The company plans to open approximately 800 new stores, remodel approximately 1,500 stores, and relocate approximately 85 stores in fiscal year 2024. This indicates a continued investment in physical expansion, although at a slower pace than previous years.

The DG Fresh initiative, a self-distribution model for frozen and refrigerated products, has positively contributed to sales and gross margin performance since its initial rollout in 2021. The company plans to focus on additional optimization of the distribution footprint and product assortment within DG Fresh.

To address challenges presented by self-checkout, the company is revising its strategy, including limiting self-checkout to transactions of five items or fewer, converting some registers to assisted checkout, and removing self-checkout from some stores. This suggests an adjustment in strategy to address operational challenges.

The company experienced materially elevated inventory levels in 2023, which had a significant impact on financial performance. Efforts to reduce inventory levels were undertaken, and the company continues to focus on inventory management.

In 2023, the company invested approximately $150 million in retail labor, primarily through labor hours, to further enhance store standards, including on-shelf availability, and compliance efforts as well as the customer and associate experience in our stores.

The company is taking actions designed to reduce store manager turnover, including through labor investment and allocation of labor hours, simplifying in-store activities, and reducing excess inventory, indicating a focus on improving employee retention.

Many customers have fixed or low incomes, and any factor that could adversely affect their disposable income could decrease customer spending. These factors include high unemployment, inflation, and changes in government assistance programs.

The company experiences significant inventory shrinkage and damages, and higher rates of these or increased security measures could adversely affect results of operations. During 2023, inventory shrink and damages results remained significantly elevated and materially impacted results.

The company transmits confidential credit and debit card information and has access to private information regarding customers, employees, and vendors. A significant security breach could expose the company to risks of data loss, litigation, and reputational harm.

The retail business is highly competitive with respect to price, customers, store location, merchandise quality, and service offerings. The company competes with discount stores and many other retailers, and this competition is expected to continue.

The company believes it differentiates itself from other forms of retailing by offering competitive prices in a convenient, small-store format. It maintains competitive prices due to its low-cost operating structure and limited assortment of products offered.

The company currently does not offer online shopping to a significant degree and has seen a greater willingness of customers to adopt online shopping. In addition, if competitors were to enter the industry in a significant way, it could significantly alter the competitive dynamics of the retail marketplace.

As the gross profit rate decreased due primarily to increased shrink and inventory markdowns, the company remains focused on enhancing margins through inventory shrink and damage reduction initiatives, as well as pricing and markdown optimization.

To further optimize its cost structure and facilitate greater operational control within the supply chain, the company further expanded its private fleet in 2023 from 1,600 tractors to more than 2,000 tractors.

Certain of the company's operating expenses, such as wage rates and occupancy costs, have continued to increase in recent years, due primarily to market forces such as labor availability, increases in minimum wage rates and increases in property rents and interest rates.

The company is providing customers with a variety of shopping access points and even greater value and convenience by leveraging and developing digital tools and technology, such as the Dollar General app, which contains a variety of tools to enhance the in-store shopping experience.

The company relies heavily on its information technology staff to fulfill its technology initiatives while continuing to provide maintenance on existing systems, as well as on third parties to maintain and periodically upgrade many of these systems so that they can continue to support our business.

The inability or failure of vendors, developers or the company to continue to maintain and upgrade these systems and software programs or efficiently implement and integrate new systems could disrupt or reduce the efficiency of our operations or retain vulnerability exploitation risk if the company were unable to convert to alternate systems in an efficient and timely manner.

Capital expenditures during 2024 are projected to be in the range of $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion. The company anticipates funding 2024 capital requirements with a combination of existing cash balances, cash flows from operations, and availability under its Revolving Facility.

To preserve its investment grade credit rating and maintain financial flexibility, the company does not plan to repurchase shares during fiscal 2024. The repurchase authorization has no expiration date and may be modified or terminated from time to time at the discretion of the Board of Directors.

To further enhance shareholder returns, the company has continued to pay quarterly cash dividends. The declaration and amount of future dividends are subject to Board discretion and approval, although the company currently expects to continue paying quarterly cash dividends.

The company routinely incurs significant compliance-related costs, both direct and indirect, including investments in store standards and labor, such as its approximately $150 million labor investment in 2023.

The operations are subject to the applicable federal, state, local and foreign laws, rules, and regulations of the jurisdictions in which the company operates or conducts business. These laws, rules and regulations relate to, among other things, environmental, social and governance matters.

The long-term impacts of global climate change present the possibility of both physical risks (such as extreme weather conditions or rising sea levels) and transition risks (such as regulatory or technology changes), which may be widespread and unpredictable.

The company is mindful that the majority of its customers are value-conscious, and many have low and/or fixed incomes. As a result, the company is intensely focused on helping its customers make the most of their spending dollars.

The company's customers were impacted by the elimination of the emergency allotment of SNAP benefits and lower tax refunds resulting from the elimination of COVID-related stimulus programs, each of which occurred in the first quarter of 2023, and continue to be impacted by the overall macroeconomic environment.

The company sources its merchandise from a wide variety of domestic and international suppliers. Changes to the prices and flow of these goods often are for reasons beyond the company's control, such as political or civil unrest, acts of war, currency fluctuations, and economic conditions.