So we’re feeling good. In terms of mix, GM and a Club Pick (ph), so grocery, pantry they’re all strong, which we’re feeling good about. We don’t have a marketplace in Sam’s yet, we’re very focused on items and on curation of great items and I think that’s going to be really important for the Sam’s business as we go forward. And the thing that I finished with, there is the great items, drive the organic traffic. So we’ll continue to focus on those great items and I think we’ll get a lot — we’ll continue to get a lot of organic traffic there.
Doug McMillon: On U.S., so also asked about general merchandise. Would you repeat that part of the question?
Paul Lejuez: I was just curious how general merchandise performed online within the U.S. business. I think, last time, you said there were several categories that were up double-digits, curious how some of those general merch categories performed.
Doug McMillon: Yeah, Paul. Really positive strength in categories like hardlines, our auto care center is running really well and the events that we talked about. I had mentioned earlier. It’s great to see momentum with strong toy items and customers are responding to great gifts, like the Barbie Malibu House which is selling for $69, was $89 before it wanted to rollbacks, so those types of items are working really well. Customers also great to see — after the redesign of the — how the team is merchandising, general merchandise reflective of the seasons’ RIN (ph). The site was really on point for Halloween before that for Labor Day. And you’ll see the site flip quite frequently. So the team is doing a nice job reacting in categories to the plans that they have, but there’s some categories there were strengthened.
And as I said, there’s still a long way between here and the holidays. We have a good plan. Our people are ready, your inventory is in position. So, we’re ready for our customers.
Paul Lejuez: Thank you. Good luck.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Kate McShane with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Kate McShane: Hi. Thank you. Good morning. We are wondering if you could go into any more detail as to what would explain a softening in late October. Do you think it could partially be due to student loans or is it more of a function of being a shoulder period or a low before the holiday? And just the variability you’re seeing week-to-week that you noted increase the risk in being more promotional than maybe was originally planned and expected in Q4.
John David Rainey: Kate, this is John David, I’ll take this. You’re right to call out some of the economic factors that may be driving this. We’re seeing credit tightening. We’re in a period of time 12 months after the Fed has begun raising rates. We’ve seen consumer balance sheets that are getting back close to pre-pandemic levels. You’ve got the repayment of student loans, which affects about 27 million Americans. So all of these things could be contributing. I do want to point out, John talked about the impact of weather can have on our business. I’m learning that that can have profound effects in consumer shopping patterns. And we saw anomalous weather in the back half of October. So there is a number of different reasons, we can’t put our finger on is exactly.
And so that’s why we take a little bit more of a cautious stance as we go into the fourth quarter, calling out perhaps more variability because there are some trends that have been different than what we saw the first 11 weeks of the quarter. Not to be alarmist, so I think our business is still performing really well. That’s why we called out what we’ve seen thus far in November. In particular, the events that we’ve had. Walmart U.S., some of the more festive events internationally, we’ve seen strong response from our customers. But that this is — this was — the trend we saw in the back half of October was different than anything else we’ve seen this year. And so we simply want to call that out. In regards to promotion, maybe the segment CEOs want to comment on this, but I feel like we’re in a good place from overall an inventory level.
I don’t necessarily see a more promotional holiday season than what we were currently planning.
John Furner: This is John. Kate, good morning. I think what’s encouraging is that our traffic, our transaction counts, remained strong and consistent throughout the quarter. The end of October, we did grow our Halloween business a little less than we expected. I’m sure there’s something to do with weather and it being on a Tuesday, which is different than prior years. And then as we got in November with the cold weather, we saw cold weather categories respond right away. Our event was strong, so John David said it right. We’re just cautious of the shift that we did see. But overall seeing the number of customers who shop continue to grow. We’ve seen new customers all year across a wide variety of income groups. We’ll be ready for all those customers and we’ll be ready for anything that they need at the time.
