The next question comes from the line of John Heinbockel representing Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs
Dave, a couple of things -- how would you describe the balance you thought you had this quarter between price investment and comp? I know you guys are always struggling for the right balance. It’s hard to get that every quarter but how do you think the balance was this quarter.
David B. Dillon
Actually, I felt pretty good about it. Some of the numbers you think about, our gross margin that we showed was up five basis points but as you know, I actually look at the selling gross a lot more closely, because that’s more reflective of whether we invested in lower pricing or not, and that was down 48 basis points. Now, that was all offset, plus a little, actually, by the shrink in advertising and warehousing improvement and of course, diesel fuel. And if you combine then our OG&A and as Rodney pointed out, I look at the OG&A as actually improving by 14 basis points. If I wanted to look at a flow of our business and whether or not it improved or not, I would take those variable entities out and look instead at the 14 basis points and if you combine the decline of 14 basis points of OG&A and you combine that with our improvements in shrink advertising and warehouse improvement, even taking out the diesel fuel, we still had good progress on saving money to be reinvested on behalf of the customer. And we selectively did reinvest it as the selling gross decline illustrates. So actually I feel pretty good about it.
If there’s anything in this market that I am encouraging us to keep look at, it’s keep pushing for sales, because we believe sales are available. We’re proud and pleased with where we are but we are pushing ourselves to do even a little bit better because sales are really our future and our strategy, and as we invest in those sales, we expect to have even more savings than can be applied back in, that which then produces the earnings growth that we forecasted in our guidance.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs
Do you think the rate of reinvestment increases as we go through the year or stays about the same?
David B. Dillon
I think we read it as we go, John. I don’t think that we can necessarily answer that. What we are targeted at is the sales guidance we indicated between the 3% and 4%. We’re pushing ourselves to be squarely there and we are pushing ourselves to be squarely at the earnings, the $2 to $2.05 a share. And as we do that, we measure ourselves as we go and if, of course, if sales don’t pan out, then we push ourselves a little harder to get those sales because we think our earnings are the direct result of the sales. So that’s why we’re going to push that point.
So I don’t know that I can predict it except that I would say the whole year is going to look pretty much like we’ve described. Now, we had a lot of tailwind in the first quarter. Diesel fuel is maybe the best example but there were other illustrations. The commodity costs that we talked about and some other things, but if you take those into account, we of course think the rest of the year is going to be a little bit harder if you just look at a comparison to the previous year. But I think it’s going to be the same plan that we played out in the first quarter on the whole.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs
Just on dairy and produce deflation, how much do you think the combination hurt the comp by? Could it have been 100 basis points or not that big? And then when does that start to flatten out year over year?
David B. Dillon
Well, I don’t think we have a number to give you. I would be surprised if it was 100 basis points. That strikes me as too high. But both of those were important areas that you are describing and in terms of flattening that out, I don’t know. Rodney, do you have an opinion on that?
W. Rodney McMullen
Well, if you look at dairy, we expect it to go up from where it is today but throughout the year we still expect it to be lower this year than it was last year for the equivalent period of time.
The item that probably affected the identicals the most and really was some of the background on Dave’s comment about he feels more confident on the number than what the 3.1% would show, is if you look at the switch from national brand to corporate brands, this is a rough estimate and there’s several different ways you can calculate it but we think that hurt identicals by about seven-tenths of a percent just by itself, and that would actually be more than the dairy and produce deflation.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs
All right, and then finally, I think you said in the fourth quarter that non-food hurt the comp by 40 basis points or so. Was that similar in the first quarter or different?
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