Well, we'll kick it off. Thanks for joining the afternoon session, everybody. Again, I think I know everyone in here, but Daniel Imbro, I cover automotive, aftermarket, and hard lines here at Stephens. Pleased to be joined this afternoon, by the team from Monro here. Many of you know, obviously, Mike, CEO; Brian, CFO; and then Felix from the IR effort. Guys, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Of course. Well, yeah, well, I'm sure we'll get into more detail in the Q&A here, Mike, but for those that may not know the story as well, could you spend a few minutes just giving an overview? Obviously, Monro, where you've been historically, kind of under the changes you're making to the business, and where you fit in the aftermarket, and we'll go from there. Sure. I'll start with, where we fit in the aftermarket- Mm-hmm I'll go through our strategy and maybe our capital allocations to kind of jumpstart the conversation. So first and foremost, thanks for having us. Monro operates 1,300 stores. We're a full-service organization, We fix vehicles. Half of our business is repairing, replacing tires. The other half is services like oil change, brake, any service that really affects your vehicle. That's what we do. We operate in 32 states. We have approximately $1.3 billion revenue. From a strategy perspective, there's a couple of pillars that we talk about publicly. Number one is we have our underperforming stores. Just like every good retailer, we've identified 300 underperforming stores, about 20% to 25% of our chain. These stores were once performing well, but now they're not, and a lot of our focus is actually getting those stores improved. And we talk a lot about double-digit comps, but it's not only just a great comp story, but it's also a great profit story for our organization. Number two is margin expansion. The organization, over the last two, three, four years, has done a lot to really refine our business model, focusing on the customer, focusing on our teammate, making sure that we have clean back rooms. There's a lot of work that we've asked our teams to really go along the journey for us, to make ourselves more productive. And when I look at productivity, it's, it's the margin story, really bringing margins to life. And then last but not least is the cash creation. We talk about AP ratios that are as high as anybody in the marketplace. We've done a good job managing the cash story, and we feel like that's part of just running a great organization. What are we going to do with the cash? That's the capital allocation piece, and I would say we invest in our people and stores. That's not going to change. We return capital to our shareholders through a buyback. Also, I would say a dividend, a nice dividend policy that's been in place forever. We reduced debt. And then last but not least is if there's an acquisition, we are absolutely interested in acquisitions. We're not going to overpay for it, nor are we going to buy acquisitions that are what I call science projects, which are nothing more than stores that haven't been properly invested in, over several months and years. That kind of frames up where we are today. Yeah. So- No, that's, that's true. And maybe we'll stay kind of on, on your history. You kind of came from the aftermarket, joined, I think 2.5 years ago, or around that time frame? That is correct. Um- How fast! When you think about the last two and a half years, what has been more or less challenging in this process of these three pillars than you anticipated? And maybe were you ahead of schedule from where you thought you'd be? Yeah, so from coming out of COVID, I joined in April 2021. Calling on Monro for over 20 years. I was well aware of the opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses that Monro had. We had a great relationship. I had a, I would say I had a good relationship within Monro, for Monro, with Monro. The number one challenge, we hired a lot of people in a short period of time coming out of COVID, staffing our stores, making sure that we married demand and supply. Lot of conversation, making sure that we're training these people. At the same time, wages were going up, and really balancing what we believe are long-term tailwinds in the aftermarket, because vehicle miles traveled are at elevated levels. We were really focusing on the people agenda, that coming out of COVID was, I would say, just like every retailer, was under a lot of stress. Oh, and by the way, wages were going up. I would say that we talked about high single digits on a cost perspective. Most of that's wages as well as other input costs. But we... That was something that was not planned for, but we do feel like coming out of these last six to nine months, we have that under control. It seems like things are starting to get real momentum. I expected it earlier, but I would say the self-help story is very much intact. We're the, the same management team managing the expenses, although I'm critical of myself and the management team of how well we manage expenses, but it's under control. That same management team really out-delivered cash. We took unproductive assets, and we created cash, and I believe that story is going to be intact for a long, long time. If I think about the Monro business, like, who is your customer? Like, what does the income cohort look like? Right. Do you have data on that? I'm trying to ask all, you know, our companies, but it sounds like you've been seeing more deferral, kind of a little bit of weakness in that consumer. I guess, how has that changed in the last few months- Yeah ... and into 2024? How are you thinking about that? Well, we have a lot of data on it. So generally, I would characterize our family income, dual-income homes, potentially more than one car, making anywhere between $100,000 and $120,000 in household income. What I see in the deferral right now is, first of all, tires don't get better over time. Brakes don't get better over time. It's just a matter of time before... Generally, it's a weather event, like a little bit of snow, and everybody comes to our shops, like, literally demanding their tires being changed over. A lot of what we're seeing right now is a deferral cycle. It's significant, more so than I would say the industry has experienced in the past. But everything kind of comes in waves right now. That customer is just, they used to replace four tires, now they replace two tires or one tire. Where there's a weather event, those tires aren't good tires, although we recommend them to change them. Unfortunately, it's usually takes a weather event to really make our customers understand they really should change their tires. They came on back, and they're coming on back as we come into the winter selling season. Specifically, when I looked at Q2's performance, September's results and October's results, we really talked about the deferral cycle. If I think about, obviously, then that's just a function of a tougher, maybe macro backdrop for that consumer. Do they come back, like, how long does it take to bring that flow back? Do they come back one tire at a time, so it takes a year and a half to get that kind of, those sales- Yeah ... you deferred? And are you getting any customer data that that same customer is coming back, or are they trying to avoid the channel together? Obviously, you can't do tires yourself, but you can do some of the other fluids and things. Has that shifted to the DIY market? Yeah. I would say DIY oil change, for example, during COVID. I would say the cars are getting more complicated. Batteries used to be a big retail. It's still a very big part of their retail assortment, changing out batteries, but as battery technology moves into the cabin, it's gonna require people like ourselves, ASE- certified technicians, making sure they do the right process. So we're seeing the same business, like battery business was up double digits in Q2, so it's a healthy business. I would say it's more a deferral. It usually takes in the past 90 days, and now I'm basically saying, where there's a weather event, it's just gonna come on back. Unfortunately, you know, just state of the customer, and, we're not gonna rationalize our expenses. We have it under control. We have our wages under control, and we're able to manage in this environment. I would think that's the most important... All the work that we've done is really to get our P&L more variable. And please, this will be a fireside chat, so ask questions as they come up, but you have them in the open forum. I guess maybe going to the 300 underperforming stores, I wanna maybe break it down. The comp momentum has slowed a bit there. At least it was materially outperforming, but maybe less so now. What investments do you see still in front of you on those stores? It's always people, it's process, I'm sure, but, you know, what's left of low-hanging fruit or has that mostly been captured? I would say it's still people. It's a people business, where you have the right front shop making sure you sell the services, and the right people in the back performing the services. The customers will reward you with loyalty and coming back for... I would say, when they are looking for an oil change, we do a proper courtesy inspection, and then they come back, and they look for other services. So I would say, in those stores, we see in those 300 stores a lot of variable in performance. The reason why I am still so optimistic about that's the right strategy, is we have many of those stores performing very well, and we're right on path, yet we still have those bottom performers. We're still very focused on getting those bottom performers, delivering the results which we believe exist in the marketplace. It's not bad real estate. It's really just people who are not on program. You know, it's just like any other retailer. We're gonna have our underperforming stores that need to be focused on. If you think about the people that are in those stores, inherently, you're asking them to do more, right? Yes. As you're driving more comp, I guess, how have they responded? How has the team responded to being asked to do more? Is it turnover being higher? I'm curious how the field responds to that. Well, we've asked our team to do a lot in a very short period of time. Multiple years, but in a short period of time. We used to have 1,300 category managers that were basically out there procuring their own parts and tires, and now we've really rationalized that. And so that using technology to say, "These are the people that you're gonna have to buy from, and you need to... Those old relationships are old, they're behind us. These are the relationships you're gonna have to go in front of." I would say, just like any retailer, it's about communication and managing change. We've asked our team to really take on a new Monro. We feel like that new Monro is gonna provide us consistent comp growth, margin expansion that we're happy about, and continue driving cash. They'll get rewarded with good bonus checks and the variable compensation that goes along with it. And, Brian, I was gonna ask about that. I guess when you think about incentives and getting people to buy in, I guess, is it pushing incentives further down the store, or is it changing just what the metrics they're getting paid on are? And what are the incentives that in the field kind of drives that variable comp? Yeah, we have a balanced approach to how we incentivize our store teams and our field leaders. Those are aligned with our executive leadership team as well. It really starts with a sales comp number. We educate our teams and help them to understand how traffic and ticket can help them achieve their sales goals and their sales targets. And the second piece is store contribution, profit contribution. So they need to deliver their contribution targets to be able to fully maximize their bonus potential. Is that on a dollar or a rate basis? It's on an improvement basis over year-over-year. Each store has an individualized target, and achievement at or above that target has standardized payout levels. Helpful. When we think about labor, obviously, it's a human business. You talked about you have a bunch of technicians, and you've been hiring, but techs are hard to find. I mean, every dealer here is talking about the same thing. How do you? What is the recruiting pitch? Why would a technician come to work at Monro, and is it getting any easier to find? Yeah. I would say getting quality technicians is always gonna be the lifeblood of the organization. Our biggest pitch is they're able to work on all makes, all models. And that gives them, I would say, more opportunity to earn money, and that's what it really comes down to. And then last but not least, we've talked a lot about how we have it under control. Our average wage is under control. Although we're not happy with our negative 2% comp coming out of Q2, we were able to manage basically the input costs, the margin. And margin is part of our tech labor is part of margin, so we're able to show an improvement on margin, and that's nothing more than just managing overtime. We talk a lot about overtime, and how we have variabilized our P&L. And given the shortage of techs, when we think about the 300 stores that need- Yeah ... quite a few people, how do you determine, as the management team, where to allocate that incremental talent? If you only hire so many techs, do you put them in the stores that are doing stronger, or how do you allocate to the stores that maybe need help on the underperforming side? It feels like a tough balancing act to maintain. There's a minimum expectation that we've established. So you have to establish that minimum expectation, especially with the services that we talk about. If you can't do a quality brake job in the right amount of time, you obviously need better technicians. That is also engine management. These are all services that we, our customers expect us to fix. The last thing that we ever want is a customer driving up, we rack it up, and then all of a sudden we don't have the skills, knowledge, and ability to be able to fix it. So we have to take it and then send it to our competition. So that's a minimum expectation in all our stores. It's a challenge. It truly is. And then number two is, where we're seeing growth, how do you feed that growth? That way, we get those stores off the list, but that's the same thing we do with our existing stores, too. Great. And then, Brad, let's talk about maybe inflation. I bet it's been palpable across the entire aftermarket. I guess, how has... Price momentum's been a lot the last 12, 18 months. How's that today? Are you able to pass it through? I think y'all have done some, some things on the lower price points and kind of navigating that. Can you provide some background for those that are newer, but also talk about just the broad inflationary backdrop you're seeing? Yeah, absolutely. If we think about the last year, our fiscal 2023, we didn't necessarily pass on as much price as maybe others, other parts of the auto aftermarket that really led with a high inflationary number within their overall comp. We experienced mid- to high-single-digit overall inflation, wages, and materials, and we likely passed only about low-single-digit back to our consumer. And so we did that for first a couple reasons. One is, Monro was a little bit at the higher end of where we wanted to be from a price standpoint. And so we took the opportunity, as competitors were raising prices, to raise them not as quickly, so that we really firmly positioned ourself back into the competitive positioning that we wanted in each market relative to our competitors. Secondly, the consumer, we've seen where we have passed on price, like tires, the industry's passed on price, we've seen a trade-down. And so it's a logical way for the consumer to respond and to not accept price increases is to trade down into lower value tires. So we really understood the stretch and the pressure that the consumer was under and didn't try to heap too much in the way of additional price increases onto an already stretched consumer. So, as it relates to currently, we saw expansion in our Q2 of material cost margin-... up to 120 basis points, which means that, we're seeing the benefit primarily from product mix, so we're mixing up our tires off the opening price- point T ier 1 through Tier 3, but also lower, but still passing on price increases over the last 12 months to the consumer. What about on the service side? I'm curious, you know, those, those value-added services that maybe you diagnose or find, is it easier or harder to pass through price on that side rather than tires, where you can maybe price shop tires before you go in or something like that? I'm curious if, if it's similar across the board. It is similar in that we have positioned our offerings to be where we want them to be within the competitive set. So while tires is something that we'll scrape nearly weekly or every two weeks in our markets, we'll do services a little less frequently 'cause they tend to not move because of the less price transparency. But still, we know firmly each quarter where we are relative to our competitive set. And we think we're well-positioned in all of our categories. And importantly, we also have the right breadth of offerings from a good, better, best opportunity to meet the consumer where they're at. And if you think about, you mentioned you're in the right place competitively, though. Into calendar 2024, would you expect that whole cohort moves up? Again, there's continued cost inflation. Does everyone move up and you stay competitively where you are, or is there not enough pricing power to where you might actually not see inflation and that be a tailwind in calendar 2024? As we think about comps going forward, I think that we know that the auto service aftermarket, if to grow, a company's gonna have to have a good balance of traffic and ticket. And so we're really focused on making sure we're priced to be able to drive additional cars into our stores and see more vehicles, while at the same time have enough in the way of passing on price and passing on the benefits of new technology to our consumers through pricing actions. Where we are positioned now relative to the competition, I think puts us on really good footing to be able to rationally pass price on to the consumer as competitors do. Got it. Mike, maybe thinking about the broader backdrop right now, I'm curious, how are smaller competitors handling this deferral period? I mean, are they getting aggressive on price? What can they do, given all the tools you would have as a scaled player, how are they trying to navigate this right now? Yeah, I would say their investments in technology, it's puts even more pressure on their wages. Like, I mean, I mean, loyalty only goes so far. I mean, I would say that that's one of the reasons why we continue to staff our stores with quality technicians, and people are looking for work. I would say that in a very fragmented market, with the pressures of inflation, with the pressure of technology, I like where we are. I think that's why scale matters in this organization, for sure, or in this in the aftermarket, for sure. And having 1,300 locations absolutely is a positive from our perspective. Does it bring more small players maybe to market as sellers? Does this typically through cycles, you've been around the aftermarket for a bit, does it bring, you know, an increased appetite or increased opportunity for M&A? Yeah, it should. It will. I just, they need to get back to a more rational ask. That's easy for me to say, but the good news is we just don't have to buy them. If it's not, it just doesn't make sense. I was gonna ask that. I was seeing- Yeah ... on the balance sheet, you have flexibility, but where does that fall? Do you want to be stepping up M&A right now, or is there enough internal opportunity that the ROI looks better there, and by that, kind of what you think about the cash? Yeah, I think one thing that we've generated a lot of, as Mike said in his prepared remarks, we've generated a lot of cash, both through the divestiture of our wholesale business, working capital improvements and optimization, and profitability. So that gives us a lot of optionality with how to use our cash. We've got a balance sheet that we're proud of. It's only about 0.3x levered on a net bank debt- to- EBITDA basis, so it provides a lot of conservative, a conservative position on the balance sheet. And then from there, we've been deploying our capital against share repurchase and the dividend. And I think that, given where we are in our cycle, both internally in terms of our transformation, but also where the market is in terms of this bid-ask spread that Mike has talked about, you know, we think that, you know, we're more than happy to continue to put our money behind those capital allocation priorities. Maybe a broader question as we think about the evolving aftermarket is just electrification. I think about it, probably is a net good thing for Monro, given the wear and tear on wheel and tire. But you know, one, do you agree with that assessment first? And then two, what are you seeing today in the markets- Yeah ... where there's heavier EV penetration, are you seeing that actually show up in results yet? Yes, so California, we see it all over the place. You can drive up to a Monro-branded shop, and there'll be a Tesla or something else in there. I mean, people are looking to get their tires fixed, brakes replaced, and chassis fixed in electric vehicles. I would say the aftermarket is gonna continue to evolve, especially with parts proliferation and how the aftermarket always does it, will evolve around the wheel. Propulsion will move in that direction. Then last but not least, which I think is a great opportunity for Monro and we'll be ready for it, is the cooling and of the battery, just the overall heat, managing the battery. It's not even replacing the battery, it's just managing the coolant of the battery. On a Tesla, there's about 18 hoses. They fail. When they fail, the car stops, and I know that's not what people want to hear. It's good for our business, not good for the consumer, but we're in that business, and we'll continue being in that business. California, Massachusetts, Virginia, are our EV markets. It's all about training, making sure that we have the skills, the technicians, they'll evolve, especially with our training, so that they will be able to take care of those vehicles. And I do believe that every state, but it's not coming that fast, but we'll be ready for it. We'll follow the aftermarket. Does it require more tech because you have full-service techs, does it require more training and more expensive labor as electric vehicles become more prominent in those markets? I would say that our technicians, once again, going back to why Monro from a technician, that is one of the biggest reasons why Monro is they're able to be trained on a vehicle that otherwise, if they went to, you know, certain dealers, it's just not available to them. They're not their EV technician, yet at Monro, with the proper training, they are. They love that work, and they do it very well. Do you think anything will be different in terms of, I think, what the sweet spot for aftermarket, older cars, obviously? EVs now are mostly at the dealership, so is it just a timing cycle before those come to the aftermarket? And obviously, we got a favorable right to repair vote last week. Yes ... in the aftermarket. Yes. But, you know, does that position, you think the aftermarket will be there to cater to that and have the parts available for it when it, when it's needed? Yeah, I do. I do. And I just talked about the, the cooling of the battery for a Tesla. I mean, Gates already, it's, they already make that hose, those hoses. So it's, they're available. It's the proliferation of it. It's the ease of doing it. It's the diagnostic. It's the marketing to our customers say, "Hey, come to a Monro shop, they're able to take care of it. Oh, it's a better value proposition for you." So I would say that that's where we're going, that's where we're prepared, and in some ways, that's where we are today. So you lose some on the batteries or on the brakes, but you make up for it with more frequent tire replacements and- I get the brakes. I have anecdotal feedback, but it's a heavier car with high torque. It's great on brakes. Now, great for me, not great for you. Great on tires. I lose oil change, and I'm okay with that. Suspension parts, I get all that. That's good business, and our technicians love it. Does it slow down throughput? I think about, like, the heavier lifts, or does it need more CapEx- Yeah ... as you need different equipment to handle those vehicles? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't think it's throughput as much as doing a quality courtesy inspection. All right, I'm gonna take that question and kind of steer it in where it's relevant. The whole industry is going through a technology kind of... It's a new technology generation. It's how we communicate to customers. Everything's gonna be on tablets. The industry was built on paper, and I would say all that's evolving. The dealerships are going this way, where you have to take pictures and videos, and you, as a consumer, are gonna say, "That's what I want, because I don't necessarily believe my local shop." The biggest breakdown in the automotive service business is the lack of trust, and this is where the whole industry is really going. Monro is absolutely moving in that direction. Every store is gonna have a digital courtesy inspection tool, will be able to communicate through email, through text, and we're gonna make sure that the customers are well-informed through the process. Oh, and by the way, that EV customer loves that. That's what they want. They don't want to necessarily... Now I'm just-... putting them all in one big bucket, which isn't fair. But they don't want to talk to people, they want to be communicated to the way they want to be, that they feel most convenient about. Monro's leading in that direction, the dealerships are going in that direction. I do believe that puts even more pressure on a very fragmented, traditional mom-and-pop type of competitor. Any framework for sizing up what kind of CapEx investment is needed to get lifts are what dealers talk a lot about, is like, need special lifts to lift heavier cars, things like that. But is it quite viable- Yeah ... or regular, as you look at the first-order CapEx investment? Go ahead, Brian, yeah. Yeah. No, we've retrofitted our lifts to be able to accommodate EV. We've got heavy enough lifts in our bays, maybe not every single lift, but available in our bays to see a critical mass of EVs. We've retrofitted them with the equipment that allows them to not create any risk to the battery compartment underneath. We've trained all of our technicians on how to properly lift an EV across the nation. There are special settings you have to put into and take out of before you give it back to the consumer. So we are equipped and trained on how to lift EVs in all of our stores. And Mike, going back to your old, you know, aftermarket parts kind of side, I guess, how is your parts relationship today with you guys? Is there room to improve that, either from a supply or pricing standpoint, as you guys, you know, scale and keep growing to help on the margin and the profitability on the other stuff you're doing? Yeah, it's. So I've been in the industry for over 30 years. Do not judge me. But I understand the parts business extremely well, so I know all the relationships. I would say what's most important is giving our teammates, our installers, everything they're a manufacturing process. Time is important to them. Flipping cars, properly diagnosing and flipping cars properly, that's important. So getting our back rooms... We've done so much really trying to enable our stores with best assortment, both on tires, one of the big reasons why we went with ATD, and parts. I still think we have more work to do on parts, but we just announced last week what we're doing with Valvoline. It's just been a great partner, really making it easier for our teams to sell oil. We still have some more work to do with parts, but we're very much on that journey. As a retailer, we're going to have a clean balance sheet. We don't have inventory issues. We don't even have warehouses. We can go anywhere in the country. We have partnerships to be able to deliver parts or tires to us. We're just a very nimble and clean retailer. I like our positions. One of the reasons why I loved joining Monro. It makes sense. Well, Ryan, you mentioned earlier, you kind of gave a high-level overview of selling the wholesale business. But for those that are less familiar, can you give a little more background on what drove that decision, any supply agreements you now have, now that better position the tire business going forward? Just that background. Yeah. So the background on the wholesale business was we had acquired, through three different acquisitions, some wholesale assets, that came along with some really good retail store locations for us. So, as we acquired those, we scaled it into kind of a regional business, really in the Mid-Atlantic, that was used to sell to, other installers of tires, that compete with Monro, but also service our own stores. At a certain point, it became clear that we could give more value and become a more focused retailer by divesting of those assets and entering into distribution partnerships, to fill in any holes in distribution. And so we did that. We divested those assets to, ATD, American Tire Distributors, and entered into a national supply agreement with them to supply our stores. So that agreement has a lot of benefits, including a much quicker availability, helping us to really utilize their technology and visibility in the industry to help us assort and make good choices on tires, and still carry a cost advantage, because of our scale and purchasing power. That agreement has a little bit of an earn-out period that we're currently in, probably four more quarters of earn-out, and then once the earn-out period is over, there's a five-year agreement. So we feel really good about how locked in our ability to get really valuable and cost-effective tires that are going to be really appealing to our consumers. It's helpful. And as we think through the margin side and just that kind of locks in tires on the supply, I guess. I wanted to ask about labor. We talked a lot about earlier, where it's at, but I guess, do we have the labor if all the deferrals are coming back? Yeah. Is there sufficient labor in the stores to meet that? I'm just curious, you, you've done so much taking out overtime and in excess. Yeah. Just have, you know, how do you feel about if that does return, you know, the ability to meet that demand? Yeah, it's a really important question, because people have actually asked the flip side and said: "How much more overtime can you take out?" And I said: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If I have a very short cycle and I have a consumer that's deferring, it comes in a short cycle, we talk about a weather event, I might spend more overtime." We've created a variable P&L. So, it's all about wage, it's all about productivity, but we are running our business for the long term. Customers don't care. We're not going to let somebody go at five o'clock in the afternoon if we have a packed house. I mean, we're. That is. But if we're slow, you know, just manage payroll. And it's, it sounds simple to say. It's over 1,300 stores. It's not that easy. It's just eliminating waste. But when the time comes, we're ready for it. It's helpful. And thinking about the financial profile of the services are obviously going to see margin accretive. Any help just kind of framing up the quantification? Like, how accretive are some of those services to the overall P&L, as we think about that mix changing over time? Yeah. Our service categories carry 60% to 70% margins. Our tire category, you know, pure tire, tire install, is about 40%. So there's a big delta between the two, which is really why we want to grow in a really balanced way. The lower ticket, higher margin service categories and the higher ticket tire categories, they're financially compatible and complementary. But also in our stores, when we do one, we tend to find work in another, in the other category, so they're very complementary in store as well. Any reason batteries were up this quarter? The retailers talk about it. We did a good job testing it, and we had some weather. I mean, that's why I would say most of the conversation, the commentary was, it's just a tire business. They're not into the tire business. Our services were doing okay. We can talk about double-digit battery business, where it's small for us. It will continue to evolve, but I do believe it's weather and the fact that we're focused on it. If we think about maybe, maybe the cost side, and I'm just thinking, maybe advertising some of those discussions, what are the... Let me just take a step back. How does advertising move through cycles? Do you pull back on that if you needed to? I would guess consumers know where you are, it's needs-based, but I'm curious if that's a variable expense that needs to come back over time, or if it picks up during downturns as small competitors become, you know, price competitive. Yeah, on the advertising side, we've been really targeted in our use of advertising. So the first thing I'll say is we've leveraged manufacturer programs and manufacturer cooperative advertising to really market our categories and to provide promotional offers to our consumers. So, you know, we've got really great partnerships and a lot of great partners that want to grow with us, and we've been able to leverage a lot of that to help support our consumer during this period of time without over-investing. In a period of time where I think, you know, you start to see lower returns on marketing as the consumer, you know, needs more and more to kind of move off their mark and buy. So we've tried to not overinvest in marketing and actually have pulled back in some of those non-manufacturer-sponsored marketing opportunities. We'll keeping a close eye on that, and if we do start to see an environment that we think would benefit from, traffic would benefit from incremental advertising, you know, we'll, we'll make those decisions at that time. Got it. And then maybe I should've started at the beginning with this, but you guys do run multiple banners across the country. Just, can you walk through the strategic rationale, again, thinking about if it's marketing or brand awareness? Yeah ... of kind of running those in the markets after the, some of the deals are done? Yeah, one of the first things that I did, spent good money trying to understand what this brand do from a rational perspective. I don't think we'll ever be down to one brand. It would be easier to have fewer than 10 brands, but really what it came down to is the customer didn't care. They care about... they have a problem with their car, they want it diagnosed right, fixed right, in a timely manner, and they want a fair price. And when you asked them about the brand, it was less about the brand as much as, "Hey, that store down the street." I would say that there's absolutely an opportunity for us to consolidate brands, but that was not our focus. Our focus is to fix the internal opportunities that are in front of us. Great. Then, Brian, maybe looking at the outlook, you guys talked about last quarter, you know, a thing called for a nice comp acceleration to the back half of the year. Can you just talk through how the back half of your fiscal year you're planning on shaping up? And then we talked about weather a little bit. Is there anything we should be aware of from a comparison standpoint, or what you'd expect there? Yeah, given where we ran in terms of down a little over 2% in our second quarter, and that accelerated to, like, a down 5% in October, we changed our outlook for the full year. We had originally said we expected low- to mid-single-digit comps, comp growth. We changed that to just comp growth, right? So kind of pulled back from that low- to mid-single-digit outlook. That's basically to reflect Q2 and where we're running through Q3 as of the call through October. But it's also supported by what we expect to be, you know, some seasonal changes in consumer buying, as what we talked about, tires become a category that is no longer deferrable in a lot of our markets, but also the benefit of a 2% comp for a 53rd week in our Q4. All of that, you know, is factored into the fact that we think we can still grow comps this year, and that's why we put that in our outlook. Got it. And then as you look forward, I mean, mid-singles was the previous kind of long-term outlook. Has anything changed? I mean, if we're in this deferral period for longer, maybe it lasts, but anything changed in your confidence to be able to get back to that mid-single-digit type outlook? Nothing changes in my confidence to be able to get there. I think what, what is important to understand is, we have a P&L that I don't think requires us to get there. I think our. If you look at what we've done in terms of, margin improvement in the business, labor management, as well as SG&A, you know, we have a business that can grow earnings year-over-year off a comp that is, much lower than mid-single. However, you know, we're focused every day on driving, more traffic to our stores and improving, the average ticket of our stores, and, and we think if we're successful in the objectives that we have laid out with the tactics that we've got in place, we'll be able to get to mid-single. And then on the cash flow side, you've made so much progress so far. But I'm curious on the working capital, is there further room or are we later innings in some of the, what I would call, like, the self-help that you've clearly, you know, succeeded on so far? Yeah, the working capital improvements aren't linear. We've really leveraged our strategic partnerships in that way to really optimize working capital, both inventory in the stores but also the terms of our accounts payable. You can see that in Q2, it kind of flattened out. With Q1, we didn't make a lot of additional growth in our AP-to-inventory ratio or in our cash conversion cycle reduction, but there's still more to come. I mean, we're gonna. We've got additional categories where we can sign up additional strategic vendors, and because of that, I'm pretty, you know, bullish on our cash creation opportunities, which is exciting because we've got, you know, really good capital allocation opportunities to put that cash to use. That... Those include, you know, continuing to support the dividend, obviously, repurchasing shares on the remaining 53 million authorized under our current authorization, and then managing a really conservative balance sheet. Great. Let me wrap it up. Mike, as we look at, you know, the next 12 months, it's been a challenging kind of last 18, but what gets you kind of most excited here at Monro retail store? We talked about a lot of things today. As you look at what's in your control, kind of what excites you most for the next little bit? So I, I do recognize that I see a consumer that's stretched right now. I do believe things in our industry don't get better over time, so I feel that what we're focused on is absolutely meeting the needs of our consumer, number one, our technician right behind our, our employees, number two. We've done so much work to improve our process, to improve the communication, improve the training in our organization. We've asked the organization to have so much change over the last 2.5 to 3 years. We're at a point right now when the customer does come back, we've, you know, we really have the margin profile, we have the cash story intact, and then we get the sales. I would say that we start going back to what we believe is our, you know, historical norms from a, an earnings potential. Ultimately, that's what we're focused on. And Monro, with its scale and its, its relationship with the communities that we operate in, I think they'll, we'll be rewarded for all of our hard work. Well, I think we'll leave it there. Gentlemen, thanks so much for the time today and all the color. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having us.