Earnings Labs

Dollar Tree, Inc. (DLTR)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 22, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Dollar Tree Inc. Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Release. As a reminder, today's presentation is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Tim Reid, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Timothy J. Reid

Management

Thank you, Kate. Good morning and welcome to the Dollar Tree conference call for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011. Our call today will be led by Bob Sasser, our President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide insights on our performance in the quarter, and recent developments in our business. Kevin Wampler, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide a more detailed review of our fourth quarter financial performance, and provide guidance for 2012. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that various remarks that we will make about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor Provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements, as a result of various important factors included in our most recent press release, most recent current report on Form 8-K, quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and Annual Report on Form 10-K, all of which are on file with the SEC. We have no obligation to update our forward-looking statements and you should not expect us to do so. In addition, as we have previously disclosed, in the first quarter of fiscal 2010, we recorded a non-recurring, non-cash charge of $26.3 million or $0.13 per diluted share, relating to a change in retail inventory accounting. Diluted earnings per share in the full year of 2010 were $3.10, including this charge. You are advised that all earnings and margin comparisons in today's remarks from this point forward will exclude that charge unless otherwise noted. At the end of our planned remarks, we will open your call to questions, which we ask that you limit to one question and one follow-up question if necessary. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Bob Sasser, our CEO. Bob?

Bob Sasser

President

Thanks, Tim. Good morning everyone. Welcome to our call. This morning, we announced our sales and earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011. I’m pleased to report that our comparable store sales increased 7.3%; driven primarily by increased traffic, this was our largest fourth quarter comparable sales increase since 1999 and a much smaller company. Total sales increased 12.8% to $1.95 billion. Earnings for the fourth quarter were $1.60 per diluted share. This represents a 24% increase over last year’s $1.29 per share. Operating margin for the fourth quarter 2011 was 15.5%, an increase of 50 basis points over the fourth quarter of last year; and net income rose 15.6% to $187.9 million. For the full year fiscal 2011, comp store sales increased 6%; that’s on top of a 6.3% comp store sales increase last year. And net sales were $6.63 billion; an increase of 12.7% over fiscal 2010. Earnings for the full year were $4.03 per diluted share, an increase of 24.8% compared with $3.23 per share last year. Notably, operating income increased by $125.8 million. Operating margin was 11.8%, an increase of 70 basis points compared with last year and net income for the year rose 18% to $488.3 million. This was on top of a 29.1% increase in net income prior year. I’m very pleased with these results. They speak to the value and relevance of our merchandize, the power, and flexibility of our model, and the day-by-day execution of our strategy across the entire organization. Our stores were well stocked and merchandised. Our seasonal merchandise assortments exceeded the customers’ expectations for style and value. Seasonal transitions were well executed and we were consistently in stock on basic items that customers need everyday. On top of all of that, weather was favorable throughout the quarter. As a…

Kevin S. Wampler

Management

Thanks Bob. As Bob mentioned, our diluted earnings per share increased 24% in the fourth quarter to $1.60. The increase resulted from our strong sales; a 20 basis point improvement in gross profit margin and a 30 basis point reduction in total SG&A expense compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Starting with gross profit, our gross profit margin grew to 37.8% during the fourth quarter, compared with 37.6% in the fourth quarter of last year. This is our highest gross profit margin since the fourth quarter of 2001. We achieved strong leverage on our occupancy and distribution expenses; reflecting the 7.3% comp store sales growth, which more than offset the impact that the continued shifts in product mix and basic consumable products increased by about a 140 basis points of that percentage of sales in the fourth quarter. The higher cost relative to sales of our Canadian stores and the impact on our shrink from our first SKU-based inventories of Dollar Tree Canada and a slight increase in our freight expense relative to sales as savings on ocean freight partially offset the impacts of diesel prices that averaged more than $0.62 per gallon above the same period last year. SG&A expenses were 22.2% of sales for the quarter, which a 30 basis point improvement from the fourth quarter last year. This was driven primarily by a 20 basis point reduction in depreciation, a 10 basis point decline in payroll related expenses due to the increased store labor productivity, and leverage on comp store sales, as well as lower utility costs reflecting the milder winter weather. These improvements were partially offset by an increase in general liability insurance expense. Debit and credit card fees were flat, reflecting growth in usage of these types of tender offset by the lower…

Bob Sasser

President

Thanks Kevin. Once again, I’m very pleased with our company’s performance in fourth quarter and for the year. There were many notable accomplishments in 2011. Comp store sales increased 6% and total sales grew 12.7%. We achieved record sales of over $6.6 billion, largely $1 at a time. Despite high fuel prices, operating margins increased by 70 basis points to 11.8%, the best in the [track] of 11 years. And earnings per share increased by nearly 25% on top of a 36% increase in the prior year. In addition, this year, the company completed the expansion of our Savannah DC, a key element in supporting our contingent growth in the southeast. We opened 278 new stores and completed 91 relocations and expansions. We achieved the highest new store productivity in 10 years since 2001 when our average size store was much smaller. We gained traction, growth, and new customers with our Deal$ model. Comp sales at Deal$ benefited from both increased traffic and average ticket. In 2011, we built a solid foundation for growth in Canada. We expect Canadian performance to improve throughout the year, especially as we gain traction in the second half. We made significant enhancements to Dollar Tree Direct including break pack, Spanish-language and mobile capability. We repurchased $645.9 billion of stock in 2011, and we announced a renewed authorization from the Board for an additional $1.5 billion of share repurchase, of which $1.2 billion remained. By any measure, it was an outstanding year and I’ll tell you that we’re singularly positioned to do even better in the future. I see great opportunity ahead for Dollar Tree because our stores, merchants and support teams are guided by a strategic vision that involves every element of the business revolving around the customer because the business model is powerful…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Again, we do ask that you limit yourself to one question with only one follow-up question. And we’ll take our first question from Charles Grom with Deutsche Bank. Charles Grom – Deutsche Bank: Hi, good morning. Just on the SG&A expense line. If we exclude depreciation, it was the least favorable – the year, but you guys actually posted your best comp of the year. So I’m just wondering if you could shed some light on why there wasn’t more leverage. Is that because of that general liability expense was so substantial or was there something off that cost that not have as much leverage?

Bob Sasser

President

I think if you look at the quarters through the year, Chuck, one of the places we’ve gotten a lot of leverage is in our payroll-related area. We didn’t get as much leverage this quarter there and there’s a couple of reasons for that. One it was such a great quarter; our sale, bonus incentives at the store level saw a nice increase, which is great. You know we’d love to reward our sales managers out there when they do a great job like they did in Q4. Also we saw a little bit of an increase in our payroll tax line item and then the other place we’ve been getting some benefits throughout the year and – was in health insurance. And as I spoke to at earlier in the year, I said, you know we cannot expect, necessarily expect that to continue throughout the year, and we didn’t see that in the fourth quarter. So I think that’s probably the biggest change on a quarter-to-quarter basis within that category of expenses. Charles Grom – Deutsche Bank: Okay, great. And then just one follow-up if I could, can you just remind us on the (inaudible) there in the quarter. What the mix of traffic and ticket were and if you could shed any lights on February is off to an okay start, just wondering if you could maybe quantify that for us relative to the guidance?

Bob Sasser

President

Chuck, this is Bob. I think I can add some colors to sales throughout the quarter. Sales were very strong throughout the fourth quarter from November, December and January. They actually picked up pace November or December, picked up the pace over November and January over December as far as comp sales increase. Our sales were strong across the whole geography. Everybody was basically up. The highest growth, comp store growth constant growth was in the Midwest followed very closely by the Mid-Atlantic and then New England. So it was very tightly packed in that regard. The sales were driven almost entirely by traffic. Ticket was up just slightly for the quarter. As I’ve said earlier, the weather was favorable across the whole country, we didn’t lose much because of store closing with weather, and we are really pleased with the cadence of the comps during the quarter. Charles Grom – Deutsche Bank: Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we will now hear from John Zolidis with Buckingham Research Group. John Zolidis – Buckingham Research Group: Hey, good morning. Fantastic year.

Bob Sasser

President

Thank you. John Zolidis – Buckingham Research Group: Two questions. One on the traffic with the large increase that you saw, could you talk about what you think is driving traffic, is it incremental customers, is it existing customers coming back more frequently. And in conjunction with that, can you talk about what advertising and marketing you do and whether that’s having an impact. And then the second question is on assortment changes, you mentioned the importance of having newness and different items within the stores. Can you specifically talk about some items that you added, some changes that you made that may have benefited sales in 2011. And then looking forward to 2012, do you see as much newness and maybe you can give us a specific example of items you are adding to assortment next year. Thanks.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · Buckingham Research Group

What’s the first question? What’s driving traffic?

Bob Sasser

President

What’s driving traffic? It was a combination I think, we believe of both new customers finding us all the time, it’s still pretty tough out there, unemployment is high, we sell things people need everyday and it’s only a Dollar, and through word of mouth, they are learning about that and they are trying us and they’re coming back then more often. So as new customers and I believe they are shopping with us, I know they’re shopping with us more often. The mix of consumer products that we have now, which is about 50% of our business, that’s more frequently purchased. So people are coming back more often to buy that. And we will tell you that, when they are in buying the consumer products, we are also seeing a lift in our variety merchandise, it’s not growing as fast as the consumer products, but it’s growing pretty significantly. So we are very pleased with what we are getting from the traffic there. As far as new items, we are always adding new items there, if you look at our Christmas assortment this year, you saw just a lot of tremendous new merchandise things, you had seen a Dollar store anyway, Dollar Tree [per Dollar], you may have seen it in the department stores, but you wouldn’t have seen it in a store like ours from only a dollar to a themed ornament wall that we had was all color relevant and very timely to the business. So, go and take a look around, you’re going to find something that you didn’t see last time, and the fronts of the stores we pay particular attention to changing those out with our items of the week and our drive items and of course our seasonal sets in the front of the store always changing. John Zolidis – Buckingham Research Group: Thank you.

Bob Sasser

President

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) We will now go to Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Matthew Boss – JPMorgan: Hey, guys from a merchandising perspective, can you speak to the opportunity in the second half, given the more depletionary environment and along those same lines can you talk to the potential gross margin opportunity as well.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · Buckingham Research Group

Well it’s a – the second half we’re very excited about second half 2012. We just came back from our import trip in January. As always it was successful, just the very nature of how we plan our business, we’re always going to come back with hitting or exceeding our planned markup targets for the trip, because that’s the way we build our merchandise assortment based on the cost. This is the most value that we can give the customer for a $1 at a margin that we’re willing to accept. So, we just finished our January trip. It’s very successful, and our markup is higher this year, and our value is even better than ever, because not only with the, I think I would characterize it as a more stable price environment in China versus a year ago. We’ve always been able to manage our margins because we’re in control of it, but it felt like just anecdotally this year that business is down a little bit in China, and we’re good buyers and big buyers, and for that reason we’ve got good relationships, and as a result there did not seem to be as much pressure overall on the cost of the items we’re able to get the prices that we needed, and increase the value at the same time, which is what we tend to do. If there is deflation in cost, we tend to put more value in the product, because that’s how we drive the sales. Our price is $1 whether there is pressure on cost inflation or deflation, our retail is still $1. So, our goals and is to provide the most value for the dollar at the margins that we need. It was very favorable. I would characterize the January trip is very…

Bob Sasser

President

Well, I think it’s always an opportunity. And first of all, fourth quarter traditionally has more of the sales pop coming from traffic than ticket. It’s just sort of the way the rhythm of our business works. So this wasn’t that unusual. But taking advantage of that traffic is really a big opportunity. Initiatives that we’re focused on is all about the front of the store; from the time you walk in, to the first feature that you see, the drive item, the item of the month, item of the week, changing those things out. [We’re] really measuring the productivity of the fronts of our stores. We’re looking at our checkouts, all the impulse locations on the checkouts, in front of the checkouts, the front end-caps that have faced the checkouts; that whole front aisle we see as a huge opportunity with impulse and related sales and the chance to get that last one item sold from the customer. Throughout the store, you’d see a lot of related merchandise end-caps and features. We’re not only selling the paper towels, but we’re selling the paper towel holder and the rest of the cleaning supplies; and just always that suggestive selling on all of our features throughout the store. Clip-strips, we’ve done a big job with clip-strips, getting those placed around the stores; that’s productivity issue for our stores, because it’s a way of hanging out a lot of merchandise in a pretty quick order and also it gets a lot of related sales out there throughout the store. So you’re right, you’re right on. There’s a big opportunity to take advantage of this increase in traffics that we have to raise that average ticket and also to keep these people coming back; because we want to make sure that they enjoy the experience, the store is clean, it’s seasonally relevant, the shelves are full, the basic in-stock is bigger. With gas prices going up, they don’t want to would have waste a trip to the store. I want them to have that – the glass clear and the dish detergent, the (inaudible) towels that – whatever they came for; we want to have that for them and then while they’re in the store, at every turn we challenge them to buy another item. Matthew Boss – JPMorgan: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Adrianne Shapira – Goldman Sachs: Thank you. Kevin, I was just wondering if you could follow up on the question on the leverage, appreciate the (inaudible) to why we didn’t see better leverage on such a strong comp. Maybe you could have us think about on a go-forward basis; what’s the appropriate run-rate, what sort of comps we need to leverage expenses and how we should be thinking about sort of the puts and takes going forward?

Kevin S. Wampler

Management

Yeah, I would tell you in general, what we have said over the last two years that to leverage our SG&A, we’d probably need a 2% comp or – for there about to give or take a little bit, it kind of depends on the quarter as well. You know, I think as we look at the guidance we gave you, if I look at it for the year, and you’d see the improvement in the operating margin, the expectation I think would be for the gross profit to be – fairly flat. And that we would potentially see the benefit, an improvement in the SG&A inside of our business. So that’s kind of the way we think about it as we go forward. Adrianne Shapira – Goldman Sachs: Great, that’s helpful. And then when we think about long term EBIT margin – as Bob you mentioned 11.8% is where you’re entering the year, it’s the best than the past 11 years. Maybe you help us think about long term, what is the appropriate EBIT margin’s target for your business and how we should think about getting there between gross profits and SG&A?

Kevin S. Wampler

Management

Well, as we look at that, again, the guidance that that we gave basically, our short-term goal is to get above a 12% operating margin, okay. And basically, guidance would get you there. The longer-term goal is 13%, 13% is the highest operating margin we have ever reported as a public company and that was in 1999. So that is our longer-term goal. Obviously, we are going to continue to grow, we are going to continue to grow our store base, which is going to help us create leverage, we’ve done a good job leveraging our occupancy and distribution; we’ve done a pretty good job leveraging our SG&A and keeping that growth to a reasonable level. And again, from a gross profit standpoint, from a margin standpoint of product margin is important that we – the value of our products is what is really important and so if we do go through deflationary cycles, we don’t put that in our pocket, we put it back into the products and our customer really appreciates that, and that’s what they look to us for. So I think, we think 13% is the reasonable goal, long-term.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we’ll continue onto Dan Wewer with Raymond James. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: Okay. Thanks. Hi, good morning, Bob.

Bob Sasser

President

Good morning, Dan. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: Canada, every call when you purchase the Dollar Giant, they were using a multiple price point approach similar to Dollarama, (inherit) effect going forward, all of that new Canadian stores will be branded as Dollar Tree. Does that imply that all of the merchandising strategy will change to, I guess, (inaudible) approach in Canada or will you stick with multiple pricing approach in that market?

Bob Sasser

President

No, we don’t have a multiple price, and what we have is everything’s a $1.25 or less. The other guys up there have the multiple price approach up to I think [now $3]. Dollar Giant had changed before we had purchased the company to the everything’s a $1.25 or less, and that’s what we’re staying with. We’re going to Canada opening up Dollar Trees that’s $1.25 or less. We will be the only major single price point retailer at $1.25 or less in Canada, and that’s the focus that we have. The Dollar Trees that we open Canada will be [$1.25 Canadian]. So we’re really not changing that strategy. I think it’s a good strategy. We like the single price point strategy. We know how to do a single price point strategy, and what we have to do is get the value equation right. That’s why our Canadian team is extra important and that’s the reason that we wanted to partner up with a Canadian company versus just going greenfield is so that – they do understand the margin equation, what a [$1.25 Canadian], what’s the value of that is. So as we’re building these assortments, there’s a little bit of difference in the value equation. We think it’s stronger, we think it gives us a better opportunity frankly in Canada. Right now, the currency is at parity, but it hasn’t always been. So this gives us the ability to manage the value for the [$1.25 Canadian] and for those customers even more value. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: And the $1.25 item would be comparable to a $1 Dollar Tree item in the U.S.?

Bob Sasser

President

Well, some are. We have things in Canadian assortments that we don’t exactly have the same in the Dollar Tree assortments and a lot of things will be the same. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: Okay.

Bob Sasser

President

We’re buying extra value well items for Canada, just like we buy well items of our Dollar Tree assortment and they may or may not be the same. So, our Canadian team we have in place there that’s one of their main focuses is to maintain that value comparison for the Canadian currency versus the U.S. currency. Dan Wewer – Raymond James: And when you’re alluding to Canada, not meeting your expectations this past year, were you referring to the revenues for store or are you thinking more about the support logistics systems integration

Bob Sasser

President

The Canadian we’re really excited about Canada. I mean I’m particularly excited about our future. Short-term we faced headwinds there of our own doing, but it was something that had to be done. The main headwinds that we faced in Canada this past year were around rationalized in the merchandise assortment, dropping some of the SKUs adding some new SKUs, adding the import piece that we’re doing in the U.S. getting the basics end lines. There is a lot of turmoil in the assortment in Canada. And you always drop things faster than you could imagine that, plus we are in the process of setting up two new distribution centers and moving them. And as a result, we lost some sales and that as a result lost some leverage on our occupancy cost. So, that’s one thing. The second thing was we did our SKU inventory. It was the first SKU inventory that’s ever been done there. It’s very critical to the way we’re going to run the business, but we did that in fourth quarter, and shrink was a little higher than we expected. So, the combination of those two things sort of teamed up and my expectation, I don’t think met any of expectations, but on the plus side it was such a great accomplishment that we made in a short order. Maybe we didn’t have any right to expect this better than we had. We solidified the logistics model now new DCs and DC and in Ontario we’ve got the Dollar Tree WMS system in there. We have POS in the stores – all trained in all of the stores. We got the SKU level inventories and that’s going to allow us to do a lot of things with allocation – smart allocations putting the right products…

Bob Sasser

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we’ll continue on to Peter Keith with Piper Jaffray.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, this is (inaudible) for Peter. Thanks for taking our questions. So you’ve been a little more aggressive over the last few quarters with your repurchases and based on the sizable authorization you have in place, what is your current position on taking on leverage to repurchase stock in 2012?

Kevin S. Wampler

Management

Well, as we’ve looked at our repurchases and our thought processes around that, I don’t know that it’s really changed. We’ve looked it opportunistically. It’s become maybe a little more as a regular program maybe over the last couple of years with regular repurchases, and given our cash flow that we generate, that does made sense. We feel it is a great way to return value to our long-term shareholders. Historically, we have not been one necessarily to take on a lot of leverage in that regard. It’s something we can think about and we do think about and we talk about as far as our overall capital structure, but its one piece of an overall though process as it relates to the capital structure. And again, we’re going to have some larger outlays for capital expenditures this coming year with the upcoming expansion to a new DC up in the Northeast. So we have taken all those things into consideration as we look at it. We obviously do believe though that it is a good way to return value.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, great. And then, I know you mentioned weather was a benefit in the quarter and I was just wondering if you might be able to maybe provide an estimate on how much you thought it impacted comps?

Bob Sasser

President

You know that’s hard to say [as a] same thing, because we’re on a roll anyway and things were well executed. But certainly weather has been almost perfect this year. It’s been the best fourth quarter weather that we’ve ever had. We didn’t have the snowstorms; the snowmageddon that we had last year in Washington D.C. in North up into the Northeast. We didn’t have the blizzards across through the middle of the country and we basically kept our stores open throughout the fourth quarter. And I can’t really – I don’t how to quantify that for you except that 7.3% comp for the quarter is positively impacted by that.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Well, thanks a lot. Good luck next year.

Bob Sasser

President

Well, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we have time for just a few more questions. We’ll now go to Aram Rubinson with NOMURA. Edgar Roesch – NOMURA Equity Research: Hi, good morning. This is Ed sitting in for Aram. How are you?

Bob Sasser

President

Fine, Ed. Edgar Roesch – NOMURA Equity Research: I just want to speak to you about your openings next year. Can you just speak to maybe the real estate profile, strip centers and such, and different types of locations? Is it pretty consistent and also on the geography, the openings are those factors fairly consistent this year with last?

Bob Sasser

President

We are still looking at although West Coast is one of our most populous areas, California I think our biggest state now. We are still looking at growth in California. We built our new San Bernardino DC and Southern California there last year to help provide support for that growth. We still like the Southeast. We expanded Savannah this past year, because many stores as we have in Florida. And in the Southeast, we think there is room for more, the customers really like us there and we’ve been able to serve them very well. So growth I think with that 10,000 square foot footprint, the Deal$ stores are aimed largely at the more urban markets, it’s a multi-price point higher volume model that we are building there, it’s one that can leverage those higher fixed costs that we have and say, Brooklyn or Bronx or in the Northeast. So – and we are seeing good results from there; we are seeing some leverage from there; we are seeing the volume from those customers as we improve that model. So although those – some of them live in suburbia, you will see a lot of those being aimed at those urban city center kind of markets, whether it’d be Miami or Atlanta or New York, New Jersey. So, a real estate strategy is onward and upward, we have an economic model that we have to meet. We have – we take strip centers, we take pre-standards, we new construct and when we can bind it, there has been a little more themes like little up-tick in there slightly not much. But we take most any way shape or form as long as it meets our demographic concerns, our size constraints and also our economic model. Edgar Roesch – NOMURA Equity Research: Thanks for that. And there is a model, the rental rates per foot going forward, and I have been factoring in faster growth from Canada where you have higher occupancy cost there. Are there any other trends or the underlying trends in the U.S. in terms of rates per foot?

Bob Sasser

President

We are always in the market to – we try to take the building as it is more and more, because we can take control of them earlier, because we can do the investment the way we want to that we can build the store out, the way we want to and then we can build a store out the way we want to. So that in general tends to lower the rental rates. We really look at it more as how much volume we can do; the occupancy as a percent of the store sales is the most important thing that we look at. So we can pay the prices of rental per foot in New York and leverage that, and we can pay the price in North Carolina and leverage that. But it’s two different numbers. Edgar Roesch – NOMURA Equity Research: Thank you.

Bob Sasser

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we have time for one additional question. We’ll now go to Dan Binder. Daniel Binder – Jefferies & Company: Hi, good morning. My question was related to the combination of mix and your comments on margin for the year of being roughly flat. I’m just curious what your best guess is on where the consumable mix will go in the coming year roughly and how that marries with the gross margin; I think you said flattish. Particularly since your China trip, it sounds like it’s gone so well.

Kevin S. Wampler

Management

As we look at this past year, our consumable mix moved about 130 basis points for the year, and so it’s a little higher than that in the fourth quarter, but for the year it’s about 130 basis points. I think our customer obviously is looking for those goods, those basic everyday consumables and we’re providing that. And that part of our business is comping a little faster than our variety business, but it’s the mix that works very, very well. As Bob mentioned, the [flying trips] for our import goods have gone very well and we continue to come back with better IMUs than the year prior and we’ve said that consistently. So that bodes well for the year. So that helps us with that shift in mix a little bit. The other things that roll into that are kind of the wild cards are things like freight. And you heard us talk to freight, as far as what our assumptions are for the year. It’s pretty hard to be able to predict, what’s going to happen with diesel especially with some of the geopolitical issues out there, and as far as the ocean freight rate, obviously that’s negotiated and we don’t have those results yet. So, I think all of those things kind of play together, but we think yeah, on an overall basis with our comp that we can continue to comp that low to mid single-digit that helps us on the occupancy and distribution and kind of at the end of day kind of all comes out in the wash kind of a flat gross profit margin so that’s kind of how we look at it I think. Daniel Binder – Jefferies & Company:

Bob Sasser

President

Dan, that’s one of the biggest learning that we’re undergoing right now in those very high volume urban stores, funny you should mention that we’re in the process right now of developing a new delivery model it’s not necessarily more people, its more people at the right time doing the right things, and entire volume in these city locations, but it’s also a tougher model to run, how do you get the freight in the door on the shelf, the cardboard out the door and out of the street. And other people have done it, we can do it too, and we’re learning this. So (inaudible) last week looking at a new delivery method coming into the city, that looks like it’s going to have a lot of – certainly the stores (inaudible), because it comes in more sorted and ready to go to the shelf versus the way we do it in the suburban stores. But the answer to your question as we do have some improvements to be made and how we deliver our stores in tri-state area, the higher volume stores; how we manage the stores in those areas; how you manage the volume; how you manage the ways; how you – all the things, when you’re doing more volume, everything is more. So that’s one of the things we are trying master right now. Daniel Binder – Jefferies & Company: Great, thanks.

Bob Sasser

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, with no additional time for questions, I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Tim Reid for any additional or closing remarks.

Timothy J. Reid

Management

Thanks, Kate. Thanks all of you for participating in the call today. And most of all, thank you for your interest and your investment in Dollar Tree. Our next sales earnings release and conference call is scheduled for Thursday, May 17th, 2012. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, once again, that does conclude today’s conference. We thank you for your participation and have a good afternoon.