David Maher
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open
Yes. Japan – and we called it out on what happened in the quarter. Again, I’ll take a look at a couple of vital signs in Japan, and it’s not a single narrative story. Rounds are up, by our estimate, 3% for the half, a bounce from last year where they had some tough weather. As we look at the ball category, we see the ball category has grown, really commensurate with rounds, our business growing similarly, gear and apparel, roughly running flat. As I did note in my earlier remarks, we saw club and footwear inventories in particular running heavy, not just our products, but also the entire market, and we think this was probably a result from some soft early-season sell-through. Clearly, we would expect this is tied to some of the broader economic pressures we’re facing in Japan. As we look at the back half, we think our field inventories are in pretty good shape. And we do expect – we’ve got wide range of product launches, but we expect them to go off very much as planned in Japan, and we’re excited about what that’ll mean for the market in the back half of the year. I think, Steve, commentary also warranted on just the broader Japan golf market. It is the most inventory-dependent market in the world, given it’s – what it would be best described as a big-box approach. Other markets tend to be more fitting-dependent, and this, in many cases, results in far less field inventory and in turn, less risk. So I think the commentary on Japan, we had a couple of areas where inventory got heavier than we’d like. We dealt with that in the quarter. But again, conversely, rounds are up a bit, golf balls sell-through in positive grounds. So again, there’s not one single narrative. But we’re certainly watching the market. We’re watching the consumer in that market, and we’re being cautious with our outlook for Japan. But again, that said, what we can see in front of us in the next quarter to two looks solid, really predicated on what we’ve talked about earlier and that is a robust launch calendar. Thanks Steve.