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6c6760724372040941a18aa1e093bde4
Just to put a fine point on the fourth quarter sales expectations, am I correct in thinking that the delta between what was previously expected and what's now expected is the lost sales in the month of November associated with supply chain disruptions and that the inventory that you got in just prior to Cyber Week is m...
I think you're pretty you're accurate. And I'd say, overall, if you look at our prior guidance, there's two factors that are impacting it. There's the lack of in-stock, especially early in the quarter, and then from a profitability perspective, there's an incremental 15 million that we highlighted that relates to inbou...
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A
96067328cc99760bc9ad08a2d16afb40
You know, one overarching question and something that I think that's a little bit different this year than in previous years is that there could be winter items, like boots and coats, winter outerwear, fleece, that sell more closely to full price in January than ever before. In other words, considering that consumer de...
Yes, Steve. I would say you are. First of all, our inventory levels today are -- and end of Cyber Week are pretty much in line with where we were last year. So, we're feeling much better about that. And secondly, since we sell a very large percentage of basics or seasonal basics, you're exactly right, those are going t...
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a5775d6470cf881b92d9d9a29382ff07
Yes, I would think so, and could -- I don't want to try to get ahead of myself, but could provide upside to the fourth quarter in sales and earnings if that dynamic happens this year relative to previous years, is that -- is that accurate?
If you look at customer traffic and you look at demand, it's still there. I mean, it's just the availability of product I think, that's been holding people back. And when we went through Cyber Week, last week, we were pretty pleased with what the outcome was, the number of customers that came to the site, who was buyin...
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B
231f812bd8f229601d93af26a8f64040
As it pertains to the supply chain expectations for the first half of next year and into the second half of next year, not asking for guidance, of course, just how much do you think how much oil will be placed into the gears that drive the supply chain for deliveries that are expected in say, March, April, May, June, t...
You know, I think there's no question. It's going to continue to be challenging. I think the thing that we've done internally is, we have adjusted some of our lead times to account for the factors that we know about. Now, unfortunately, there have been several things that are outside of our control, but we are hopeful ...
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bc407962587069a2504f739f3a15a820
If you know, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the $15 million of supply chain costs that you're expecting here in the fourth quarter. Can you unpack that a little bit more about what those dollars were? And then as we think about the -- you mentioned potential pressure extending into the first ha...
The two biggest components were the inbound cargo freight rates that were up dramatically year over year, and then the second is that we did air more product than what we would normally do. Just some of our key items that we're worried about, even if we expedited things on boats and trucks, it wasn't going to get here ...
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80d13f951ce5b74fddb032cd62081fc0
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, if costs remain elevated for the foreseeable future, is there a point in time next year where you would either becoming less promotional or raising ticket prices on your goods? How should you think about that? Or are you kind of, you know, waiting to see what happens in the spri...
No. We've already gone back and we looked at pricing for next year, for spring, and for fall. And obviously, that after the price increases to make up for the increase in costs. Though I would say, we think that, while the cost probably will not make it down to last year's level, we don't think it's going to continue w...
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082c8c73ba02401738b97622411698ad
Jerome, you've talked a lot about the future initiatives, expanding the reach and presence of the brand. What do you see is the opportunity for the TAM of Lands' End, given the different verticals and the long-term growth? Where does it grow? What do you see that being as we move forward into 2022 and beyond?
Thanks, Dana. A couple of things. First off, due to what's happened over the last couple of years and the proliferation of more people shopping online and their being comfortable shopping online, we believe that the customers that are online shopping now, more than where they were a couple of years ago, are really our ...
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1636c14173146cd4e9472a7ceecd8d78
Got it. And any -- and the partnerships business or what you have with Kohl's, are there more opportunities like those ahead? And how big do you expect the partnership business to get over the next year or two?
We haven't shared numbers yet, on the size of the partnership business, but we will talk about in January when we lay out our long-term goals. But we see it is extremely significant. And I'd rank them. I think our organic growth is probably going to be our No. 1 growth factor over the course of the next five years, but...
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B
cadae01ff22831d65ea2e72d7ec30e94
I wanted to start with one of the things you mentioned in your prepared remarks. You talked about strengthening the marketing through accelerate awareness. Could you maybe expand upon that a little bit? Are you using new channels? Are you spending more dollars? This is like a shift in dollars? Just what was the impetus...
Yeah, we're really excited about the changes that we have made. And I would say overall, it's really more of a shift in dollars as opposed to a dramatic increase. We traditionally relied more on kind of basic advertising as well as the efforts of our sales organization. And while the sales organization remains a critic...
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7ce8c7d55d31b04b9c1ae9b780f4991c
I know you highlighted this a little bit, I wanted to get a little more specific in terms of margins. The H&H margins were I think a couple of years, if not all time high on the adjusted basis and adjusted EBIT basis and then obviously, H&H in specialty were more impacted by raw materials. So the question is one, what ...
Hi. This is Martin. So if you take A&H first, I mean, you did see very strong margins here in the first quarter. And it's primarily driven by favorable product mix in the sense that you have a very strong minerals and nutrients, which relatively speaking, its higher margin compared to the food ingredients. So as those ...
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2bc4bbdc89b3b327257917b2025b24ab
If we start with the human side, I was hoping you could help us understand, where the volume growth is coming from in terms of, is it higher volumes on existing customer products? Or is it new launches? It feels like, product launches are accelerating? So, just curious what your perspective has been?
So, Mark, I'll take that one. Yeah, it really is somewhat across the board, I would I would have to say, if you peel the onion back and look at all of our product lines, all of our sub-businesses within what we call human nutrition and health, essentially they all grew in the first quarter. Obviously some more than oth...
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e7b58873cb0a16b33ec65ce09b8e7517
Can you talk a bit about the EO products for agriculture? I know it's a small piece of the pie. But I'm just curious how much of a resource investment is for you and where you're going with it?
Yeah, I think that that when we talk about our specialty product segment and I'm just going to maybe, guess a little bit where you're headed here on the especially product side, when we talk about plant nutrition. Those really are key related minerals for plant nutrition. We're not really selling any -- I think you men...
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3da07ebc99c18fcf24ea9ac933e960b7
I'm curious how you think the normalization of hospital activity is going to affect. Are we going to see a bump here, a bump up or a bump down?
We believe overall we're going to see a bump up, as opposed to a bump down. But you're sort of digging into a very important topic relative to this and very kind of pertinent to what's happening today. We did see really nice growth sequentially in our, what we call Performance Gases business, volume was up about 11% se...
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A
bcc7967f49625ad08f50e530d4ef786d
First, just coming back on the margin side, obviously, I think on the raw materials side, it seems like the price increases should mitigate most of the impact there, but appears on -- increase in distribution costs that you're seeing. What can you do to kind of stem back? And when should we sort of expect that to maybe...
Hi, Mitra. We certainly have a challenge at the moment with the inflation going on, and just to maybe dimensionalize it a little bit, if you just look at sort of price paid year-over-year in Q1 this year versus Q1 last year, for the exact same product, that impact $4 million, $4.5 million, almost $4.5 million of just i...
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B
667193be38e9f2d1cfe6148ec125e173
On the obviously, pandemic, with the vaccine rollout under way and restrictions being increasingly lifted, etc, we probably should expect especially product business to bounce back, if not interchange, stop growing year-over-year. But on Human Nutrition side, I was just curious on, especially on the foodservice market,...
Yeah, it is Mitra. We are -- we've talked about, we have approximately $50 million to $60 million of sales, or we did at least in 2019 that went into foodservice that really was a significantly impacted, and we are absolutely seeing an increase in that business. It's still volatile, it's still not consistent. But we ar...
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dc0512b79c8f7d4cd374f5896211e92a
You've obviously done a great job on the balance sheet, that building cash and just curious in terms of the acquisition pipeline and if you maybe seeing some opportunities now that might not have existed pre-COVID?
So we definitely, and I think I said these exact same words, there was definitely a short slowdown last year in the early stages of pandemic and we even as a company struggle a little bit with how could we do a transaction? And I think that, the market as everybody will tell you is very hot, there are lots of assets fo...
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434377c29df58e011a43b6dbc4dc6d05
So troubled accounts was the main topic for DXC over the last few quarters. I did notice that you didn't talk about troubled accounts in your update today. So I would like to ask what's your status with these troubled accounts or at least the accounts that were previously considered troubled. And to what extent are you...
OK. So thanks, Rod. Look, when I reflect back on my first year at DXC, I would say my two biggest achievements are around strengthening our balance sheet and our customers. When I think about the 40 troubled accounts, in my mind, we've moved past that, right? So I communicated that 38 out of the 40 were fixed. And in m...
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c22892aad3b3e65162df4732d08b9149
I'm looking at the cloud layer of the stack. Your growth in cloud did improve from the prior quarter. But cloud is clearly one of the big growth trends in this industry. And relative to that trend, your cloud growth is somewhat lackluster here. So can you give us some color on your cloud business? I know a growth turna...
OK. So Rod, like I just talked about in terms of customers, right, that's where my focus has been. Most of it has been in fixing the ITO layer, which is where the business has traditionally had the most revenue runoff. But as we are stabilizing that, which you can see in these numbers, when we look through both GBS and...
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1fafd0484945f860258e6bb314840efd
It's really good to see the strong book-to-bill and then that potentially going into 3Q as well. Can you talk a little bit about the sustainability of 1 times or greater book-to-bill going forward? And I'll ask my follow-up question upfront. If you can talk a little bit about the strength in your pipeline and the timel...
So, Rayna, thanks for the question. In terms of the book-to-bill, we're obviously very focused on the next quarter. I like what Neil laid out in terms of our guidance. We're still managing quite a few things here, right, we still got one of the assets that we have to complete. We're bringing the other two businesses in...
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B
20e001c241fc9c741b4ab11e4b2d812e
I guess my question is to ask perhaps for an update in terms of the delayering and the simplifying the organization that you've spoken about in the past, Mike. And once that's done, what's next in terms of sort of looking at margin improvement? Is there sort of a revenue mix push? Is there a pivot to maybe higher-value...
Ashwin, thanks. Always good to hear from you. So, look, the update on the delayering is we definitely said we're on pace to achieve our $550 million for this fiscal year. We did better than expected in Q2. We took out roughly $60 million in costs. We expect that level to continue in Q3. And then when it's over, this is...
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A
748742f0d98754dfb2392834458d0ff7
And then the other question, as we look at bookings and trying to get a beat on spend or behavior, enterprise spending behavior, anything with regards to the pace of decision-making, of contract-sizing? The contract is already signed. Should we expect normal ramps, things like that, as we look out? What are clients tel...
OK. So here are the five things that I'm seeing in the market, all right? And that's what these five things are pushing our book-to-bill of 1.0 or greater. The first thing is that CIOs are making decisions. And when you look at our pipeline, it's up 11% quarter on quarter, OK? The second thing is everybody is talking a...
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c55a95a262add9fff2edfa033ef58785
Mike, no rest for the weary. Now that you've completed the strategic review of DXC's portfolio, how are you thinking about M&A going forward? Meaning are there some high-growth areas you're eyeing potentially for tuck-in acquisitions? And/or would you consider another big-scale merger at this point? And then maybe I'll...
OK. So, Lisa, thanks. And I always check in on your seven points about how you're tracking our progress. So thank you for that, all right? So I can recite them. Look, on the M&A front, when I talk about us getting to a certain level of stability, we are now getting to a point where I can run this business, OK? And I do...
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d2936947b1fbe1dc7002b730027f6baf
To expand on Lisa's point around M&A, can you talk more broadly about capital allocation now that you've paid down some of the debt with the Health and Human Services proceeds?
OK. So basically, look, our capital allocation, I think I've been incredibly consistent that my No. 1 priority, as COVID hit and so forth, is to maintain an investment-grade credit profile. We're constantly reevaluating our capital allocation, but we're still, like I said, dealing with a number of moving parts. So just...
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afec2fc606ae04360ce970663849ff7a
And on the Workplace and Mobility asset and the horizontal BPS asset, can you talk through some of the actions you're looking to take around those? Is there any reinvestment that's expected to take place? And if so, is that contemplating your margin guidance?
Yes. So the bottom line is what we're going to do with those businesses, so I don't want anybody to misunderstand. We're bringing those businesses back in, but we are definitely going to run them differently. And the three things we're focused on is, one, strengthening the management team. To give you a specific exampl...
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eae7e41b174bfd1fae858b6494e3c744
I just wanted to ask about -- I know you guys have been talking about like the prior terminations, price-downs, runoffs, and those that have affected 2Q. I just wanted to know like are those expected to gradually subside throughout the end of the fiscal year or sort of how long are those impacts still going to last.
So thanks for your question. So, look, we've been talking about those runoffs for a while now. We are pretty much through them, and that's why we continue to talk about the revenue stabilization because the year-on-year compare is a tough one. And what I'm trying to show you all is we've gone from green shoots to real ...
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588dbdd7bd3fb1c5542d22783cee8f63
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions then. Nice momentum in the business here. So -- snd first up, can you expand on the AmEx contribution? What percent of bookings, enrollments kind of in the quarter? And if you could remind us of the TAM of members and where we sit today on penetration. Where you expect that number to ...
Sure. So I'll answer in a couple of ways. One is that we had a really strong launch starting in July 1 with the AmEx partnership. It exceeded our expectations, and continues to remain strong in terms of new growth and renewals of existing members that have the Platinum card. You'll see in the Q, there's about a $17 mi...
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ba30de0fd8f47de9a893c5dfbe550c75
Gotcha. And then as we think about the Health Pass enrollments and kind of upsell the Clear Pass, what strategies are you using to kind of convert those members? Can you quantify kind of the actual number of conversions? And if you could confirm the split between Health Pass and kind of Clear Pass in the quarter, it wo...
So we're not going to break those out as we do look at it as a platform business. I will say that the platform side of the business is a B2B SaaS model where enterprises are paying Clear. You are seeing some people naturally migrate over because the brand is really resonating with them, and they understand the experien...
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6fa6852b7d640c6777eae06293540c53
Gotcha. And then last question, just on free cash flow, very nice record quarterly cash. How should we think about kind of seasonal dynamics there? Is this more of a function of the start of the AmEx contract? Or how should we think about free cash as we exit the year and move into fiscal year '22? And now with the IPO...
Sure. A lot of questions in there. So from a cash flow perspective, I think important to note that we generated strong growth and free cash flow. And certainly, the American Express partnership contributed to the free cash flow, but it wasn't all of it. So we still would have generated free cash flow even without the ...
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1a9b7b57a9cea9750ff3d6568bbbe229
Hi, everyone. Congratulations on the progress. You mentioned 100 new partnerships that occurred this quarter. Can you expand a little bit on those and what you see the runways for those? What that translates into, maybe what type, going forward? And then secondly, is there a regional trend in airport usage? Which marke...
So I'll start with your second question first. So we do see regional variability. I'm not going to break out specific markets. But as I mentioned, we have about 40% of the markets that are now above from a verification standpoint. But interestingly enough, we're outperforming on enrollment. So even if a specific marke...
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ffbd83004c5acaec95637f2892d91a6b
Got it. And then just one follow-up. TSA PreCheck, any reason for the shift in timing?
Look, we're seeing really encouraging trends in the business. We're expecting a strong Q4 even without PreCheck. We're actively working in partnership with TSA to bring Clear's brand to the TSA pre-check product as soon as possible. I think everyone is involved, is motivated to bring this to the traveling public. And ...
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3aff970ee5552bcb92e8a49e8e621db2
Good morning. This is David on the line for Michael Turrin. Just one question for me. Can you guys talk about the progress you're seeing in terms of member acquisition metrics as it relates to the dynamics of the airport ambassador efficiency rate that we would see versus mobile sign-ups for this quarter? Thank you.
Sure. I think if you look at our sales and marketing line, you'll see some really strong efficiency from a customer acquisition or a member acquisition standpoint. So we are extremely pleased with the performance of our field team. We talk about our over 1,500 ambassadors in our physical footprint which really drives e...
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bc8c2f11c291daac7c40c7e4e7318223
Hi. Good morning and thank you for taking the question. Maybe, Caryn, if we could touch on the platform business. As we see all these different partnership agreements come across, and we know there's been kind of a mix shift last year from event management to Health Pass, I would imagine you're starting to see a greate...
Yes. I wish I could give you a specific answer. I think here's my foundational answer, which is identity is foundational, right? And not digital ID, but secure identity. And our platform not only comes with an embedded base of members that what you saw at the end of the quarter is 8.1 million members who trust our bran...
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e2d14c05b9949c911f252d6b16a3de2d
Got it. That's helpful. Maybe, Ken, to follow up on that. How do you think about the unit economics for these deals as you're developing all of these partnerships? Is there a range of kind of unit economics or price per attendee or price per seat, and if it were an enterprise agreement that we can kind of wrap our head...
Yes. I mean, like anything, there's a range based on volume and type of agreement. Generally speaking, these are annual agreements that are either upfront based on the number of members or based on variable usage. From a unit economic standpoint, there is an upfront enrollment cost, which we've talked about. And that ...
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8916dd654a97b46a3af01a69635450a1
Got it. Maybe just real quick. You mentioned, I think during the IPO, we saw maybe like a 15 times LTV to CAC. As you become more enterprise or platform focused to that mix increases, do you imagine that that would changed materially? Or is there a level that you kind of look toward to maintain like a model efficiency ...
Yes. I mean that LTV to CAC is really referring to the B2C CLEAR Plus business. I think the unit economics will be very strong on the platform side. I can't really speak yet to what that ratio will be based on it being a developing business. But I think it will be very [Inaudible].
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85886489e6a47bdd01bc69904f9d98f1
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just a few if I could. And Caryn, you may have touched on this a couple of questions ago. But you mentioned a bit earlier, you guys are converting at higher rates and sort of how that's even in the -- airport is now back to 2019 levels. Offsetting some of that volume...
So great question. I think as people are returning to travel, the experience that they've had sitting on their couch ordering tacos at the push of a button and the rest of their life at the push of a button, really what we're calling the convenience economy, the expectation for frictionless experiences, it is making th...
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0ef2876140e0dba67c4b8414a9aa7346
Yes. That's super helpful. Thanks. And second question is, philosophically, if a Jan 4, vaccine mandate goes into place, are you -- would you consider that to be sort of net positive to the business model in a way that would show up?
I can't comment on that except to say that Health Pass has been really important to our partners. And what we're offering our tools to help people reopen, stay open and make the experiences safer when there's different things that our partners need to comply with, Clear is a very important partner to ensure that compli...
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38681e21f73eea16a6ab664e42f6b812
Cool. And then just one last quick one. Are you guys able to track at all the impact from the digital nomad contribution to travel or to your platform? And then any way to track sort of the business impact? A bit of a stretch but what, I want to ask.
Well, it's an interesting question. We are seeing different patterns, right? So different days that used to be really busy are slow now and days that were slow are really busy. And so hours of the day, right? So you are seeing different patterns. Holistically, you are seeing travel numbers up and strong and -- but the ...
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B
bb3fec52284cdc039a5d35ea079f7f85
Just on the quarter, if you could give us an update on gross margin. Was China accretive to gross margin in the second quarter? And give us an idea of how far Model Y gross margin was versus Fremont Model 3? And then just more broadly on strategy, it seems like your approach to insourcing is varying by region. You're i...
Yes. Just to start with the gross margin questions. We did see progress on gross margins in China, and that was despite pricing action that was taken. The factory is still not running at full capacity yet as it continues to ramp. So we think there's a continued opportunity to optimize the cost structure there.Model Y, ...
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20539ad01df8f94bb787091a02aa9ca2
So really nice to see the revenue acceleration here at 13% this quarter versus 12% in the first half. Guidance implies 14.5% at the midpoint in the fourth quarter. Can you talk a little bit about the components leading to revenue acceleration here in the second half and then particularly with the fourth quarter guide?
Yes, happy to. So we've been talking about the revenue acceleration for a while now. And as you can tell by the LTM current billings, what we're really seeing is the continued growth from the spend from existing customers as well as new. So if you take a look at our bookings trajectory and looking at the pipeline, what...
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9c31da459521723d0ab0aeb25dc7ec33
Could you talk about the traction in multiproduct adoption by new customers? You mentioned that in the prepared remarks and in the last couple of calls. What's driving that trend? Is it simple as vendor consolidation? Or are customers increasingly realizing the power of the platform on that initial sale?
Yes, I think it's a combination of both those things. I think any CSO you talk to, they really do want to consolidate their stack and too many vendor solutions and the time is wasted in trying to get these solutions to work with each other. So when you take that, essentially, that's what the market is really looking fo...
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84116fb104e298e5d4a8977a6e8ee79b
I get your thoughts on capital allocation. So I noticed the Corta Family Trust has been selling shares in the open market since August. It looks like it's been a bit of an overhang and probably explains the 10% short interest in the stock. I mean given now with you're executing and tailwinds you're experiencing in cybe...
Yes. Great question. We've actually been talking about the capital allocation strategy on a regular basis with the Board and with management as well, and this is actually one of the reasons why the Board has authorized an additional $200 million when we had slightly over $100 million left as of Q3. We do believe that o...
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f42ce969bb241c4a19384202e8bb509c
One, just in light of a number of the new executives that you brought on, including the CRO, I'm curious, have you formulated any different changes in strategies and go-to-market or anything, any observations that we could take away? And then secondly, in terms of the XDR product, I'm just curious, are there any partic...
Yes, great question. I think, first, I'm definitely excited to have these seasoned leaders come onboard. I think, as we have stated, our focus really is to drive continued platform innovation, and that's where bringing someone on board as a CPO really helps us ensure that we are continuing with our innovation, continui...
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8b43f11513613ca98da3c066fa11e64a
I was wondering maybe if I could follow on to one of the previous questions that were asked, and I apologize if I missed it, if it was commented on before. But I guess on sales and marketing initiatives, given the changes in executive management, any sense of what we might anticipate for the trajectory of spend there a...
Yes. In terms of the sales and marketing, we're working very closely with our CMO, CRO as well as our new CPO to understand the incremental spend that we think is necessary and we should be spending. And we do have an intention to increase the investment, as we said, all along and sorry to repeat that every quarter. Bu...
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0525948973ca572d3f49d4431f4c74af
Have you offered -- and I apologize again if I missed it -- but the percentage of VMDR as a percentage of total bookings over the last 12 months? Or any kind of other metrics to give us kind of a bookings or revenue penetration rate?
Yes. So in terms of the bookings, as a percentage of LTM bookings, VMDR now makes up over 40%. So it is significant. And I know that one of the metrics that we talked about that the quarterly -- the renewals that are up for renewal with the VM solution, we're talking about that percentage actually went up to 57%, up fr...
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04658d2c94cfa94d4d18a2a7f4eda8c7
For the current billings metric, was there any sort of contribution from the total cloud acquisition at all either to acquired deferred revenue or revenue in the quarter?
No, it had no impact to the top line financials at all. So it's outside of that.
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817d3c5dd28e273d9ff1e6f96bbd2caa
And then just my follow-up on the hiring environment. Obviously, it's a very difficult labor market. A lot of companies are seeing a lot of wage pressures. I'm curious, as it relates to hiring, what's the experience been like there in the past couple of quarters and how you're kind of reflecting that into your forward ...
I think if you see -- we have done, I would say, a good job in the last few months of getting a lot of the key hires hired in the company, right? So yes, I think the market is interesting. But I think when there is a good strong opportunity. And these leaders, as they are coming into Qualys, believe in the story and th...
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bb4eceef1f263d5e5aa613cbef3a8e59
I wanted to just ask you a little bit about, I guess it's two part question, but one is, as we look ahead and you look at sort of the dynamics within the frac sand business and pricing trends, how should we think about, without talking about specific quarter number, but how should we think about contribution margin per...
Yes Stephen for contribution margin issue, if you follow us sort of the past, you know in our fourth quarter and first quarter we typically have lower contribution margin because our costs are higher as we're bringing an inventory over the winter. And typically we will have lower costs in the second and third quarter a...
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80301f47489fb46325fe68e9a7634077
I was curious about is with the new facility come online, the Utica facility, does that impact the short term cost structure at all? Is there any headwind from that we should think about?
Well, as we've ramped up Utica actually their production costs are relatively in line with what we're seeing at Oakdale, but we do have a little higher trucking costs there because our terminal is not right at the location. So there's a little bit of friction there in terms of our trucking costs. It makes Utica a littl...
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ee1a7684ec89628451c9fd30bbe89f3f
And then just one other question I was just thinking about, and you guys have as good a perspective as any, when you think about just the dynamics of demand, which has been rising clearly, and then just sort of the frac sand supply demand situation. You have obviously had a lot of competitors that have financial proble...
Yeah. Stephen, thanks. The, so what we're seeing is there's definitely some idle assets out there that are, I think either will not, or having difficulty coming back online, particularly in the Northern white space. And that's a good thing for us, right. As you mentioned, demand is going up and the supply, I don't thin...
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f62f496aa842be1ca9df88d2c7466229
I guess, two questions this morning, you know, all of us here, the analyst community, we all have our view on frack crew counts. We all kind of make up some numbers to throw out there. What are you guys seeing today in the Bakken and Marcellus in terms of activity and looking into the crystal ball, you know, how do you...
Yeah. So, John, what we're seeing is we're seeing is relatively robust activity in both of the markets you mentioned Marcellus and Bakken. And with the commodity price in oil stabilize, and kind of in the 60's, we anticipate that this year could see some growth in additional spreads going out there. But so far, we see ...
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c7255c48072b609f57483fe2ba6f7ab7
And then what the SmartPath rollout, I think you alluded to as many as potentially 10 systems later this year. Is the initial focus in the Bakken or are you taking that across the US? Just walk us through the rollout strategy?
Well, our first deployment has been in the Bakken. We're set up to support additional deployments there, but no, that system's available anywhere in the US and we're prepared to support it anywhere in the US. As you mentioned, we'll have 10 systems ready to go by the end of the year. And the system is really kind of pr...
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fb5d6dce78c109bd2564171c84706d67
Okay. And then, I guess the final one for me, there is a little bit of chatter, some small invasive mines popping up in places like Wyoming. Just your thoughts on opportunities there, whether you do something defensively, aggressively, I just any, what's your take on that?
Yes. We are seeing a little bit of additional mind development out there. We've seen, I think there's been some activity in the Bakken and there's some in kind of Southeastern Wyoming. We keep an eye on it, John, but we don't anticipate it's going to be similar to what happened to the Permian with development outside o...
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3499e015580fce0bbd0e145a3b4387dc
And is that primarily right now, the driver issue or just the road traffic?
Sheer cost of it, and the other part about it, it's easy to put rail cars in storage but for these truckers have already gone through where this industry seems to go up and down in cycles and it's not a really great job to have for the truckers.
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28b920928f997b3abd25ede01497d08a
Hey guys. Just a quick question on the cash flow. It sounds like there was a slight change in the language of the guidance. I think you guys previously said at least 10 million previously, could you please just kind of address that please?
In terms of cashflow here? We still anticipate being in the $10 million range for the year.
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896bee31bcf244971193b804f601e7c4
Okay, great. And then I noticed a really nice customer pickup that you had this past quarter. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit more in how you're able to expand your customer base? You know, is that being driven by the new capacity from Utica or the ability to transport to this location? If you could maybe talk abo...
Yeah. So a couple of things. You had mentioned Utica, clearly getting an additional Class one railroad on the BN has been helpful in attracting customers that we were unable to attract prior because of having two line hauls and things like that. So that's been a positive, but I think ultimately as we've been picking up...
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fbf3e61b7812cfb26de3b2b0b153a2e7
Do you have a sense of the mix and your volume right now from contract versus spot?
Yeah, we don't give a breakout between contract and spot. A lot of times we've had customers that were on contract that have come off but they're still having very consistent volumes with them. So even though they maybe typically spot today, they're still from historical contractual relationships and management. So we ...
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4bd05fac952fd7726b9d17d974d99d67
Hey guys, quick question. I was trying to figure out the fixed charge coverage ratio and it's kind of complicated because of the cash taxes and whatever, tax refunds in Q3 and Q4. Where are you all on the fixed charge coverage ratio as it applies to the AVL right now?
Well, first of all, the fixed charge coverage ratio doesn't apply. It only kicks in if we have 85% of our facility drawn. And so we don't have any covenants that we apply to currently under our borrowing base. And so it doesn't apply in terms of being any kind of compliance issue. And then secondly, I don't have the nu...
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79faf080cfee5a8c7e87ef7ba20a3e02
Can you comment on the planned cadence of capex over the course of '20? You had mentioned that you would have liked to have seen fleet on rent to be stronger exiting the year, and I'm wondering as you lay out the capex outlook, how back half loaded? Is it -- how much flexibility do you have to move below the low end of...
Yeah. Jerry, I mean the fleet capex wasn't -- doesn't have any real connection to our volume in Q4 that typically comes in early in the year. So, it's simply loaded in Q1 and Q2, that's just very typical, and that's where it will have to begin this year. We were conservative with our capex last year, I think which is w...
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c5357b492c0b65a1b08e60bfefa88b7f
And obviously, two levers of time, one is the demand piece, but the other is how much capacity you folks you deliver into the market? And just given the softer time in 4Q, should we think of a lighter capex in the first quarter versus normal seasonality, or how do you think about the pace of capex is going to be rolled...
As far as we're concerned, I mean, we've been very conservative with our capex in '19. We'll probably be looking for a little bit more flexibility in 2020. But the demand is solid out there. There's no real shock that we're addressing. So, we will -- and the demand in Q1 that we've seen so far is typical of what we'd e...
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f9813e6cba9bf51a5556db6123e2c478
OK. And lastly, can you talk about what level of improvement in dollar utilization you're expecting with your '20 outlook. It looks like at the midpoint of the range, you're baking in a modest improvement in dollar you -- at least -- that's how the math looks. Can you just comment on if that's right? And if you expect ...
I mean our guidance has been pretty consistent in terms of dollars. So, we're looking for 100 to sort of 200 basis points of improvement year over year for the sort of next couple of years. That's the goal that we set for ourselves. And certainly, we're a long way to getting that goal in 2019 and expect to do the same ...
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dd38575deb063a41de3ba516c7813fb6
Good morning. It's actually Brian Biros on for Steven. I want to ask one about the end markets. I guess you gave some good commentary in the prepared remarks to make slow and steady, kind of similar to the last few years. Could you maybe compare how you feel now versus 12 months ago for your outlook? And if things are ...
Brian, this is Larry Silber. Yes, look, we're pretty optimistic about the markets. We believe that we're going to have another solid year. The markets are that we participate are reporting excellent type of project activity and expectations as we flow into what is the traditional construction season coming up here. We ...
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3b1d32d7a1a894acb3b112130d567de1
That's good to hear. And then just to second follow up. In some of our channel checks, you've heard some people mention certain markets are either oversupplied or getting to that kind of oversupply status in fleet. I was wondering, are you guys seeing any of that in any markets anywhere? I'm just trying to reconcile ho...
Yeah. I wouldn't say that we see oversupply in any market. I think maybe by the end of '19, supply headspace will catch, the supply growth has started to catch up to demand growth. I think we're starting to see adjustments in the capex, sort of growth cadence from strong some other players in the industry, and we're ha...
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9234932fe25872553e50841dc040fa2d
Good morning. Good morning. Greetings there. You guys keep doing just a great job driving margin expansion here. Given that the revenue environment, is there anything on the SG&A or DOE side that kind of picks out as an area where you can improve even further?
Yeah. Brian, I mean we're really happy with the results we got in 2019, obviously, they're pretty dramatic, and something that we're not going to be able to sort of maintain the sort of momentum forever. So, we will be back, I suspect for 2020 to a slow growth in DOE and flattish SGA. Delivering freight is an area wher...
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afb5a2ff4e7fc16306d8e0c7ed0b7282
Got it. And Larry, if you're thinking about preparing your company for any sort of material correction in the market, can you walk through maybe the road map of first steps to make sure that you don't get caught in an area where we're exposed?
Yeah. Look, we're -- well, first of all, we don't expect that to happen on -- except if the unfortunately, issue that comes up. And -- but if it did, look, initially, we would cut off capex. We are not sort of committed beyond a 60-day period out in terms of our purchase agreements with all of our vendors, so we would ...
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eba2880c583ff9e4f39a81d4971526a6
Hi, good morning. This is Brendan on for Seth. As we look at your fleet composition, is there any notable strength or weaknesses you're seeing by equipment type that you feel is worth calling out?
Look, no, I think we're fairly strong across all of our equipment categories. We've done an excellent job the last four and a half years of shedding the fleet that existed when we came into the company and good spend back in mid-2016. We're pretty much beyond any of our remaining fleet. In fact, we had a great deal of ...
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ac0c9f09b55f7967a43864a1ba07db40
OK. And then earlier in the call, with the introduction of Aaron, you mentioned some of his experience involved M&A. Does that change the strategy at Herc at all, potential inorganic growth going forward?
Well, as I've said from Day 1 here, our primary focus is going to be on organic growth in the business, and that was for a number of reasons. We have ample opportunity to grow into our existing footprint and put more volume through our existing footprint. And that remains the same, particularly as we add additional foo...
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0b0de9c3c301061a2ac8a5ee634ddd41
My first question is regarding, there are some rumors about the management change at the Bigo level. So, I would like to understand the actual situation and is there any impact on operation? My second question is regarding the Bigo key operating regions -- key operating countries about the user growth, user retention a...
Hi. This is David. Let me answer your question. In the past 12 months, Bigo did have some personnel changes. Such changes were made to better execute our long-term strategy and satisfy the evolving needs of business development. But what may remains unchanged with our conviction and confidence in the global market pote...
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1633243599b1509d53b42854d2813654
My question is related to the Baidu deal. So, could management provide related update on your transaction with Baidu on YY Live?
This is David. Regarding the latest updates of Baidu, we don't have any new information. As mentioned and disclosed in the SEC filings on February the 7 and March the 9, we have substantially completed the sale of YY Live to Baidu. There were still some customary matters that are still in progress. For further informat...
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c3d0bb8a8fc7c2bf75df840d6a85aa2a
My question is about the cost side. Can management share about the content cost trend, as well as the off packs and how we should think about margin trend going forward?
This is Alex. For clarification, the adjustment on product promotion synergy was mainly about prioritizing the allocation of resources. It means that the reduced spending on advertisement will be mainly redirected to product research and development, our content ecosystem and also other localized operational activity. ...
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bf7e7f4610cdff68bdb49eb8518fc983
So as Bigo is well-developed in overseas and the more users and user participation, I wonder if we have other ways to monetize this group of people. And also -- such as advertising, also in the last several calls, David, you mentioned about the new business. And I wonder if you could give us some clarification or updat...
In terms of our other source of revenue, first of all, I'd love to clarify that we do believe that live streaming is a very healthy and promising monetization tool. And you will continue to see decent growth coming from live streaming monetization in the coming few year. As for advertising, we have been actively explor...
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487e4e46e6a3c89171816096d9465615
Rick, just hoping you could expand on the month-to-month cadence of results throughout Q2 for both U.S. and OUS [Phonetic] end-user demand? How are things tracking toward the end of the quarter and just how is Delta playing in the things starting here in Q3?
Yeah. So, great question, Alex, and thanks for joining us today. I have to tell you it's still inconsistent. We see a lot of inconsistency month-to-month depending on the country. We'll have a strong month in the U.K. and a weak month in the U.S., and then it will flip the next month, and a lot of that is tied to the v...
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3bda89eb5d76edf00960fd2505870fc9
And how much inventory do you think is sitting outside of the U.S. right now? Do you think that's mostly dropped down and end-user demand is good -- or excuse me, orders shipped is going to track closer to end-user demand here in the second half?
It should. Yeah, we should get much closer back to end-user demand. There are orders that we have in on hand as we said for deliveries in the next three quarters. So there's some in the third quarter, some in fourth quarter, some in first quarter of next year. I would say we're probably not quite back to a perfect matc...
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8e1b8f204e86eabc07e69b6b75dce5d2
Okay, that's great. And can you expand on the Tanner Group deal? Just how to think about that? Is that going to be a material piece or is that relatively like just given the lack of reimbursement in some of those markets?
Yeah, so I want to -- I'm hesitant to quote a number on that. I mean, I would tell you that we see as we do get a lot of interest at trade shows and things like that from countries where ILUVIEN is not yet approved and available. So, we hear a lot of interest from South America. We do hear a lot of interest from Asian ...
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add456be4918dfb9c64a3e8d9cba9fc3
Understood. And then given the cash infusion, you mentioned a number of different investments that the team wants to make across sales and marketing. But I was just hoping you can kind of rank order those. Where -- with the additional cash, where do you plan on using that most wisely from a sales and marketing side, fr...
Yeah. So it's -- I would say -- I would say really, really two things, maybe three. The two things that would be top of mind on that are going to be the advocacy and the face-to-face engagement with the doctors, right? So I want more of my team to be face-to-face with more doctors and quality environments is often as w...
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5dbfb2eb3e5baa9a4681295bf7c0af3d
No, that's great, and just anything on the pipeline as far as new retinal asset?
Not right now, not right now. We are out there looking aggressively. I will say that as things have started to open up and we see some meetings on the horizon, we do expect to be able to engage a little bit more dialog, but nothing -- nothing right there on the front burner at the moment.
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88fbe06c464203eade51353443e9b61e
Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. I had a quick follow-up on the NEW DAY trial. Did you quote 51 patients currently in the NEW DAY trial at this point?
Yeah, that's right. So we've got about 51 patients in the study right now. There's 11 that are in the screening phase. We have seen that ramp up over June and July, as some of that patient volume and access has come back. It's a little bit slower than we'd like, Jim. Unfortunately, because some of the people that have ...
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83fbcec0f52d5470533fd4ba786cc113
Obviously, the pandemic hitting that much slower than you anticipated. With the 11 in, it's hard to know with the Delta variant, of course, but would you anticipate that's 50 in a year granted in piece of COVID, you expect like a 100 in a year over the next year or so?
I certainly hope so. I mean, certainly that -- that enrollment will increase exponentially over the next 12 months. I'm not giving up on it being enrolled at this time a year from now. The challenge we've had, as I said, is the specific type of patients that we're trying to recruit is that naive patient or very -- a pa...
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27e049d8a551a25eb43a15160fa8e048
Great, thank you. And then you talked about with of U.S. sales. How many reps you guys have currently? And is there a -- is there a change to, and you say obviously face-to-face very important and you're showing excellent leadership doing it yourself. With the Delta variant hitting everyone, how is that working out at ...
Absolutely. So we've got about -- you asked the number of reps. We've got 29 reps right now. There is one territory that we had had some turnover in and we just decided to leave it open in the COVID situation down in South Florida. I would say our reps access is getting better. As I mentioned, there was about a 14% inc...
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18af86cd96fb926b4e1846ea4756aed6
And last couple of questions on. Could you speak a little bit to the sales versus sales and marketing spend? Sales and marketing up a 11% quarter-to-quarters versus the sales down 5%. Is there -- is there a lag on the sales and marketing or decoupling between when the spend goes up versus it comes back in sales or? Can...
Yeah, first, I'll -- Jim, I'll talk a bit about the spending. If you are aware -- if you look at the spending in the sales and marketing area, we've had severe lockdowns for about the last 16 to 18 months and what we're seeing now is the rest are able to get out into the field and be able to travel a bit more. And as t...
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b7867003e84d7d73a7751615ac832a75
Last question. Any thoughts on guidance for '21? You're halfway through.
Jim, I don't think so. We're not real comfortable doing that right now. I mean, we think there's a lot of positive signs that are pointing to positive trends from activity that we went through in the call, but probably especially with the spike in the Delta variant right now just not comfortable providing guidance for ...
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4b8d29a7f52d0295aa71e2ca1d32582e
In the second half of this year, do you think the U.S. revenue growth to exceed the international revenue growth?
Yi, that's a great question. I would say probably not, because we do have those additional countries that have started selling product in the first half of the year and we do expect to see some of those distributor order come back. So I think that -- as you see Europe sort of come back to get to a normalized level, the...
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3e57d50ff5bacf44d2b8732c0e8c2fa7
Got it. And with respect to the enrollment for the NEW DAY trial, do you think it would be reasonable to expect that the enrollment should be completed in the 2023 or 2024 timeframe?
We're certainly going to be pushing and working on strategies to get enrolled in 2022.
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1ddf94fcfa6c9a877aef6294342d91dd
And for the second half of this year, how should we look at the operating expenses?
So I think we will be building back over the course of the year to the levels that you saw in the fourth quarter of 2019 and potentially increasing a little bit of that in 2022.
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35b3212a89914ff8ce4ef1dd5a84490c
Just on the quarter, if you could give us an update on gross margin. Was China accretive to gross margin in the second quarter? And give us an idea of how far Model Y gross margin was versus Fremont Model 3? And then just more broadly on strategy, it seems like your approach to insourcing is varying by region. You're i...
Yes. Just to start with the gross margin questions. We did see progress on gross margins in China, and that was despite pricing action that was taken. The factory is still not running at full capacity yet as it continues to ramp. So we think there's a continued opportunity to optimize the cost structure there.Model Y, ...
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7b5ea76fd113bf12d591a02a221b2b2e
I wanted to just start by going back into Q3 and understanding what the retail store, same-store sales were for the quarter? And then as we look at the quarter-to-date period in Q4, what's been the split thus far of same-store sales for your e-com business versus your retail stores?
For Q3, the store comp was down 3.3%. E-commerce, up 7.3%. For November, they're about equal. So I think e-com is down 9.6% and stores down 9.2%.
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c7c975c0d352f52c7f9389a99605446c
How should we think about resolving those issues here in Q4? Are you going to bring in more staff to get the shelves in the shape they need to be in to make sure that Q4 isn't further burdened? Or are we kind of like rolling forward here and kind of looking into the beginning of '22??
The actual store staffing improved throughout the month of November. So I think it really, for us, was the last couple of weeks of October, the first couple of weeks of November, the store sales and traffic improved throughout the month. And then, as Woody mentioned, we actually had demand comp that was flat for Black ...
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eefaa4d4123ff18198e6f4f99e5c4b91
OK. So that's -- I mean that's a pretty huge number. You're talking over $0.35 of drag in the quarter from freight. Should we expect a similar impact here in Q4 and then plus the additional discounts or clearance selling that you might do because of the timing mismatch? Can you give us maybe a better sense on your gros...
Yeah. For those details, we actually -- we had to pay more for the Christmas product than we paid for anything up to that point. So even though we've been running at about 400 to 500-basis-point freight impact for the first three quarters, in Q4, in some categories, it's 800 basis points. So it gets much more significa...
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2c4a92ad21ac012ba3d4fa05a0aaca14
OK. But then some of that freight impact is going to carry over into '22's results then, correct?
It will. We're paying outside of Christmas and it worked out that a lot of our Christmas is out of one port that had gotten backlog. So we had to find other methods and pay extra costs in order to get that Christmas product here. What we ended up paying for furniture and the things that we'll sell in the first half of ...
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af1d3868d40b93658849181df6acd22b
OK. Last one for me, then I'll hop out of the queue. In terms of just tightening up the actual total sales range, obviously, you have store count changes and so forth and not knowing the exact timing. I think by my math, it looks like you're suggesting that sales are going to be in the kind of 170 to maybe high 170s ra...
Yes. I think that's a good range.
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c300f69b73da82885384cb7bf6571415
So yeah, first, I just wanted to check in. So as far as your sourcing exposure, some other retailers talked about Vietnam. I don't think you guys have much sourcing exposure to Vietnam, but just wanted to make sure that what that is. And I think it's, for you guys, it's still predominantly China, but just wanted to fir...
Yeah. Thanks, Anthony, for that question. Because I mentioned in the script that we did have some shortages of our best-selling furniture group called the Jackson and that's 100% out of Vietnam. And so we did get some of the pressure where it's actually produced. We just couldn't get it out due to some COVID shipping r...
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264c5fc7f1bfb48fffa84d6954fc187b
Got it. OK, thanks for that. And then as far as the price increases that you have put in place, I know you've had to adjust some of your promotional activity because of that. But just wondering what the level of price increases was in the third quarter and plans going forward to try to offset some of these inflationary...
It's hard to predict because it depends on the category that you're looking at. We were able to take Christmas products up in price and we didn't seem to get any resistance once the product was on the floor to our higher price points. I think the consumer is expecting that price points will be higher. Some of our furni...
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ea119016e3f0387e2de0e8fc569b3ddc
OK. That's good to hear. And then so as you prepare the stores for the new furniture and outdoor products, which categories will you be deemphasizing?
For the full year and I think we talked about this before. Our Christmas buys, we don't expect to go down from a dollar perspective, but we do expect harvest and Christmas to be a smaller part of the assortment. And there's some other categories within wall, making sure that we've got the right amount of wall and decor...
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46ad99c074243ea34c85294bd77d0d33
Right. OK. And lastly, as far as the brand awareness campaign that you're planning for next year, any sort of ballpark estimate as to how much will that cost? And will that be more digital or more TV? Kind of what media channels will you be using for that?
Yes. So I think a little bit early to kind of give details of what that looks like. But for this year, we're going to finish with advertising at about 3.8% of sales and we did cover some of the increase in '21 with pull back in other areas while we were doing tests. I think going into the year, we'll start out with a v...
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ec940f4afbbbf40d6a69e0fd7fc852e6
Yeah, Woody, would you just take a step back and obviously, on the freight situation and in the marketing situation. if you could -- it's a little unfair because the things are moving around. But if you had a chance to replay the tape again and what decisions would you have made differently, say, September, October and...
Yeah. I really feel like probably on one side of the coin, we did a good job of getting our products out of the very highly constrained ports of China, knowing that we have to pay more and being very diligent on making sure that we shipped out the most time-sensitive products of season. I don't think we anticipated as ...
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3e6a48bfa280c48e02da8fcd9d7b6dfc
Right. And Nicole, to make sure, just to clarify, what was the impact? You just mentioned it, the impact on the freight was $0.23, is that what the number was?
It was closer to $0.35. $0.23 was just if we normalize that, how much we would have been over last year.
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a7b86e41cb82c52900f8bcf956f0c0fe
Well, OK. Close to $0.30. And then obviously, not to beat a dead horse there, but the advertising decision, obviously, if you'd have known, that could have been a couple of million more that would have been saved along with the freight, correct? So that number, without that spending, the number would have been much hig...
Yes. And that was a decision we felt like had this store been set with exactly the way we wanted to be set, bringing in new customers to show them what we're all about is a good idea. But after we realize that the customers are still very thinking of us, especially at this time of the year, as a seasonal retailer, we h...
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78dcffb7ba8c388f499830bc602bfefc
Yeah. And last question for me is the e commerce demand, you made mention in the release about sort of a decline. Any thoughts there?
Yeah. E-com, interestingly, so stores in November picked up week to week. E-com was soft in the middle of the month. And then actually, was a big part of why we were flat in Black Friday, Cyber Monday week and even into early December. And again, that's just a handful of days, have continued to see e-commerce perform b...
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964ebe2b50ee9929e0e98bf3198a5fd5
Hey. Good morning, guys. James on for Chris. Just wanted to get your view on the rate environment post-Chinese New Year. What indications are you seeing in the chartering market, any indication that it will soften? Also, if you could provide a little more color on what you're seeing in the Panamax market, I think that ...
Chris, for the time being the market is still strengthening. The only thing I can tell you that even today every new fixture that we are doing is at higher levels than the previous one. Practically the whole industry has kind of slowed down. There is demand but there are no vessels to match. I cannot really tell you wh...
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115bdccd8ee58c491b6b4c7ac115d517
Got it. Given that and essentially where vessel values are, do you still think that it's an attractive opportunity to be active in the S&P market in 2021, or is that something where you might centrally think of a different use of capital?
Well, to be honest, we don't like chasing the market up. It's pretty hard now to go in the market and pay almost double the price for the ships that we've bought in the last year or so. So, we will keep on looking, of course, for any interesting off-market opportunities. But to be honest, I think this is more of a peri...
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eef621e6c0a960b2b8e0152ced455c19
Got it. I also wanted to touch on capital structure and the issuance of the 300 million in unsecured. Just wanted to understand how you are thinking about balancing bonds with bank debt, and how you are thinking about sort of the capital structure moving forward, and if you're going to move more toward one and away fro...
Yes. What we have seen is that bond capital is getting harder and harder to find. And not only that but also the actual amount that each bank is preparing... the limits per clients are going down because banks are getting more and more conservative with shipping. And if one wants really to have a reliable source, then ...
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