This is Suzuki from the B of A Equity Research Management team, and I'm really pleased to have Brian D'Ambrosia and Felix Veksler from Monro here with me today. This is a story that I've followed for a long time as being an auto analyst and then a retail analyst, and still now in management I get to continue to follow your story, which is always really interesting for me. So Brian, I think you had some intro remarks you wanted to give just to get people more familiar with Monro if they don't know your story.
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Great to be here with everyone this morning. My name is Brian D'Ambrosia. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of Monro Inc. Monro is one of the largest automotive and service aftermarket providers in the country. We do services related to oil change and related to parts and tire installation and other services around under the hood and under the car and around the wheel. We do that through our network of almost 1,300 stores in 32 states, and we do that through about 9,000 service bays. In fiscal 2023, which ended this March a year ago, we did $1.3 billion in sales. We generated record operating cash flows of $215 million, and we maintain a very strong balance sheet. Our net bank debt to EBITDA is only about 0.5 times.
As it relates to our strategy, we're really looking to deliver on three outcomes, and the first of those outcomes is consistent comparable store sales growth. So we've put in place and are continuing to put in place a lot of initiatives to support that sales growth. One of those is a focus on our underperforming 300 stores that we feel represent an outsized opportunity for comp store sales growth, and they should achieve multi-year results above trend for the company. Also, we're really focused on a balanced approach between service and tires. That's important for our staffing model. That's important for our traffic driving activities, and it's also important for our margin profile. And finally, everything we're doing is to make investments in technology and in training to really deliver an elevated in-store experience for our guests.
That's ultimately the way we win repeat business and the way we can differentiate ourselves from those who aren't able to make those investments. Third pillar is cash creation. I'm sorry, second pillar is margin expansion. It kind of goes hand in hand with the sales increases. We are looking to reposition our cost structure and our labor model to support top-line growth, but also do that in a way that drives productivity. We're also using our scale with our manufacturers and our vendors to deliver cost advantages to our competition. And then we opportunistically are taking pricing actions and trying to influence mix through our category offerings. And we believe that that all will help to support expanding gross margins over time.
And then our third initiative is really our outcome that we're looking to deliver with our strategy is really cash creation through improved profitability, but really in addition through working capital optimization so that we can streamline inventory levels and expand payment terms with our most strategic vendors who are supporting us in delivering the product to our stores. Despite some of the challenges that we faced, and particularly our tire category, I think it's pretty well known that the entire industry has been under some pressure for some time now. Despite that, we really feel like we're putting the right investments in place during this period of time to really support organic growth and position us for further unit expansion down the road. And ultimately, our goal is to return our business to pre-COVID gross margins, but importantly, double-digit operating margins.
I'll just make one final comment before I turn it back for Q&A related to capital allocation. I did mention that we achieved record operating cash flow last year, and we've been able to deploy that across some pretty straightforward priorities. The first is maintaining that really rock-solid balance sheet. We think that's a prudent thing to do in this environment. The second thing is really investing in our business, so making sure we're allocating capital and operating expenses, making sure those investments are there for us to support the growth that we believe is there for us over the medium to long term. And then returning capital to shareholders. We've done that through a long history of dividend and dividend increases, but more recently, we've also done it through our share repurchase program. We remain an opportunistic acquirer.
There's a lot of fragmentation in the industry and a lot of opportunity to grow units. We've been a little more opportunistic during this period of time, but ultimately, we feel that our cash flow and our balance sheet is going to really be a key tool for us as we look for unit expansion over the long term.
Great. So I want to spend a few minutes talking about the demand environment, but if we take a step back and just think about really what drives this category, right? Is it as simple as the number of cars on the road, the size and complexity of those cars, and then how many miles are being put on them, or is there kind of more to the demand story than that?
It is pretty that simple. I think the only thing I would add in there is age of vehicle as well. So we continue to see more vehicles on the road. There's 280 million vehicles on the road today in the auto aftermarket, and that continues to expand every year. We see more and more vehicles on the road. We've seen the average age of those vehicles increase about over 12 years now, 12.2 years. So they're getting older, which is good for the aftermarket. And complexity, well, I think complexity has been around for a while, and it's baked into most of the aftermarket. It continues to get more complex, which is good for the do-it-for-me providers like Monro who have the skills, training, equipment needed to do the work versus maybe something that could have been done in the past by a do-it-yourself person in their driveway.
So that all tends to lead to some outsized growth that the DIFM category is seeing. And vehicle miles traveled, once you have those other pieces in place, vehicle miles traveled becomes, I think, the more volatile of the factors. Those other ones are multi-year cycles. For VMT, it can be impacted, as we saw during COVID, very quickly. And we are almost about back to pre-COVID levels in terms of vehicle miles traveled, but with more vehicles on the road, you're seeing kind of less vehicle miles traveled per vehicle if you look at it that way. And it's important for us to really look at that number because ultimately, in our services, miles create wear both in fluids, in brakes, in tires, and that wear creates the replacement cycle.
Got it. Okay. So then the need for auto maintenance should certainly increase as each of those factors kind of picks up.
Correct.
The consumer's, I guess, willingness and ability to pay for service is also a variable. I guess how would you characterize the current demand environment and that willingness and ability for the customer to pay?
That's right. That's right. I think that what we just talked about creates the need for the purchase. Now, the actual ability or willingness for the consumer to make that purchase is affected a lot by more of the consumer's own budgetary constraints. And so what we've seen in periods of compression or expansion of unemployment or expansion of inflation, what we've seen is that the consumer tends to defer because you can get a little bit more out of each of those worn parts or worn tires, and that creates an elongation of the deferral of the purchase cycle. And that, I think, is what we've seen most recently in our tire category. Tires has been an area where both trade down and deferral has affected the purchase cycle, and it's probably lasted a little bit longer than most would have thought.
So then, as you think about how much you, as a service provider, can charge, kind of taking into account the differentiation of your service, the convenience, etc., how has that changed over time as Monro has evolved as a company? And then what do you think are Monro's biggest competitive advantages?
Yeah, related to pricing, I would say that it really, if you, let's look at the difference between the service and the tire category. We'll start with tire. I think what you've seen is a really rational tire category in terms of passing along cost increases to the consumer. Certainly, input costs have gone up. Shipping costs have gone up, and that has been passed on from the manufacturers through distribution and ultimately to the installers and finally to the consumer. Consumers have responded in a trade down way. They've looked at tier one through three tires, and they've started to really prioritize maybe a tier four tire that maybe doesn't have all of the warranty, all of the quality, or all of the life, the long life of a tier one through three. But for now, it's the best tire that they want to put on their vehicle.
So we've seen that in trade down, and so I think some of the pricing actions in the tire category have been offset by kind of a disinflationary trade down so that average tire ticket is actually under pressure because of that trade down. And certainly, margin would go along with that, and this is kind of commenting from an industry standpoint. On the service side, I think we've seen the most pressure there on cost of labor, and those labor increases haven't really fully been passed on to the consumer. So I think that the installers have taken a little bit more of that than they've passed on in order to maintain competitiveness against the fragmented service category.
Got it. And then some of those trends that you mentioned in trade down, is that happening really across the country, or are there certain regions where you're seeing it more acutely than others?
No, it's a national phenomenon. I think what we've seen in the industry data was the tire units were pretty well supported in the center of the country for a while, and they were more pressured on the coasts. And that was largely due to weather dynamics coming off of not this winter, but last winter. A lot of snow in the Rockies, a lot of heat in the Texas area. So that was supportive. What we've seen more recently is that the entire country has seen units come under pressure pretty consistently across regions.
What's the demographic of your average customer if we kind of think about who this customer is, what their family income looks like?
Yeah, the first piece of that will be to talk about the vehicle they drive, and they typically have a six plus -year-old vehicle. six to 12 years is where we have most of the vehicles that we see, and that's the prime age for a vehicle that's being maintained, but really being maintained outside of the dealer network. But before, it maybe becomes a vehicle that gets less invested in when it gets older. So that's the most important part is the age of the vehicle. Now, who drives those vehicles tends to be households making $100,000 or less. Unless it's a multi-vehicle household, you've got two or three vehicles. Sometimes a couple of those cars will go back to the dealer. They're newer, but maybe the third vehicle that is older in their fleet, they'll choose to use the aftermarket.
Got it. Okay. So just kind of turning to the competitive environment, you mentioned some of the investments that you've been making in technology. I mean, how are you utilizing customer data then? If we think about who this customer is and maybe they probably have a phone, they probably are connected and want to utilize an app if that's available. And so how are you staying engaged with that customer in a business where generally you don't want to have to go in for auto service, right? So you don't want to push too much of that, but how are you there for the customer when they need you?
That's a great question. It's a low-interest category. It's not something that people shop when they're not in the market for our services. So it's really important to meet them with the right message or offer the right channel, but the most important thing is at the right time. And so we have a robust CRM, Customer Relationship Management System, that our marketing team uses. And what they're really doing is they're looking at our consumer and our customer and seeing what services they had done, looking at time intervals to see when they may be in market again for those services. But also, they'll be looking at recent declined services. When a guest comes into our store, we will obviously do the work that they came in for, but we also provide them a full courtesy inspection of their vehicle.
We'll make recommendations and help them prioritize on things that need to be done now or later. Oftentimes, because of financial constraints, the guest may decide not to do work that day, or we may prioritize it for a later date with them. Our CRM will then market back to them that decline service so that we can get back in front of them knowing that it's likely still squeaking or still squealing, and they're still not satisfied with that part of their vehicle.
Then you kind of touched on this a little bit in your prepared remarks. How are you thinking about growth? I mean, it seems like the focus is really on consistent comparable sales growth, but then where do you think unit growth kind of comes into that strategy?
Yeah, it's an important part of our long-term strategy. So we've, over the last couple of years, really used it as an opportunity to make the investments and focus in our platform of 1,300 stores. And we've grown through acquisition over the years. So there was a lot of opportunity to standardize processes, implement technology that we can leverage across multiple stores to gain common systems, visibility, and management tools for all layers of our organization. So we've spent a lot of time doing that, getting in place what we feel are the right national programs to really create a single operating model for Monro. We believe that makes us a better platform for our next round of growth.
And so ultimately, with the fragmentation in the industry, our financial ability to complete acquisitions and our improving capabilities as an operator, we believe that we're going to have a good opportunity to continue to consolidate the industry moving forward.
Great. So I wanted to talk a little bit about pricing. We've gone through this dramatic inflationary period, which was arguably good for a nondiscretionary category like auto service, but often the message that we get from companies in various parts of the auto value chain is that pricing should hold. But we've seen in prior periods like 2013 through 2017, right? Pricing didn't hold for four years. So from your seat, what do you think is a realistic scenario for auto service pricing over the next 12 months?
Yeah, I will again take that kind of in the two halves of our business, first in tires. I think that there is some pressure on tires because of the trade down. I think we're seeing enough trade down where we'll see how manufacturers, distributors, and the installers respond from a pricing standpoint to try to preserve some of the tier one through three volume and make sure that if we are seeing that trade down, what is the price point that needs to be achieved to step back up into some of the tier one through three branded tires? So I think that that tier four could put pressure on some tire pricing. I think that that may be, we'll call it disinflationary to deflationary on the tire side.
On the service side, I think there's still enough wage pressure in terms of what we're seeing in technician market wages. Monro's done a really good job of walking back those wage increases through productivity gains, through leveraging our improved scheduling process, as well as rooting out any unproductivity or overtime that it's not productive in our stores. But still, overall, the market pressure and labor is there in the technician category. I think that's going to prevent retailers and service providers from being able to deflate prices at the consumer. So I think that you'll see less pressure, less disinflationary pressure on the service side.
On that point, on the labor costs and other costs like rent, etc., I mean, are you seeing any moderation in the inflation that you've seen there?
Yeah, I think that we've seen it in some parts of our business, but the technician is still, there's still some stickiness in wage inflation from a technician standpoint. We saw, let's call it mid- to high-single-digit inflation, all-in inflation, including materials. That's pulled back, but mostly because of the material side. The technician inflation is still running kind of mid-single-digits, and I think that from a planning standpoint, we're planning on that. So that just puts a lot more emphasis on making sure that we've got and are achieving our productivity levels, that we are inspecting every vehicle, building tickets, and making sure that we're getting compensated from the guests for the services we're providing.
Great. Just for the category broadly, I mean, how much pricing power do you think auto parts and service has, and how rational has that competitive environment been?
Yeah, I think from the auto parts side, I think you've seen obviously a good amount of inflation built in over time. We tend to pass on that inflation to our guests when we buy a part from a retailer and then install it for the guest. We get the value for the inflation in the part. I think that that, and I think you're starting to see it in some of the more recent announcements, there isn't as much inflation being built into the overall top line comp. So we've always said that over time, we're going to really need to support our top line comp with a strong balance between traffic and ticket.
That's why we're focused on all the things we're doing around our digital courtesy inspection to support ticket once we see the vehicle, but really looking at our offerings and our staffing levels to make sure we can accept traffic because we know that it's going to be a balance there, that ultimately the inflationary boost to top line is starting to dissipate as we move forward.
Great. I want to make sure we have enough time to dedicate towards capital allocation because I feel like this is a subject that's been coming up a lot lately. I mean, in the consumer sector, there's all these near-term debt maturities that everyone's really focused on. Companies are going to have to refinance debt at higher rates and pay down debt at the expense of growth initiatives and other shareholder-friendly actions. So could you just talk about the state of Monro's balance sheet and then your approach to leverage and the potential competitive advantage of having some dry powder?
Absolutely. So at our last quarter end, we only had about $94 million outstanding on our revolver. Our net bank debt, if you exclude cash, was only about $70 million. Like I said, that's about 0.5 times EBITDA. So a very conservative leverage profile. So debt service is not a major concern of ours. We do have a revolving credit facility that we have that outstanding on that matures in 2027. So we don't have a significant maturity wall or refinancing event anytime soon. But we do pay variable interest on that. So we are mindful of interest rates, but nothing that has prevented us. Our Free Cash Flow is a great opportunity for us to continue to invest in our business and manage our debt levels at conservative levels. So there's nothing on the horizon that I think changes that.
We always are looking as we look at opportunities to deploy capital and looking at the balance between putting a little more debt on the balance sheet and doing shareholder-friendly actions or doing acquisition growth. But right now, I think we're pretty well capitalized in terms of our debt profile, and we'll continue to manage that debt while we deploy Free Cash Flow against those capital priorities I talked about earlier.
Great. So I guess I had a question also just about, you talked about some of the pillars and your top priorities for this year, but how are you thinking about kind of the longer term and what you're investing in as a company?
Yeah, that's a great question. We're investing all of our initiatives behind that sales margin cash flow, and I'll just maybe highlight a couple or one opportunity we have in each one of those categories. From a sales standpoint, I mentioned a minute ago the digital courtesy inspection. So we've invested in our stores to take all of our inspections of a vehicle. It comes in, we do a 32-point inspection, kind of quick red, yellow, green, take brake measurements, take tire measurements, and then are able to present that back to the guest for potential other services that they may need. We are translating all of that into a digital inspection. So it'll be tablet-based. We will complete the rollout within the next month and a half to all of our stores. It's close to 1,000 stores currently.
It will basically take that and make it a much more engaging experience for the guest. They'll be able, if they're not waiting in the store, we'll be able to email it to them, have notes, pictures of the part that we're actually seeing. And anytime you can build trust with the guest to prove that it's their vehicle that needs the service and it's not, there's a low trust relationship between a high-information technician who has a lot of knowledge and kind of a low-information guest who doesn't know everything about a vehicle. And so there's always a level of this trust. So the more you can show them in real pictures and in real time through a digital way, we believe that's a better experience. It also allows us to capture a lot more structured data about the guest interaction.
So now we can see exactly centrally what was found. When it's on a piece of paper, you don't know, but now we can pull all that data in, see what technicians are finding on guest vehicles, making sure that it's in line with industry standards. And if we know that two out of every 10 cars on the road need a battery, what's our percentage of when we do a battery test to make sure we're doing the test effectively? And then we can also make sure that guest inspections are being done on every vehicle because as shops get busy, you want to make sure that your technicians aren't cutting corners and skipping steps on the inspection because that's an important value that we provide. So it creates a lot more control over one of our key ticket-building exercises. That's on the sales side.
On the margin side, you may have seen that we recommitted to our relationship with Valvoline as an oil provider. So that's an example of us really having a category focus in terms to optimize and deliver improved performance in our oil category. We're not just doing that in oil, but we're doing it across our key categories, tires and brakes. And I think that our category management team has done a great job of putting an assortment in offerings that are going to resonate with the consumer, but also be margin opportunities for us. And then finally, on the cash side, we continue to leverage our supply chain finance program. So our strategic partnerships have allowed us to extend out payment terms with a lot of our strategic suppliers and leverage a supply chain finance facility that's really providing us working capital benefits.
All of those are going to be, we believe, meaningful continued benefit for us as we go into 2025.
Great. Just wanted to touch a little bit on industry consolidation to the extent that you feel like that's happening. I mean, this has historically always been this very fragmented industry with a lot of very small mom-and-pop players. Wondering if you think that that is sustainable and if what the reasons are for having this ongoing fragmentation or if you think it's going to be kind of a slow consolidation trend that just continues as data becomes more prevalent?
Yeah, I think it's a continued consolidation trend. I mean, when you look at how we've gotten to the fragmentation we have, which every year we become a little less fragmented as an industry. There's consolidation happening at all levels. The ones and twos are being consolidated in the 10s and 15s store chains, and then those get pulled into larger platforms. So I think that there is, you started out with that fragmentation because a technician could start their own shop with relatively low cost to get a couple bays. The investment in technology and in tools and in machinery wasn't all that great. It was primarily hand tools and you move on. But as the industry's gotten more complicated, the investments have become higher and the barriers to entry have gotten larger and the guest expectations have gotten higher.
You've seen some really good chains that have good customer bases move in, consolidate into larger chains that can afford to make the investments in what the next generation of cars is going to require. I don't think that changes. I think if anything, it accelerates, and I think you'll continue to see consolidation at all levels.
Great. I'm going to open it up to the room if anyone has questions here, and then I still have a couple more, so...
Okay.
Can you help maybe frame the tire category that's been weak? Is this well below historical averages? Is it coming off of elevated levels? Just so we can understand, even if there is a trade down, is there a recapture opportunity in the coming years as the macro gets better?
Yeah, it's a great question. What we've seen in the tire category is we've seen pressure on tire units overall, and I'm speaking for the industry now, not necessarily for Monro. You've seen a trade down to tier four. I think that trade down has been exacerbated by a lot of supply that was stuck overseas during COVID that ultimately landed in the U.S. shore. You've seen a healthy supply of tier four, and you've seen pricing decisions in the tier four category by some to try to work through that inventory. We talked about Monro doing that even a year ago where we had, we really leaned into tier four because we had adequate supply and we were looking to move units, and we certainly did that.
I think we're seeing the industry still deal with that, Monro not at all because of what we did a year ago, but the industry is still kind of dealing with that tire supply difference in terms of Tier four. At the same time, the consumer is stretched, so they're really taking to the Tier four category, which has ample supply in it. I think that that dynamic fades as the supply side fades. I think it fades, but the consumer is still going to be value conscious. So that's where I said before, we'll see what happens with Tier one through three pricing in response to that consumer clearly showing desire for a lower price tire.
I think that that dynamic has exacerbated the deferral trade down cycle for a longer period of time than maybe we've seen historically and why it's lasted a little bit longer than most have thought. I believe that because of the nature of the tire, we're going to see units recover. You have, and I believe that there could be outsized growth to your point for the industry as we require. I don't think this is a fact that anything was pulled forward and this is the air pocket. I think that this is the air pocket that is going to be filled in the future.
Has anything changed materially in terms of tire durability? Like, I don't know if there's an argument to be made that tires are made to last longer or is that not the case?
No, there hasn't been any significant change in technology that creates a longer-wearing tire. I think if anything, with some of the standards that there are around fuel efficiency, you actually might have seen the opposite because really the amount of rollout is the most important thing. That's particularly true in electric vehicles. With range anxiety, you want to be able to demonstrate that your electric vehicle has a good amount of range, and to do that, you have to put tires on that enable that range, and that tends to be a little bit softer of a composite tire. In addition, the size and weight of electric vehicles tends to wear them out significantly faster, at least what we've seen. There haven't been many studies done on it, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence around it.
So I think that if anything, we're probably seeing a tire replacement cycle that could become compressed going forward versus elongated because of any technology changes.
Yeah, I can support that anecdote personally with my own in that I have an electric car, I have an internal combustion engine. I replace the tires twice as often on the electric as I do on the...
Good, that's consistent with what we've heard.
Yeah, yeah, I'm supporting that data. Okay, and then I guess just kind of turning to, sorry, I'll open it back up again, but that just led me into another question I had, which was about EVs. And if you feel like that's an ultimate opportunity for your business or if there's a disruptive element to it, like on the service end, like do EVs actually require less service? Because that seems to be the kind of going assumption, but I don't know if that's a correct assumption, so I'm curious.
Well, they're going to require more tires, so we just talked about that, and that is going to create a couple opportunities for us. One, obviously the ability to sell more tires, and these are typically fitments that are higher value tires. They're not an opening price point tire, not many sizes are available in opening price points for an EV consumer. And currently, with the type of consumer buying EV at that price point, they're not interested in putting a value offering on their car. They want a branded offering. So they're higher value and they're going to be in more frequently. It also gives us a chance to inspect the vehicle. And I had the chance, I was in Raleigh, North Carolina last week and was in one of our shops that had three Teslas in there.
One was getting a state inspection, one was getting brakes, and one was getting tires. So the one that was getting brakes had come in for four tires, and tires were fine, we found, but they needed brakes, so we were able to replace the brakes on them. So you can see that's our full complement of services in action with the vehicle. The only thing that doesn't parlay over to electric vehicles is going to be the fluid exchange. And for us, that's only about 15% of our business, and so it's a much smaller part of our business to pivot. And again, it's a pivot because you still have 300 million vehicles on the road that require fluid exchange. So we will continue to evolve our offering to make up for that as the EVs come in.
Great. Sorry for hijacking, I'll let it back out to the audience if there are more questions in the room. If not, I'll take it back because actually that raised another question that I had, which was really about, as you talked about that, evolution or the pivot, right? And I mean, in the past, there have been changes to vehicle technology and the company has pivoted. I'm trying to think of some examples, like I don't know, carburetors, right? Which aren't really in modern cars. So what are some of the ways that historically Monro has been able to pivot along with the change in vehicle technology?
Yeah, I can point to a couple. The first is just the original pivot where we were Monro Muffler, right? And so as you got mufflers that became stainless steel, you used to replace your muffler. Now no one even really replaces their muffler unless there's physical damage to it because they don't corrode, they don't wear out. But historically, and I remember growing up, you'd hear cars pull up next to you and the muffler's half hanging off and rusted out. That doesn't happen anymore. The company pivoted into undercar repair like brakes and front end and shocks. So that's how Monro Muffler became Monro Muffler Brake. So that was kind of the original pivot, and it was based on a technology improvement in the exhaust. But also, we pivoted our exhaust into really doing more catalytic converters than we do pipes and other undercar services in exhaust.
The other one I would say is if you look at our oil category, we know that in the reason why we got more into tires as well is that we saw the elongation of the oil change cycle, right? It used to be three months, 3,000 miles, and now you've got manufacturers of cars where when the light comes on, you get your oil changed, and that light can be anywhere from six to 10,000 miles between oil changes. So we knew that the elongation of the oil cycle was going to require a diversification into other areas, and that's when Monro, when I joined, was probably 20%, 25% tires, and now we're 50% as we looked at a tire category that was going to be a good way to maintain some of the traffic that we knew we might lose with the oil category.
Yeah. I guess there's really nothing that can disrupt tires that we know of today. I mean, every car is still going to have to have...
For now, for now. You hear about the flying taxis and all of that, but for now, the tire is the common denominator no matter what vehicle we're talking about.
Got it. Okay, great. And actually just a follow-up on tires, which is you mentioned that there's been this trade down to Tier four. For you as the retailer, what's the difference besides just a lower unit cost to the customer, so lower same store sales for you? Is there a margin difference as well?
There is. There's margin pressure on our Tier four offering, and that is why when we looked at our performance from Q3 and Q4 a year ago and FY23, our comp store sales were mid-single digits, but a lot of that was in the Tier four tire category, and you saw that pressure our flow through. Now, we had our labor, we were still in the process of getting productivity in our labor that we had just invested in as well, so that exacerbated it a little bit. But basically, as you see labor costs go up and tire pricing come down, that is a tough mix to have. We can't have expensive, highly trained labor installing low margin tires, particularly when the low margin tires tend to have a consumer that isn't attaching as much to it. So they're not buying the road hazard protection.
They're not necessarily buying an alignment to protect it. If we do find other work, they're not necessarily purchasing the brake that they also need. So it becomes a low attachment, low margin ticket, and we'd made a decision to really slow down that. And even if we lost overall tire share because of it and tire units, we were going to really focus on our Tier one through three offerings because that had the best P&L impact for us.
Yeah. Okay, makes sense. All right, any other questions in the room? Otherwise, I'll ask my last one. Okay, last question is just what are you most excited about for 2024?
Yeah, a lot of things, but really we've laid the foundation for future growth. We've, I think, are coming through and weathering through a tough tire category driven by a tough consumer environment. So I'm really looking forward for our teammates to see the success of a lot of the hard work that we put in place because I think some of that has been masked by the overall macro in tire category environment. But I do believe that the growth initiatives that we've installed will ultimately shine through, and I think that's going to be a rewarding time for our teammates.
Great. Well, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Appreciate having you here.