Andrew Masterman
Analyst · George Tong with Goldman Sachs
Yes, absolutely, George. We've been talking about the investment in our sales force for a couple of quarters now. And truly, what we saw in the seasonal markets is basically an expansion of our pipeline and then an expansion of the conversion of that pipeline into what is our – historically our best snow contract year we've ever had. Usually, what then follow snow contracts is clearly green contracts. But that is the primary reason, is basically an expanded sales force and just a deliberate and intent on using the marketing tools that we've implemented. We have the digital marketing efforts, combined with that expand sales – expanded sales force, that works together with our local branch teams on expanding that footprint. And by the way, that growth was across the country. It wasn't necessarily concentrated in any specific area. It was fairly balanced. So as you see that, that was our Q1. Q2, first month, January, was a very light month. No question about it. It was very similar to last year. Last year was also a very, very light month. So as we saw, frankly, in many of the northeastern communities in the first quarter, I mean, in January, was followed on by what was a significantly – significantly high event with Orlena, which we're still removing all the snow away from sites today from a storm that happened over the course of three days. So while January was light, we got off to a great start here in February. And what we expect as we look into the second quarter is we need several more decent events in February and in March. When I say decent, I mean, five- to six-inch snows in the Eastern corridor to kind of hit the averages that are out there, the 30 year averages. If those occur, as you'll see in the guidance, we believe, with those averages, we'll hit the high end of the guidance. And kind of with a light over the – light snow events over the next two months, we'll be at the lower end. And so we still need snow to come, but certainly Orlena gave us a great spot. And we're confident that we're going to be able to improve or beat the snow levels that we saw in fiscal 2020.