Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Mark Miller - William Blair & Company, LLC.
Mark Miller - William Blair & Company, LLC
Was hoping you could expand on your comments about the tighter competitive pricing as it relates to pharmacy. And what type of impact did this have on the pharmacy margins in the second quarter? And how much greater was that than in the first quarter? And is this coming more through moves of competitors or how much of that is caused by the roll out of the RX Plus card?
Rick A. Chambers
Good morning, Mark. This is Rick Chambers. In regards to that what we’re seeing when we make those comments, what we’re really getting on there is you know we’re still seeing the same pressures from the Wal-Mart, Kroger and grocery industry in terms of the $4 programs. We are as Bruce mentioned earlier aggressively rolling that out and we’ll have our marketing support behind that beginning in September. And it’s been more of some impact as we talked about on margins but we’re looking at it more on a broader scale as an overall investment into the entire store experience for the customer, not just on the individual pharmacy margin alone. But yes there has been a pressure put on that but not again that’s something that we did not expect. It was something that was in line with our plans. But we would expect that to continue to support our strong scrip growth as we go forward and the comps that Bruce mentioned earlier, so.
Bruce A. Efird
And Mark, just in emphasis, we have seen the benefit of that driving scrip comp throughout the year.
Mark Miller - William Blair & Company, LLC
Sticking with the gross margin from on the positive side, very impressive increase in private label as a percent of consumable, you didn’t mention that in the text or I guess that I heard in the commentary about that being an uplift to gross margin. Was that something that did impact the business positively, you know in a meaningful fashion? Or are you pricing it such that really it doesn’t have a positive contribution to the margin percentage?
Jerry A. Shore
No, Mark, it did. We didn’t see the positive initial mark up that came from brand, own brand. It was in terms of the overall impact as related to the markdowns and the freight it wasn’t in that range, but certainly is growing through month-by-month.
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