3% versus last year but the company did note improvement in brands like cover girl i spoke with sue nabi, the ceo, and asked about the company's profitability and sales miss >> the profitability was clearly a momentum for us. as you know, this was a can you milestone that we really wanted to make happen during the third quarter. that was taken clearly by gross margin strong improvement, more than 450 base points versus what we've done in the past and this was clearly the number one objective. in terms of sales, you could really see that our prestige business, our prestige brands are booming, in america or in china, and we are starting to stabilize our mass beauty business worldwide, including in america. you've probably heard during our earnings call that's for the first time cover girl is seeing market share gain since four years. so the picture i really wanted to share with you today. >> what's driving that in cover girl i always thought of some of these big beauty brands, especially like cover girl, like the problem with big food where they need to be cleaner and go more where the con