“And today, while we expect conditions to remain challenging in the near term, the operating margin rate improvement we're projecting in the back half of the year should serve as an early indicator of the continued rate improvement we should deliver in the years ahead.”

In context

“flation at 40-year highs, volatile supply chain conditions and rising fuel and transportation rates that are expected to add well over $1 billion of cost this year. Our business continues to generate historically strong traffic increases, low to mid-single-digit revenue growth and unit share gains across all of our core merchandising categories. And even in the face of unprecedented profit rate pressure driven by the host of factors I just listed, we remain profitable with an after-tax ROIC in the mid-teens. In fact, if our performance in the fall is consistent with the revenue growth and operating margin rates I outlined earlier, we remain positioned in 2022 to generate higher operating margin dollars than we did in 2019. That's what we mean when we say we have built a durable model. And today, while we expect conditions to remain challenging in the near term, the operating margin rate improvement we're projecting in the back half of the year should serve as an early indicator of the continued rate improvement we should deliver in the years ahead. With the potential for additional rate expansion and continued growth in traffic and revenue in the years ahead, we're facing a compelling financial picture as the economy and consumer eventually recover. That's why I've never been more confident in our long-term prospects than I am today. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Brian. Brian Cornell: Thanks, Michael. I often tell my team that leadership and performance are tightly linked over time, but that leadership often appears first. That's why I'm extremely proud of the leadership our team showed in the second quarter. After they took a hard look at our owned inventory position and the amount that was building up across our industry, they opted to make the hard choice: get in front of the problem and address it head-on. The”