re prioritizing investments that we can continue to invest to be able to help grow the business. So we look at some R&D and some of the investments we make. We have a lot of new products coming to market, as we’ve talked about at Investor Day. We want to preserve that flow of products. We want to make sure we’re properly reaching our customers so we prioritize some of the sales and go to market activities that we have around that. But we’re looking at all parts of the business to say, okay, what can we adjust? What can we make adjustments to still deliver on our priorities that we have as a business to help try to grow with the means that we’ve seen, but then also deliver the profitability and being able to see this margin accretion.
We’ve seen that all year as we’ve gone through. And essentially what we’re calling for in the fourth quarter is the continuation of that margin accretion. And that’s just through a combination of just looking at those investments and making sure that we properly invest for the future.
Elizabeth Anderson: Got it. And maybe as a follow up, obviously I have hope for the safety of all of your employees in Israel. Can you talk about sort of the capacity of that organization if sort of things stay as they are? Is that something where you’re sort of drawing down inventory elsewhere, not able to produce, if any, more details you could provide on that obviously unfortunate situation.
John Morici: Back to know we’re producing over there right now. I don’t give you this. It’s a reasonable amount of capacity. I’ve had other businesses in Israel at times like this, too. Not this bad. But in those situations, I feel like where it is now, we can manage it. As we talked about in the script, if the things get worse, the war over there. We can’t guarantee what we have. But we have a terrific team there, very dedicated team. They’re working both sides of the angle right now. We’re bringing in materials. We’re converting those materials, we’re shipping those out. So the business is operating fine right now, but we have to just wait in the upcoming weeks and see what develops on their homeland.
Elizabeth Anderson: Got it. Thank you very much.
Operator: Yeah, thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Aaron Wright from Morgan Stanley. Your question, please.
Aaron Wright: Great, thanks. I’m curious if you could break down a little bit the key components of the teen case volume trend you saw in the quarter by geography, specifically in the Americas region, and what’s driving that. And I think you mentioned, like, invisalign first and how we should be thinking about visibility across that patient cohort just given you have some more inherent control over maybe that segment in this sort of environment. And then second part of my question is just more of a clarification, I guess, in terms of the fourth quarter guidance. Does it specifically assume that there’s a further deterioration in the macro or just a continuation of what you saw in this September experience? And I just want to understand the buffers I guess you have in that expectation at this point. Thanks.
Joseph Hogan: As far as the teenage patients, again, we’re really pleased with the growth that we saw in teens, and it’s a very important teen season. I think the teens perform extremely well. We saw strength across every geography. We saw in Europe. We saw in North America. We also saw it in China. I think our portfolio helps us a lot invisalign first. We led with that. Remember, those are patients that are anywhere between six and ten years old. We really have terrific results in those areas, but also with permanent dentition. We saw some good growth, too. So overall, I feel like it’s a strong indication in the sense that we’re hitting the dot, in the sense of where we want to with those specific consumers, and through the advertising programs that I talked about and also through our digital platform and then the specific products, like invisalign first and then IPE that rolls into Canada. And then more broadly as we move into 2024.
John Morici: And just on the fourth quarter, Aaron really taking what we see in September continues into October, and we assume that things don’t get better than what we saw in September. So it’s a tough macro environment. There’s less orthodontic case starts, lower patient traffic. And so we factor in all those based on what we saw, and that’s what our projection is for. Q four.
Aaron Wright: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Jeff Johnson from Baird. Your question, please. Jeff, I don’t know if you’re on a speaker phone, but if you could lift the handset if that were the case. Still not hearing anything from Mr. Johnson. One moment for our next question .And our next question comes from Jason Bednar from Piper Sandler. Your question, please. Still not hearing Jason?
Shirley Stacy: That’s strange. We certainly will follow up with both Jeff and Jason. Operator, do you mind just going to the next question, please?
Operator: Certainly. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Rich from Goldman Sachs. Your question please.
Nathan Rich: Great, thank you. Can you hear me okay?
