Fahmi Karam : Which I think just adding on one more thing to that, Brad, if you think about the furniture pull forward being probably the biggest headwind that we have in household durable goods a little bit in appliances and electronics, but it’s primarily furniture with all that pull forward from the stimulus money in 2020 and 2021, that as things normalize and I don’t think they’re going to normalize in the next 90 days or anything like that when it comes to that furniture pull forward. But if you think about adding the merchants that we’re adding, doing more on our marketplace, we mentioned in our prepared comments some good regional wins. We don’t have a national one that to talk about just yet, but we’ve some good regional wins take which basically means taking share from our competition.
And when you add all that together and then furniture does improve, presuming 2024, maybe it’s not normal, but 2024 is better than 2023. And I think when we talk to our furniture partners, 2025 will be better than ’24 and probably ’26 will be better than ’25, and maybe you level off, then it’s going to take another couple of years. But if we’re already positive for other reasons from a growth standpoint, we’re in really great position for when the furniture per door productivity comes back.
Bradley Thomas : We would agree. Certainly all the data we have is that furniture’s trending at below normal trends in the United States right now. So a reason for optimism longer term. On the Rent-A-Center side, Mitch, just as we look at some of your competitors, I mean, it does look like your results have been well lower year-over-year significantly better than competitors. Can you maybe talk about what you’re doing to maybe take share and maybe how the weekly value proposition may be more compelling if it is in this current environment than what some of your competitors offer?
Mitchell Fadel : Yes, I think Rent-A-Center has performed pretty well improve the negative theme to our sales each quarter. And as we mentioned deliveries year-over-year being only 2% off if you compare them to traditional retail and half of the Rent-A-Center business is furniture too. So only being 2% off, we feel pretty good about and that improved as the quarter went on as well as July, August and September. So yes, I think we’re just sticking with you are focusing on execution. The e-commerce, as I mentioned has been really strong. We continue to grow it. When you think about e-commerce, 25% this year, roughly, versus 23 last year growing when and then ’22 was better than ’21 and so forth. So even post-pandemic, continuing to grow the e-commerce with the extended aisle stuff that’s on there as I mentioned, and just really focusing on execution, we haven’t changed our model.
We’re still in the communities with all of our stores, a steady store count, not moving them all over the place and doing things like that. We’re just steadily focusing on the customer, being there for them in a traditional way, expanding the offerings form certainly, but really focus on execution and sticking with our core model.
Operator: Our next question comes from Jason Haas with Bank of America.
Jason Haas : I’m curious if you think you’re seeing more trade down now than you were earlier in the year. And I know it’s hard to guess, but do you expect to see more trade down going forward?
Mitchell Fadel : It is hard. It is hard to say. We can look at vantage scores and stuff like that and see a little bit of it, but that’s not the only indicator, right? When you think about trade down, we de definitely think it is part of what’s happening. Don’t know that it is — yes, I think I’d say it’s been pretty modest. All the data we’re looking at, we think we could get more in 2024 as credit tightens and it’s possible that it goes up from here. We don’t have that forecasted or anything. It would be a positive tailwind and upside, but it’s been pretty modest. But I think it’s definitely there. I can’t say, Jason, that there’s more today than there was 30 days ago, 60 days ago, 90 days ago or even earlier in the year. It’s just really hard to say.
But on the other hand, when you think about what I was just mentioning to Brad, when deliveries at Rent-A-Center are down 2% year-over-year, and half their business is furniture. And when you look at, we talked to our big furniture partners that we have on the Acima side and even suppliers big names like Ashley Furniture and so forth. I mean, it’s down a lot more than that, right? Furniture. So is that because of trade down? It’s got to be part of it. The team’s executing really well, but they probably need a little help besides execution. And I think there’s probably some trade down in there. Maybe it’s more than we think. It is just really, really hard to say. There’s definitely some there and it could accelerate as we go forward. I don’t know if anybody wants to hear it, but if unemployment goes up a little bit, it probably even accelerates.
If unemployment gets worse in the country in 2024, it may even accelerate if there’s even more tightening above us.
Jason Haas : And then how about the impact from student loans? I know we’re pretty early into that, but I’m curious if you’ve started to see any discernible impact from those on loss rates or anything in the business that seems to be related to those repayments starting?
Mitchell Fadel : No, we haven’t. We’ve been watching it and looking at it, trying to see if there’s any differences. Same thing we get asked the question sometimes about the Snap program and so forth, but nothing discernible that we can tell at this point.
Fahmi Karam : Yes one of the things that we have started to notice a little bit and again, very early on but on the frontend folks that have student loans have started to convert a little bit less now than where they were kind of before the it turned back on. So nothing in our lawsuit, nothing in our delinquencies, but we have seen some of it come in from the frontend on the underwriting side.
