Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Tracy Kogan - Credit Suisse.
Tracy Kogan - Credit Suisse
First question is, you mentioned the improvement in April around Easter, can you just quantify how much you think it hurts your comp in the first quarter, and then secondly I was hoping you could quantify some of those changes in the merchandise margin and the buying in occupancy de-leverage. Thanks a lot.
Tina Klocke
With inclusion of Easter we talked about our year-to-date comparable store sales showing a slight improvement over the end of the first quarter, so that we did see an improvement in the trend from the Easter season so to speak.
From a perspective of the gross margin, the majority of it was a de-leverage of occupancy cost in North America and some de-leverage in our gross margin on the value price animals and some impact of foreign currency translation in Europe and that was about a 100 basis points on the foreign currency translation, because as a remainder we do purchase all of our inventory in U.S. dollars.
Operator
Your next comes from the line of Tom Filandro - SIG.
Tom Filandro - SIG
Two quick questions if I can. One is Maxine can give us a better understanding of your comments about identifying some stronger assortment and rebalancing between value and core, to be more specific in terms of how we should look at the assortment go forward in terms of pricing and positioning.
Then my second question is more broadly speaking in terms of John’s impact on the business. Can you give us a little insight, you kind of noted that he had some positive impacts, can you give us some inside on exactly what the impact has been and how he is viewing your marketing spend go forward? Thank you very much.
Maxine Clark
Tom we always had our value pricing, but now that simply actually begun to feature it in our marketing messaging, we sort of separated out those animals and we’re calling the value price a points that $10 and $12 predominantly and some $14, and then every thing that’s in the middle of that from above that point is our core line.
Then we also bring in our seasonal and fashion items that might be just seasonal and sometimes they are at 14, sometimes they are at 16 it just depends on what the animal is. So we are looking at that more critically than we did before, because the customers gravitating so much to the lower side of the spectrum.
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