Domino's Pizza Enterprises Limited

Good morning all. I'll just wait for all of the attendance to populate the Zoom call and then we'll start our presentation. Good morning. I can see our attendees have now been able to join our Zoom call. My name is Nathan Scholz. I'm the Chief Communications and Investor Relations Officer for Domino's Peace Enterprises. I will welcome you this morning to our half-year results presentation. Joining you today is our Group CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Don May, our Group Chief Financial Officer, Richard Coney, Andre Tenwald, our Europe CEO, Josh Kalimnik, our Asia CEO, and introducing you for the first time, Michael Gillespie, our Chief Commercial Officer. And with that, I will hand you over to our Group CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Don May. Now, also a reminder that today we will, of course, have our Q&A session. I can see people are already populating their questions in the Q&A chat. For those people for compliance reasons who cannot enter into the Q&A, please just feel free to send me an email. We'll attempt to get to as many of those questions as possible. With that, I'll hand over to Don. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Nathan, and welcome, everybody, to our half-year market update. Today I intend to, with the leadership team, tend to walk through three core areas. Firstly, in the first half, where did we make missteps and what were they? In parts of business, what did we get right? And then how are we going to apply what's working to the rest of the business? If I start with this first slide, which is slide number two, what hasn't changed is fundamentally we're still very mission focused in that we want to be the dominant sustainable delivery QSR in every market by 2030, and that guides us in more refer to the references of that throughout our presentation. We also want to continue to, once we do get a business unit economics up with strong sales and franchise profitability growth, we still want to make sure that we're fortressing markets with being a competitive advantage to get closer to the customer with hotter and fresher pizza. And fundamentally, since the early 90s, we've been a business driven with a high volume mentality, and that is through scale and leverage, One of some of the benefits of fast food businesses is that we're able to make sure that we can pass those savings through and be better value than most of our competitors. If you come with me now onto slide three, We talk a lot about the value equation at Domino's and the value equation at Domino's is product, service and image divided by price to equal value. In the last two presentations we've given to the market, we talked a lot about price because in many cases we weren't getting the price right. But at Domino's, we want to talk a lot today about the whole value equation. What do you get for that price because it's what's driving our business or where we're making missteps in some of the underperforming units. So we talked about it the full year that the way that our business rebuilds is it always starts with the customer. When customers are excited that they're paying the fair price for our product, that our franchise partners then benefit from the better margins and the sales growth, and then ultimately our shareholders also succeed. So it's the whole ecosystem starting with the customer that we're focused on everybody getting a better slice When we think about what happened in the first half, the missteps happened when we didn't get that value equation right. So what have we been focusing on in the first half? The first thing that we talked about at the full year and leading into the full year was that after two decades of international growth outside the Australian market, we'd built up a number of business units. at that start to have their own independent leadership teams with lots of disparate systems from businesses that we'd acquired before, and we weren't getting the proper leverage of our scale. So in the last half, and it's continuing into this half, we've been very focused on restructuring the business, removing inefficiencies, and focusing on building some new business units, which we now call our Centres of Expertise. are very much largely driven around things like technology, around marketing, media, strategy, data and insights, finance, where we're able to support by building centres of expertise, we're able to achieve best practice and then apply that best practice through the rest of the business, often benchmarking different things like conversion inside our apps, what's performing in new media, like the new entertainment platforms and so on. Once We've been building these. We've been proving them out in originally our home market, Australia and New Zealand, going back to how we operated the business for most of our life, where ANZ has been the petri dish of the business, and then we're exporting that knowledge like One Digital and our data and insights platforms and so forth. And so we've been proving those strategies, and you can see the results of that in Australia, New Zealand and Germany. And now we've been in the phase, as you're seeing in this half, we're applying those learnings through the rest of the business. And we're going to continue to focus on applying these centres of expertise as we build out the knowledge and learning throughout the business, noting that this started in Australia and then it's been migrating through Asia and into Europe. If you come with me onto slide four, what is leading the results that we're getting in Australia, New Zealand and Germany that we think is applicable to other businesses? First of all, we've been focused very heavily on day partying. So when you look at the Australian New Zealand business, we've had very strong lunch and early morning growth. And then when we think about occasions, we think about single eaters. We think about families and groups. And the creation of the My Domino's box and more recently our melts have been very successful in driving new occasions. And I'll talk about that in more detail specifically in Australia and New Zealand. We've also been focused on new media, testing out things like X and Reddit. And it means creating new creative as well. These new entertainment platforms like TikTok and the Meta products and the Google products and so forth align in Asia. They perform in a very different way. And so when we're creating creative, we have to create creative for this new media and test and learn. And that's part of what the centres of expertise do. And then finally, if we're going to be the dominant media sustainable delivery QSR in every market, we need to dominate some of the biggest delivery platforms. And so we've been early adapters. And with our new agreement, we'd like to thank our partners in DPZ in the US for assisting us in getting the new Uber agreement, which is benefiting many of our markets. We're really leaning in and making sure that we're getting new learning and dominating in these spaces as well. And that's where we're seeing growth and performance. If you come with me now onto slide five, You can see our key metrics for the first half. Our network sales were up 8.8%. We gave a trading update that we thought we'd be between 87 and 90. In January, we came in at 89.6, and our underlying EBIT was down 5.3. That was largely affected by Japan, Taiwan, and France. From a half-to-half, when we're rolling from the second half, we can see there that we are up 22.8%. in the underlying EBIT, and that's largely as we were forecasting around the AGM and at the full year, that a lot of that has been the savings from the $21 million, or at least the two-thirds of the $21 million that we've been able to bring through with the restructure in the first half. If you come with me now onto slide six, and just look at our trading update for the first seven weeks, we're going to talk in more detail, so I'll just go to the height later in the presentation. So I'll just go through to just the high-level numbers. The network sales are 3.78, rolling 4.2% last year. While we're happy with the same store sales for the first seven weeks, it should be noted that they are rolling softer comps. So, you know, still more to be delivered and get a track record in some of the markets that are starting to perform better. Still not a trend yet in those markets. And we've opened seven new stores. And as we highlight the full year, that this year we would be within the three to five year view of our store openings as we're rebuilding markets. As they rebuild, we can then go into store growth into the next year as we get a track record. If you come with me now onto slide seven, the first thing to note about these is obviously they're always averages. And so inside these results, we have had stronger performance in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, even the unit economics in parts of where we're more corporate based like in Singapore. Believe it or not, even France has had some good growth with the franchise partners' performances as we've supported that and worked hard as one of the early phases of rebuilding our business. But those results have been diluted by the Japan and Taiwan franchise partner results. What I can say is that when we reported in August, we were reporting 93.5K Aussie dollars. and we were slightly up on that at the 94.5%, but what is showing better results is in the last quarter that we were up 11% in these numbers that are being added. So we're constantly focused. It's all about rebuilding our franchise unit economics through strong customer growth and good margins from our customer with the products that we're creating that will deliver our future growth. So if we come on now onto slide eight, You can see there that we believe we're on track to deliver circa $50 million in savings for the full financial year. We've already delivered around approximately $21 million back into the system, a third of those being shared back to our franchise partners. There are some important footnotes to just notice there that some of the ways that things are flowing through is, for example, the supply chain changes in Asia. When we moved to a back-of-house model, it brought some efficiencies through directly to the stores, whether they be corporate or franchised. But also, some of these savings are also coming through to the advertising funds, so where we're being more efficient with the people, the centres of expertise and so on, and that's partly how we're bringing those benefits through to the system. But it should also be noted that despite these cost savings, what excluded from this is to note that there are still some cost increases with natural wage inflations for our team members and some CPI costs that are natural in the business. At this point I'm now going to hand over to Richard Kane.

Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Don. If we just move to the next slide, you can see here the key points to note on this slide is that although our NPAT is down $9.3 million or 13% on prior year, a large part of this is related to increasing in financing costs which are up $9.6 million. predominantly due to increases in Euro and AUD base rates, with average interest rates moving from 1.9% to 3.15%. In addition, we had lower profit on sales stores, which were down 4.1 million, which we expect to recover as unit economics improve. We have announced a half-year dividend of 55.5 cents per share, which although is down 17.7% on prior year, it is up 30% on the last half. If you now just move to slide 11, the geographic summary, revenue is up 10.2% in line with network sales growth and with the largest increase coming out of Asia from the recent acquisition of Malaysia and Singapore and Cambodia. Margins are down 1.4% this prior year, predominantly due to very tough trading conditions in Asia. partially offset by Europe, which has benefited from the Denmark closure and the improvement performance in the Benelux and German region. When comparing to the half just gone, you will see that the results have improved considerably, with margins up 1.3%, with a large improvement in ANZ moving from 12.3% to 14.2%. Coming to the next slide, non-recurring costs. The group restructuring cost to date of $10.8 million are largely in line with expectations, noting that we still have not finalised any of the store closures and redundancies in France due to longer than expected negotiations with the workers' council in the region. We have also adjusted down the contingent consideration by $7.3 million relating to the earn-out for the Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia acquisitions. Now moving to our group free cash flow, you can see that our free cash flow has improved by $47.7 million predominantly due to a large tax refund as a result, predominantly a result of the restructure and more importantly a reduction in capex of $24 million while maintaining the sell down of our corporate stores and our loan book continuing to recycle. If we now move to slide 14, some more detail on our capex. You can see our net capex has reduced by $22.9 million, or 35%, with store-related capex down $18.1 million, and our digital capex largely maintained, noting that this included the incremental investment to convert the online ordering platform for Singapore, which is now operational, and Malaysia, which is expected to go live in the fourth quarter. We saw the benefits of implementing this system in Singapore with higher conversions and we expect a similar benefit when One Digital is implemented in Taiwan and Malaysia. Noting when Taiwan is completed, this will be the first time that we'll have all of our 12 markets on the same global platform, which will deliver additional scale and synergies for our group. Turning to slide 15, capital management. As we foreshadowed at the full year results, we have been successful in executing our capital management initiatives, which included reducing our net capex, improving operating profits and reinstating the DRP. As a result, our net leverage ratio has improved materially, dropping from 2.92 times to 2.76 times for the half. Our banks have also been very supportive, providing additional headroom and formally agreeing to increase our leverage covenants to 3.5 times, which although unlikely to be required, it highlights the strength of their commitment and our strong partnership. Our liquidity and funding capacity remains robust and has increased by a further $65 million with undrawn facilities and cash of $482 million. With that, I will now pass you over to Josh to talk about current trading conditions in Asia. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks everyone. You know, overall 0.34 same-store sales is a good start of the year considering some of the strong external headwinds in the region. Regardless, there's also some initial encouraging results in our key markets thanks to Inspire products, better aggregator partnerships along with some strong operational execution. I guess an example of this is January's Volcano Pizza launch, which was a test at the full year announcement and now is in all markets in Asia. And results are showing that this is helping really grow, you know, customer counts and stores are benefiting from lower food costs enhancing, you know, some of the unit economics that we have. If I turn to Taiwan, somewhat delayed from the reopening after COVID, so we're a little bit in lag, but we'll soon be launching a major new branding campaign and we aim to reach new customers, reconnect with some lapsed customers and build out our barbell strategy. One thing I'll mention is that the market's recently been affected by a third-party supply chain issue, which has dampened some of the results over the important Chinese New Year period and may cause some further headwinds down the track. If I turn to Singapore, it's one of the smaller markets but reporting really strong product lead sales growth and also aided by having our digital stack. So DPE is one digital technology platform but we've also coupled that with a repositioning around our core value offer in the pickup channel which has been growing customer count and volume and taking market share. The good news is that 1D platform, 1Digital platform will roll out into Malaysia, in fact, in test this week. However, what is clear that Malaysian sales are weighing on the region with average weekly customer counts and sales have been affected by some of the tensions in the region. Japan's same-store sales have been positive, 6.7 with a return to product-led promotions. That's produced customer count growth through our own channels as well as aggregators and that's despite a macro shift to diamond, a consumer trend that we're dealing with. Work, however, is still underway and is ongoing and we'll continue to grow our own delivery channels but we need to engage the more price sensitive, carry out customer and this is going to be launching the first stage this week. One thing I would caution is that it's a positive number, but we're rolling over negative sales from last year. And for us and for our investors, we know that we need to string more than seven weeks together to rebuild Japan and confidence. This is our focus. I'd like to hand over to Michael Gillespie.

Or to me.

Or to Andre. I think we'll hand over to Andre first.

Thanks, George. Thanks for that, George. So where we deliver value in Europe, we are clearly growing customers, but we do require more traction in some of the markets, and one of those markets is France. France is receiving considerable focus and supported by the global census of expertise is regaining momentum and growing in delivery orders. However, currently declining mostly offline pickup as other QSR target price-sensitive customers has led to reduced weekly customer counts within Domino's France. Onto the Netherlands, currently overcoming a recent mandated increase in labor costs, a big increase, and management is redoubling efforts to launch new products with sufficient margins to offset this increase. Germany, as you can see, sales up 6.08%, continues to lead the region, growing delivery sales with great new products and winning new customers through aggregated partnerships. Now over to Don to talk more about ANZ.

Thank you, Josh and Andre. Yes, in the Australian New Zealand business, as we've commented in the past, it was our strongest same-sale sales in the first half in six years, and we're continuing that into this half. I'm really proud to say and give credit to the Australian New Zealand team that we're 5.28 times in traffic, bigger than our next nearest competitor in pizza, and in the last two quarters, we led in both customer accounts, same-sale sales, and obviously total growth. We had the fastest growth delivery business out of all major QSR in the Australian market. We also had the fastest growth lunch business out of all QSR in the Australian market, largely led by the MyDominos box, and in the last month, the melts, and that's continuing into this half. Contrary to some of the commentary here, on our business is that we're actually fast. When you look at the average QSR custom accounts, we're well and truly exceeding that in the Australian New Zealand business for the average for the industry. And we're doing this through less discounting. Another thing that I want to correct on some of the commentary that our average discounting is down materially and we're actually our number one selling pizza, our fastest growth part of our business is our premium and traditional pizzas. It may look like we're discounting because we're launching products that have got great value, as we talked about earlier, and that is their price, like the MyBox, which is very, very rarely discounted in any way. It's sold at the price. It's just great value, as is the melts. Now, despite all of this growth and the focus on everything we do is designed to be delivered, there's still opportunity in the Australian and New Zealand business. One of the areas that we've had weakness has been in our operations. They're the consumers who just walk into any fast food company. They're not looking at digital offerings from digital providers. They just want to walk in and get affordable meals. And that area we've underperformed against the category. And so today we launched our $5 or less menu in the Australian Zealand business. These are inspiring products, good margins for our franchise partners. And we're going to continue to build out that menu as we think there's, you know, we still have a lot of opportunity to correct some decline in that area. We're also focused on family bundles and we could get more growth out of particularly Thursday and Friday nights where we've been quite dominant in our history but despite all of this growth, we can still perform far better in those areas and so there's lots of room to improve in the ANZ business. Now at this point in time, I'm going to hand over and introduce you to Michael Gillespie. Thank you, Michael.

Thank you, Don. So let me introduce myself. My name is Michael Gillespie. I've been in DP for over 16 years now. starting in a local role and progressing through a range of global roles into my current Chief Commercial Officer role. Back in June 2023, we shared that we were taking deliberate action to bring more of a focus to our business, removing distractions and maximising the benefits of our global reach and scale. Where that comes into play in this part is we've restructured our business to a more centralised model or global model for key expertise and guidance and strategy. but also moving to a local model of empowerment around how do we allow our local leaders to drive and execute on strategy and be more connected, whether it be if they're a spied product involved with their local markets, but be driven by what we call centre of expertise and global support centres. Through a global support center and this greater global support of our local markets, it allows us to grow our partnerships with even some of our bigger players, whether it be Uber, which you've heard about previously, and some of the greater media players and digital players in our landscape, and also any partner that stretches at a commercial scale or group level. What our CEOs then can do at a local level is stay focused on their business. How do they get hot pizzas into the hands of our customers faster and how do they allow our franchisees to operate at a more efficient level? with this group support. If we go to the next slide, I'll touch a little bit more on that. It comes down to applying best practice. What does that mean? Our centre of expertise and our global support centre can be there. They can be a backbone for our local markets, our CEO and local teams to operate at a more efficient and scalable level. We can reduce costs where previously we might have been doing things in Jupiter, even 12 times over markets that we can now do across the group, either automatically or via one central location, and then share that across the broader teams and allow them to operate in a more efficient and effective way. While we're doing this, across the whole group, that means that with those savings, we can reintroduce or bring them back to our franchisees, bring back one third of the total savings, which you've already heard of, of that $21 million today, back to allowing them to run more efficiently and effectively And hopefully that leads to greater profit and more store openings. But also when we're applying best practices to the group, we can now test and help markets that may be doing something great in Germany bring that back to our other markets. Or as Don even touched on, with Australian New Zealand, where we started the Centre of Expertise and Shared Service for Global Support Centre services earlier, we've been able to take learnings from that and apply these into other markets more seamlessly than we could have had before. As we move to the next slide. Domino's traditionally has been seen as a leader in the digital landscape and I'm proud to share we continue that momentum. 11.8% growth in the first half of digital outpacing our total sales. I'm excited to share also that soon we'll be aggressively adding all 12 markets onto our one digital platform. What does this mean? It's $3 billion of our sales now, 78%. That is of sales via our digital platform. When we have this large mass of customers and sales, we're able to look and achieve changes to the system that enhance business for our franchisee partners, but also make the system easier for our consumers to use and allow a platform and backend tools that the likes of Malaysia and Singapore and Taiwan on their own wouldn't be able to afford. So they get this great digital platform that not only from an investment perspective, We're from our learnings from over a decade of digital learnings and back into our learnings. We can import into all our markets and also continue to refine the greater inputs across our markets. So it's very exciting to continue that growth and really look at how we can take learnings in one market and execute it across all or bring a greater economy of scales and efficiencies. So now I'll pass back to Don.

Thank you, Michael. All right, so just going into specific focus before I hand over to Andre to talk about Germany is that the three really big areas that have been driving the Australian New Zealand business. First, we're very mission focused to be that dominant sustainable delivery QSR. And so obviously we needed to make sure that we're really strong with inside the biggest delivery platforms. So that's been a really important focus. And that is transferable knowledge that can be global. Most of these platforms are You know, you've got two or three quite significant platforms across the world, and their algorithms work very similarly across those businesses. We've also been pushing into new media. So looking at the new entertainment platforms, not as social media, but actually as the entertainment platforms they are, to be able to launch these new inspiring products. But we're also testing and learning and having good success in places that were surprising to us, like Reddit and Xbox. And so, you know, constantly pushing and with the sense of expertise, we're able to get real learning and then apply that to the rest of the network. And then finally, it's been inspired products. At the beginning of the last half, when we were launching the Mall campaign, the lot became overnight the biggest selling premium pizza in our menu, all the way through to cheese. volcanoes that we're learning from, and you'll see parts of learning from that for the Australian New Zealand business. But more recently, the My Box has been a really important layer to the business, as is the melts, and the fact that in the $5 or less range today, we've introduced a slightly smaller melt for $5, and we expect that to be quite successful. So I'm going to hand over to Andre to talk about Germany.

Yeah, thanks, Don. Germany is a great example of a global approach. We've taken the learnings from Australia, and with those learnings, we've seen strong growth inside aggregators from already really high base. Germany already had a big presence on aggregators, but with the learnings, we have even grown that. And that's despite some of those channels, the aggregators are facing some headwinds. So we're actually growing our share within these platforms. We're also currently looking at using the same media mix modeling tools as in Australia and Germany, but even without that toolkit, we're seeing great success in using non-traditional social media and other advertising platforms to grow custom accounts and sales. And like in Australia, inspired product matters. The Doner Pizza range launched in the first half year was very successful, and it was completely inspired by the Burger Pizza range in Australia. It grew sales and it had a strong contribution margin to our franchisees. So let me now take you to slide 22 to talk about France. We're obviously not happy with the results in France, as I know you are not. Clearly, we have more to do. As we announced last month, the ongoing underperformance in France offset some of the benefits of the saving programs we are delivering in Europe and the improvements in, notably, Germany. but there are some core principles that apply in France too. We've seen through the burger range and the My Dominos box here that product matters. In fact, the My Dominos box has helped us compete in the face of very strong pickup competition from burger chains, but we obviously still need to do more. Our investors would be familiar with our barbell menu approach, offering a range of products from the lowest entry point to our premium range. It's clear that you need to have an accessible entry point to entice customers. And we need to have products that are designed for that pricing point. For example, the My Domino's box allows us to have an entry point around the 5 euro mark. Head-to-head with other QSRs, we're also having menu bundles at 5 euros. And still maintaining a healthy margin for our franchise partners. There are some particular challenges in France. We talked about it previously, but including that it's taken longer to implant a new structure due to our local labor laws and different regulations around franchise partner independence. That said, we know we need to get franchisees aligned on implementing proven promotions, even though they have more power over their local pricing. We have a plan to improve that alignment, including through set pricing tiers that give franchisees choice and control their pricing, but also gives our market fewer pricing points, which helps target our advertising and our customers. And we also see there's still great potential in finding consumers within the aggregators platforms. Indeed, we have had some additional trials with aggregators to target non-traditional opening hours for our stores, which have shown a lot of promise. And we will be working with franchise partners to implement these more widely. And now I'll hand over to Josh to talk about the similarities in his markets.

Yeah, thanks, Andre. Look, many of the points Andre and Don have spoken about are working in Japan as well. In fact, you know, My Domino's Box was actually first launched in Japan and exported around the world. And now we've launched Volcano as a platform in each of the markets in Asia. And I'm encouraged now by the fact that we can see at 12 months in our tested promotional calendar. In fact, getting back to this inspired product was a real missing piece for us. And it's fair to think that we should have simply returned sooner, but because of our testing program, it's a lot longer than other markets due to longer buying cycles to more infrequent customer base. You know, we typically like to get it around two buying cycles and this really gives us the confidence to launch but it also helps us narrow down on how much ingredients we need to buy, which normally launch six months from whenever we decide on that promotion. If we get this wrong, we not only end up with a failed promotion but then we have to deal with the aftermath of a potential stock write-off. Further than this, and similar to other markets, you know, we've spoken about our barbell pricing strategy over the last six to nine months. We've been refocusing on balancing the barbell. Inflation and supply chain constraints did upset this balance. The good news is that, one, we're building confidence with inspired products, but we now have to answer the other end, which is critically the access point to the brand in Japan, the more value-conscious consumer. Now, due to inflation, we've got this wrong. pushing the price exceeding really what the customer is willing to pay. And we know that this cannot exceed 1,000 yen in Japan. So we made an error, albeit with good intentions to protect profitability, but in our game, it's all about building volume. So what are we doing about it? Well, we've been actively lowering the entry point for our brand without a compromise to quality. This has been done through various channels up to now, but structurally we're launching this nationally with our From 790 range, which actually launches today. You know, this is coupon-free. It's unrestricted access to purchase for that really important 40% of consumers that are single-eaters in Japan. Furthermore, we also know delivery customers, although not as price-sensitive, are still seeking value. And we've had to adapt delivery deals like buy one, get one to include more options. Counting intuitively, this actually helps us lower deal food costs with the perception of greater value. I'd now like to hand back to Don, mate.

Thank you, Josh. So if you come with me onto slide 23 and look at the group outlook, I just want to share our commitment and reiterate our commitment to the long-term potential of our store network. But it is worth noting that after the two years that we've just had, that we are reassessing the timelines of growth based on improving the economics. When we've got markets like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Germany, that have now been pulling together some consistent track record and improved franchise unit economics, we expect that stores should be accelerating into the next financial year in these markets. And growth depends on other markets getting to the same sort of strength in their unit economics and same sort of sales growth. With that in mind, you'll also note that we removed one of the bug charts, one of the blocks there of around the target for 5,000 stores due to the way that we've missed our targets in the last two years. If you come now with me into conclusion, I know we look forward to answering your questions. In conclusion, our most recent performance has been a period of change and we have not met expectations, yours or ours. The new organisational structure is delivering increased efficiencies and savings into the network. both improving the competitiveness of our company but also our franchise partners and our corporate stores. Recent trading has demonstrated some initiatives that we're doing in the aggregators through technology and marketing, new media, product and operations apply across all regions and that there's many of these things that are more similar than we are different. Some markets have taken more time. to appropriately balance that value equation and require some time to turn around. Clearly, with some of these businesses, we cannot promise yet a result. The recent same-source sales growth has reinforced that our focus and the way we went after aggregators as a vibrant marketplace was right for incremental customers, and that's serving us well. Established markets continue to identify new approaches to get incremental customers, and so we're working on those new day paths and new occasions as a driving force. And finally, the Domino's value equation relies on in-store execution as well, so inspiring our franchise partners and our store managers and our 100,000-plus team members all over the world, and that we match that quality to the appropriate pricing to deliver value. As markets return to those stronger unit economics, we expect new store openings to take place. Typically, the first surge is to acquire some of our corporate store network, where we may be an overweight in some of our corporate stores, and then followed by new stores. So we do think that we should see strong new store growth in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Singapore next year. Markets executing against the value equation are recording good sales growth. And so the Domino's mission and strategy remains unchanged, to be a high-volume mentality business, to focus on profitable orders to enhance our unit economics and build stronger, more sustainable franchise partners. So we've been in a rebuild mode. We still have a lot of rebuilding to do to make sure we're building the next layers so that we can get on and deliver upon our 7,100 store outlook. So at this point, I'll now hand over and we can answer questions. Over to you, Nathan. Thank you.

Thank you, Don, and thank you to all of our speakers. Again, a reminder, you can enter your questions in the Q&A box down at the bottom. Perhaps, Don, if I just start firstly in terms of franchisee profitability. Obviously, you mentioned that the franchisee profitability has slightly recovered so far, but we're still working on that. What is the level of franchisee profitability that we're needing to get to to start the store openings?

Yeah, so when we get to that three times, we've talked about it a number of times, three times the EBITDA, then we can see it accelerate. So many of our businesses are out of four times at the moment and even higher or worse in Asia in the last half. So as we pull it down into three, the first thing that happens is for each of those partners, balance sheets improve. They may have accumulated more debt in their underperformance periods as they improve their balance sheets. They may also be paying back some bad debt to us if we carried in, if we took any to book over that period of time. And then we often see many of them want to accelerate their growth again. And the more inspiring the results, the more likely they are, the more stores you're going to see grow. But we've got to get it towards that three times.

So Craig Wolford asks, it's noteworthy that EBIT margins actually fell in Australia despite strong sales. So why did operating costs rise in Australia? What are some of the other major component parts?

Yeah, one of the first things we've done is we've had front loaded in Australia and New Zealand so that we make sure that our franchise partners are strong. And we're obviously playing the long game here and you're going to see that over the full year results where you're going to see the benefits from these sales play out to us. Remember, we talked about customers first, franchise partners, then ourselves. And so, yeah, it's my expectation that we'll see that flow more through to shareholders next. But the first part of this has been getting a lot of those savings and so on into our franchise partners and creating the value equation.

And then so staying on franchise partners, Philip Kimber asked, average franchisee profit per store increased modestly, and maybe if you could provide some more colour about that by region.

Yeah, look, the bigger picture is, as you can expect, we're seeing sales rose and unit economics improved. And so whether you're from Singapore to Germany to Australia and New Zealand, One of the outliers was we did see some improvement in franchise partner health in France, which I know has been such an underperformer. But part of inspiring the change is in that business. We have seen some recovering franchise partners. But by and large, the most pain that was in our business was in Japan and Taiwan in the recent periods. And, of course, we own most stores in Singapore and Malaysia, all the stores in Singapore and Malaysia. So it's not in these references.

Okay, I'm just going through. There's a lot of questions here. I had a question in terms of, sorry, I'm going back to this one. In regards to leverage, is it not a more prudent approach to lowering the net leverage ratio back to 2.0 by divesting some of the more recently acquired or underperforming markets rather than having an ongoing handbrake on capital expenditure and the ability to grow new stores?

Yeah, look, with our current capital management program that we have, we expect that we'll be leveraged at quite a reasonable pace. So these are good markets with a good future outlook as we roll and get some of these challenges we've had in the near term sorted out. They're good pieces to have in our portfolio. So we think we're going to achieve quite a good balance sheet without having to do that.

And keeping in the same vein, will Domino's be shutting stores in Japan and France in 2024?

It's always the ones or twos. Remember, we're a business now of 3,800 plus units. So for the purest answer there, there will be the odd store here and there, as it has been in our history. But by and large, with the exception of France, because France still is going through that final phases of what we said for the restructure. So France still has to close a handful of stores. But yeah, for the rest of business, it's businesses as usual from the store closures at this point.

Okay. Again, remaining on the franchisee payback, if you can provide some more colour in terms of what that payback period is now for franchisee partners opening new stores and how is it trending?

I think I've really kind of answered that one with the fall markets that are trending really well. Fifth to be out in France. But yeah, I think I've answered those by and large. With that, we clearly got out beyond four and that just see has really slowed the growth. We have had still store growth because there are franchise partners who, regardless, have performed well and have wanted to take the opportunity in these moments to expand. But our focus has been really squarely not on the new store focus. It's been really squarely on those unit economics, knowing that as that's getting healthier, as we're moving to three now in the markets that I mentioned, we should see store growth. We're focused now on store growth into those other markets, so into those markets.

And before moving on from this topic, then characterising franchisee appetite to open new stores is really then related by region back to that store payback then?

It is. You know, these are small business owners and it's literally based on the performance. And you'd expect that. I mean, they're a more sophisticated investor. And when performance is good, they're going to, you know, the better operators who have a longer outlook are going to buy and open stores. So, yes, it is. And vice versa with slowing down. When we were underperforming, you saw the growth slide really quickly as well.

Sean from CLSA asks, on the page 23 group outlook, you maintain the store opening target number and timeline unchanged, but you also said you're assessing the timeline of this growth based on improving unit economics. My reads, the timeline could be delayed. Is that a fair observation?

It is, and that's why we removed also that bar of the 5,000 stores in between, because we've lost these couple of years. And as we look forward into the next year, there's still some of these businesses that are showing they still need more time to recover. So that means that we have to assess market by market. But once again, reiterating, as soon as the market shows consistent performance, we're watching appetite improve, and then we'll get back to focusing on those stores. But it's not just one size of DPE right now. You've seen there's two speeds going on in the portfolio.

A question regarding France. Perhaps if I can maybe turn to Andre on this one, the delay in closing some of those stores we referred to in the restructuring update.

Yeah, so the cause is that you have to go through a procedure with unions, with workers' councils, and you have to follow all the steps there, which we are diligently doing. It's a So it's a process that I understand that is very difficult to understand, but we have to go through the steps to be compliant. And so it's taken a little bit longer than expected. We expected it by the end of the last half year, and we expect it to be finished by the end of this half year.

Okay. Okay. Now, in relation to the trading update, Tom Kirith asked, in the trading update, same-store sales growth in Asia is plus 0.3%, but Japan is plus 6.7%. So then how much are other countries in Asia down, and are these countries expected to be profitable this year?

Yeah, thanks, Tom. Yeah, look, we are, you know, we do have some strong growth in Japan, as you noticed. We have got some external headwinds coming from Malaysia. They are down 10%. on our plan, same with Taiwan as we rebuild and get our branding in there and our new brand approach. So we do expect that they'll keep delivering once all the tensions ease and we'll keep continuing with our business plan and doing what we know. And we're really focusing on what we can do at this point in time in the markets. There's a whole bunch of people still coming to us and we're actually challenging our cost base in these markets. So we'll actually come out the other side

And adding to that, both those markets are still profitable by now. Yes. It's not as profitable as our expectations. Correct, yes.

While we've got you Josh, a couple more questions on Asia. A question in terms of the growth in Japan. If you can maybe give some colour regarding ticket versus customer counts.

Yeah, so most of the growth now, I mean, tickets have moved. We had to move ticket. It's reasonable for a business to take ticket from time to time. We exceeded that. We're now rebalancing that. And now we're going through customer accounts in Japan, which is What we were trying to do, this has taken some time to figure out, but we are in a place where we're launching. The critical part, which is what I mentioned, is the access point to the brand, which is our pickup customer who wants to come and meet us every day.

Okay. Also, while we've still got you, Josh, if you could maybe give some more colour around what the third-party supply chain issue in Asia.

Yeah, look, we really are working through some of these issues still, so it is live, and I can't share the full details on that, but I can tell you what we're focusing on. We're focusing on what we're in control of, and that is our stores and just doing what we need to do, and that is relaunching the barbell strategy. The plan hasn't changed. We just need some time to work through those details in our supply chain.

While I've still got you, sorry, Josh, now I'm going to monopolize your time. A question from Sean Cousins on Japan. The order frequency, has it reduced in Japan? And does that mean the business is not profitable each month? And how does that order frequency compare with, say, Australia being profitable every month?

Yeah, I mean, definitely different markets. It's apples and oranges in terms of order frequency. You know, through putting up prices, yeah, it did affect order frequency. And we saw that in different cohorts of customers. We understand this and this is why we need to rebuild out of that. So that is the biggest focus. And as I said, we're growing through order counts now and ticket is largely flat.

Okay, while we have got some questions from Sean on the screen, ANZ, Don, menu innovation has been important. Is this multiple years of innovation at once, or can this pace be maintained?

Yeah, it's a really good, important question. So we have built in a couple of new layers. So the My Box is something that we're going to continue. It's one concept, but there's ideas inside that. And you've watched since we've launched that, that as we launch a new product, like a lamb tzatziki, or a lot pizza, it's also appeared in the My Box, but there's even other innovations. So we see My Box as a platform, just as you would see other boxes from the chicken brevets and burgers as they bundle up their meals for a single eater. We also think Melt is a layer. So you see Melt appear both in My Boxes and independently. Today we launched a slightly smaller version of the melts for the $5 or less range. We'll be monitoring that. We don't think long-term we'll carry two sizes of melts. In the coming three months, there are some products also coming out the back end. Everything on our menu has to perform. So there's some products that are being retired as we've added these new products. So by and large, there's a couple more layers. We see the $5 menu as a layer. So when we think about that, $5 or less that is, There's a couple of products that are launching between now and August that will be at $5 or less that will be making its way into that menu as well. So trying to look at these segments and become known for them, become iconic for them in our industry and our category. And so, yeah, a lot less of that much layering, but looking at a day pass. I can say that the business has also expanded trading hours in Australia, which we're benefiting from. So there's been 450 stores out of the 900 approximately Australian New Zealand stores that that have extended trading hours, largely earlier trading hours, and that's because we've had the melts in the my box with some stores due to the aggregator performance in the city stores trading a little later. We do expect that to continue. So as we build on these occasions, we build on these day parts, we're looking to encourage ways that our franchise partners and our own stores will expand trading hours. So that's still part of the menu development and the outcome of that menu development. Because, you know, Domino's and the pizza category has been behind, particularly burgers. Many of those trading now 24 hours. And we think there's opportunity, large parts of the market we haven't performed well in, previously lunch, that we can do a lot better in.

While we're talking about aggregators then, Don, the aggregators have been a fast-growing channel. And so when did all the stores in Australia get put on that aggregator? So effectively the question is, so when does that uplift get cycled?

Yeah, the core uplift is around July, August, and it continued to build from there. And originally, the first phase was just largely in Uber, if you're talking about Australia and New Zealand. And now there's some efforts now to expand that energy into DoorDash and Minilog in this part of the world. But there's still lots of areas, despite the fact that we've had really strong growth, that we underperform, both in the menu that we've got in there, the way we're executing the menu, so there's constant learning. It's worth knowing these technology platforms also change their algorithms and change their own advertising. So we're often pursuing different ways to advertise and grow in this space. But, yes, the fundamental first change is around that July-August period where we took the first step up in the aggregated growth.

Thank you, Don. Maybe if I go through to Andre for a question on France from Sean. When was France last a strong performing market and what are the key challenges with this large pizza market?

Oh, Sean, I'm a bit... I think I'm the most disappointed that it has been this long before France has been a strong performing market, especially given the potential that is in the market. What was the second part of the question?

What are the key challenges really for that pizza market?

Within the pizza market, we're actually doing quite well in France. I might add very well. The biggest challenge that we face, it's a big market. It's a big QSR market. There's a lot of people fighting for attention. And what we've seen lately on the pickup end, for instance, We've seen that all QSRs are back to fighting over price, which hasn't been there for a long time. And pickup is our largest part of our business in France. It's good that we strengthened delivery because we're absolutely a standout in delivery, where pickup is a more generic market. And it's now fought on price by our competition, who has way bigger media budgets than we have. So we have to be smart around it. I'm very glad we did introduce the MyBox because that's together with the Kohl's, which is more a snacking product that we've introduced earlier. We can fight on the pickup front, but that's where we need to focus on now. But it's clear France is a very competitive market.

Thanks, André. A question on the covenant and the relaxation announced today. Does the decision to have lenders agreed to the net leverage covenant increase from three times to 3.5 times indicate concerns over the second half outlook? Maybe, Don, if I pass you to that one first.

Yeah, no, absolutely not. I just want to congratulate Richard. He saw an opportunity talking with the banks and was able to do a commercial analysis we said, yeah, why wouldn't you take it? We still live in a volatile world. But no, we expect to continue to be able to deleverage. That's our focus at the moment. And in this new phase of just this near-term phase of rebuilding, part of that's deleveraging, and we're doing that.

Richard, do you want to add anything to that? I'll add to that. In effect, there was virtually zero cost, very small work fee for us to have the temporary increase in this covenant relaxation. It's out to June 24 results and that's sort of the time period that we expect. We don't expect to have any issues at this point, so it's just really why not take it, and really just highlights the strength of our relationship with our banks. There's no increase in interest margins unless we exceed the three times, so as I say, it's a bit of a no-brainer.

And Richard, I think that really goes into the next question I actually had on this, on the interest expense. So you just said, obviously, there's no increase in the margins unless we go past the three times ratio. But there was a jump in interest expense in the first half. And is that how much is driven by the cost, which you've already answered, but also overall interest rates or increased borrowing? So what's the makeup of that? And should analysts expect to annualise that figure?

Well, as you probably know, we've Let's say all of our yen debt is locked in and fixed, so that's not moving. In terms of our other debt, there's no change, as I said, to the risk margins as a result of this relaxation. And so, therefore, we're just dependent on what's happening in the global markets in terms of, as you know, hopefully we'll get some reductions in interest rates as the the countries around the world start to beat the inflation curve down. So I would be expecting no real change in the coming six months, to answer the question. But then going out, we'd expect those to reduce in the macro world at the moment.

Now, perhaps if I can hand over to Josh for a moment a question regarding Japan. Do you think some of the issues that we've been having in Japan stem from executive leadership having, quote, limited operational experience within the market or maybe not be familiar with the local demographic or consumer preferences?

Yeah, look, I think that's a great question, but one thing that I would answer with that is we're research-led. We test, we research, we then find the right approach to answer consumer demand, and we balance that through our teams and various focus groups. I don't feel that that's a factor. And apart from some of the key leaders, the rest of the team is Japanese. So we're well informed of if anything doesn't or won't work in the market.

Maybe, Michael, if you can talk about that application of the centre of expertise and that sort of local versus global approach.

Yeah, thanks, Nathan. So when you talk about local versus global and you talk about local markets and culture experience, the center of expertise and the global support center actually reduce some of the risk of have we got the right people on the ground who actually understand our systems or understand what local market we do. As Josh touched on, a lot of these markets have people that are connected with the franchisees and the research on what should be local, what products should be local, but backed by global support systems. So when we have new people on the ground or less experience, we can support and over-index in the areas that we are lacking on buy the COEs which is a tremendous benefit to what we didn't have last year and we've already seen that leaning into Australia as Don touched on earlier ANZ is where we first applied a lot of the centre of expertise and global support services and now we're leaning into Japan and Europe and only taking how we did that and you know expand on that so I think it's definitely a benefit that we have that we didn't have previously is this global support to complement augment and help our local markets where there might be in certain areas and grow them to be stronger teams and also lean on them to understand their markets better because we need research. We're not going to launch the same pizza in every market if the research doesn't show there's interest. Volcano is a great example. It has gone beyond Japan to other markets, but there might be the lamb pizza, which just stays in Australia, and we need local expertise and local research to know that and bring the franchisees on board.

Thanks, Michael. A question for Richard regarding the working capital position. A question from Michael Simotas. Is the current working capital position sustainable or were there some timing impacts and was there a conscious effort to increase the collection of franchisee loans?

So yes, our working capital is sustainable and as you saw, we actually went back slightly from a timing perspective around in December. There are lots of ups and downs, but especially into the Asian market. But yes, it's purely timing and we don't expect any further structural changes to our working capital over time.

Just to add to that, Nathan, sorry, just that we will have our first franchising in Malaysia. in this half and so as we look into next year, one of the strategies that we've applied throughout our business is when we acquire a corporate market is we need to do franchising and then we start deleveraging that market from the money we put in. So we can expect that to start this half but we'll see any sort of movement in that into the next half. So that's something also worth noting in that area.

Richard, a question from Ben Gilbert. Do we have cash conversion targets moving forward and what are these? Is 100% conversion reasonable near term?

Yeah, look, as I say, that one's purely dependent on the working capital to an extent, but the other thing that impacts that is profit and loss on sale of stores, which is an outflow in that calculation if we increase that. So, look, around the 80% to 100%. But we don't have a specific target each half year. It's more that we expect to have full conversion other than the profit on sale of stores. So the working capital is the key there and that just moves between periods depending on when our year ends and half year ends falling.

We've obviously given an update on our restructuring program and that we said that we're targeting savings of circa $50 million. A couple of questions just in terms of what that means for the previous guidance for FY25. Does this mean that those targets are still on track?

Yes, that's correct. And that's largely when we start moving into the shared services and Michael's heading up that division at the moment. So that's well and truly underway. We've got our head of shared services currently in Malaysia. We're imminent with a site in Poland. And so that's obviously the second phase of those savings. And from all intent, the team are embracing the approach and things are progressing well.

Yeah. And in addition, you get the full year benefit of when we started the process. For example, like in France, we're not really getting any of that benefit. As that moves into the next quarter, when that starts to be implemented, then you're getting a full-year benefit at that stage.

Correct. Don, while we've got you, there's a couple of questions on the Australian QSR market. Your peers in ANZ have indicated higher levels of discounting and promotional activity. Have you stepped up promotions in ANZ and is this step up sustainable?

No, and I know there's been some analyst reports talking to that, and we actually haven't. But I think what might be some of the things that lead that is that for most of recent years, we were doing boost weeks, which is for a year. And boost weeks for us is a customer acquisition period. So that's when you'll see something like 50% off. It may be app only or it may be certain parts of the menu. Often it doesn't include things like the value range for pickup and so on. And so we returned to those last year. but they've been a layer in our business for a long period of time, as is our Tuesday offerings. But if you look at the other products, when you look at the $5 or less, the first reaction to that might be, oh, look, Domino's is getting back into discounting the range. Those products are built with really good margins for our franchise partners at those prices. They're built for those costs. They're clearly smaller offerings, things like a stuffed pepperoni cheesy bread, melts, our lava cakes, our garlic scrolls. and soon to be some other products in this area. So our QSR peers often have had products in entry levels there. As we're now branching out into an expanded day pass, we think there's openings for those as well. But at this point, no, we have not stepped up increased activity. And I think there was three things we wanted to make clear in this is that we're not discounting more. And I can say that in that margins are improving for our franchise partners and from our tickets. that we have real customer account growth. So I think that for analysts that are tracking our business, they're missing all the aggregator numbers. So when you're looking at web traffic and app traffic and that sort of stuff, obviously the aggregators apply to platforms. So I don't actually know what are the equations for some of our analysts, but I think that's being missed. And so, yeah, this is real customer growth. This is real sales growth, sales growth. This is category growth, and this is segment growth.

It's always me. Here's another donation. This costs me every time another donation to our Domino's charity, which gives me the opportunity to talk about actually our relaunch of our charity is Minds and Meals, which I'm sure Tim will be delighted for me to mention. So another donation. We might as well just make an auto deduction for my salary. Okay, so just on share of throat from Ben Gilwood, how are we seeing that pizza share of throat, that's Ben's words, by key market ANZ Japan and Germany, anecdotally restaurants and chicken QSR are losing share. So maybe if we start with Don and then hand to Josh

We are in a very interesting period in our history that I can remember in my 37 years with the two leading players in pizza in Australia and New Zealand both growing. Typically it's been either or in history and right now both are growing and so that is healthy for the category in Australia and New Zealand which is really positive. Over to you Josh.

50 bucks for me too. For Japan, you know, the conditions have compressed, I guess, all pizza QSR. We are the ones that are sort of growing out of that, the best with their size and scale. So yeah, that's what we're seeing. And we're starting to sort of grow within those and various channels within those. So that's the encouraging part.

Yeah, and then for Europe, it's different for Germany where we see the pizza category according to the crash data, is still growing, but we're growing the fastest in that. In France, we're growing fast in the pizza category, but the others seem to be losing. So the pizza category is pretty flat. And in the Netherlands, I remember 18 years ago when we bought the market, the thing was the Dutch don't eat pizza. Well, they keep eating more pizza, and the category is still growing.

This is going to be an expensive morning for me. Okay, so Ben Gilbert just asked while I've got you, Andre, to what extent are we seeing it's Japan and Germany, so we'll start with Germany. So to what extent are you seeing Germany follow the path of ANZ, given some of the initiatives were put in place across Australia three to six months earlier? Does it give you confidence in same-store sales growth lifting?

Yes, it does. Like Michael said, we share a lot of things that may not always originate from Australia, but we get the additional learnings from the Australian market. So, yes, both on all the things that we do and the three mains are clearly on the product side, on working within the air gators and the media mix modeling. We see that continuing, and we keep on introducing learnings. from Australia into those markets. Actually, the CEOs of those markets are coming over over the next couple of weeks to make sure that we really understand what's working and what's not and how we translate that into the German market and the other markets.

Yeah, same for Japan. I mean, you know, all the product-led promotions, all the access points to the brand has all changed. We're seeing customer count growth. So we're feeling okay about building. I would say, you know, definitely, as I think about the outlook, 3% to 6% is where we're targeting.

Just in terms of some of the costs at a store level, what are we seeing in terms of the food inflation? Do we see there's a benefit flowing through to us and what kind of timing are we expecting?

If you start in the Australian New Zealand business, we've obviously still had some currency headwinds, some of the global commodities. So where the incremental increases, in some cases decreases, but the net has been quite marginal overall, but it still is, on average, an increase in food. And, you know, we're still expecting on the 1st of July to get more wage increases. Haven't seen any indication yet of the range of that, but that's still what's in our expectations. What the ANZ business is benefiting from is the leverage of the volume and the scale at the moment. So that means our fixed and semi-fixed costs are coming off. which is a positive as well in those businesses, especially considering that we took a sizeable wage increase last July and we're actually running lower store wage costs now, so we're being more efficient. One of the things that people underestimate with Michael's teams in the commercial area is that The digital expertise they have goes into a lot of things, including co-pilots using AI and so on. So we're working currently on smarter scheduling. We've just started real-time live wage assessments, all sorts of really good analytics to put in our hands more education for our franchise partners and our team DPA, Dominus Pizza corporate team members to be better performers as well. So there's branches right out and The other thing that we're benefiting from is that as we're with the centres of expertise is with the media, the media are also some of the creative. So some of the creative can cross market. So we can actually shoot products in a central location and use them in more markets. We've rarely done that as a business because each market was running separate plans that were so separate that they weren't timed to be able to do those sort of things. So there's some really good leverage that's coming from that in the business. Over to you, Josh.

Sorry, just confirming the question again.

Talking about stock commodities or just inflation period, yeah.

About the impact to the business?

Yeah. And then also then the follow-up question is obviously in relation to Japan with the currency movements as well, what that means for the local stores.

Yeah, certainly watching that. I mean, we have an FX program where we do lock currency. Soft commodities have sort of flattened out a little bit. But we are watching the FX because we are an import market. We do have some labour rises that will naturally come through. And that's sort of in October, September, October next year. But we're already planning for that. And this is the business that we're getting back to where we only have to deal with those one-offs and two-offs a year. So everything we're doing now is testing to try to build volume because that's the answer, not pricing. Just putting price up, which drives down volume and actually produces customers. What happens when you put the pricing up is customers just shuffle our products out of your basket and that's not what you want. We're a volume-based business and that obviously then hurts any warehouse profit that we make as well. We're after volume and we're seeing some better conditions going forward.

If we go back to franchisee profitability, a question from Max Molinari. Rolling $12 million franchisee profitability is... Sorry, rolling 12-month franchisee profitability is plus $1,000 from the third quarter, the first quarter, despite the $21 million in cost savings, of which $7 million went to franchisees. Now, Don, I understand from what you were talking about that that doesn't... Some of those are supply chains. But that means in Max's assessment that underlying franchisee profitability is moving backwards. So given that, firstly, is that correct? And then secondly, what makes you think you can return to that store growth in FY25?

Yes, to be really clear, in the last half, yes, in Taiwan and Japan, it did go backwards. That is absolutely true. For the rest of the business, by and large, that's not accurate. In the last quarter, in fact, that rolled off, we're up 11%. What's missing is the December quarter. And a lot of the performance that you've seen in the business has really shown stronger recovery in the markets that are performing, being very clear. And it's coming into the last quarter as it's just accumulating. So, yeah, when we look at the December quarter, it's been healthy. and growing and so no, we're not going backwards with the exception of Taiwan and Japan in the last half.

Just in terms of the growth in Australia, can you give some more colour around ticket, customer count and then the additional trading hours and what the contributions or how they will feed into that puzzle?

Yeah, so it's both customer count and sales. And as I mentioned, we've been in some of the top growth QSRs for customer count and we're in the top four for sales. And we were the leader in lunch. Lunch has been enhanced by the product, but also by increased trading hours. Some of our stores with melts have moved their trading hours to 9.30 a.m. Typically, a lot of our stores were either 11 or midday. And during COVID-19, Some stores were reducing trading hours when there were labour shortages. They didn't renew those trading hours. In June and going through the half last year, we started to reopen those. So some stores were closing at midnight on Friday, Saturday, went to 1am and so forth and so on. So these have been incremental around the side. The clear growth has mostly come from the products themselves being targeted and I want to really reinforce the delivery. We've really put a big focus on our mission We've relaunched our packaging with the D-Box so that we have a more robust box. It's clearly the best in the business. When you think of the products like the designed-to-be-delivered crispy chips, the MyBox itself, everything about the MyBox is the perfect designed mission. It's a far more sustainable product, both in the profitability for our partners, but also three packages in one. It's designed to be delivered. It's very pizza-ness. It uses in many cases, also our crispy chips with pizza salt. So very, very focused on our mission triangle. And it's really interesting. When we look at our mission triangle, designed to be delivered, more sustainability built into the product, and that comes in all sorts of different focuses, and you see that when we do our disclosure annually. And then the pizza-ness, when we get that right, these products really accelerate and resonate with the customer. When we sit in these, what we call inspired product development sessions, which in most markets happen at least once a week, if not more, we're constantly going round and round in those triangles and then placing it in segmentation and day parts as well.

Thank you. Now, just in relation to a couple of maybe policy questions or how we're thinking questions, the different attitude towards loyalty between DPZ and DMP and then also what our latest thinking around GLP-1 is.

GLP-1, sorry?

Ozempic-style medicines. Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point. So the first thing is that it's not a difference completely of opinion on loyalty. And there were parts of our business where loyalty didn't make a lot of sense and it would have just ended up in straight dilution in the way that it had been done previously. So we actually do have the DPZ platform in parts of Europe. But Michael's got a team assembled in this year where we'll be revisiting loyalty and looking at some other QSR learning, and so that's still on there. We talk about loyalty in the business, by the way, and we talk about that by customer lifetime value. So when we think about things in the way we use our wallet, when we talk with franchise partners about the individual customers, we're very much following the customer through different cohorts, and we talk about that as loyalty. How do we drive people up the curve? But software, which I think is specifically what's being asked there, yeah, that is on our platform. When we come back to the current Wygovies, Zempic and so on, one of the things that you see us focusing on is also these smaller meal choices. So our observations, and they're clearly light at this point because we don't have length of research in this category, But the consumer is still eating less and still wanting to treat themselves. And so when you see things like melts and you see some of these newer products, they very much are also the secondary part of that is we think that they are a small meal choice for people who are making those lifestyle choices with the needle.

Thank you. Richard, a couple of questions for yourself. Is the debt of $858 million inclusive of the $365 million line of credit available? And is all debt due in FY27? If not, what are the due dates for this debt? Richard's on mute. That is $200 so far that we're up for the Mines and Meals charity donations today. So I know our charity partners will be very delighted today. But Richard?

Yeah. Okay. So just to be clear on the question, obviously the additional facilities are additional to our debt. So I think that is the question. So inclusive, yeah, no, we have an additional facility of that $365 million. In terms of when our facilities are falling due, they're all falling due predominantly at the same time. We have one of our debt facilities that is two years out as different to the 27th, but predominantly all falling due. We're going to be getting ahead of the curve before we get to the end of that period and be looking to extend those at the appropriate time.

Two more questions while I have you. What was the EBIT benefit to Europe in the first half from the closure of Denmark?

Yes, so that was $6 million. Let me just double check that number. But yeah, approximately $6.2 million.

Okay. And other expenses is reported in the P&L increased by 21% or $9 million. And what's the category of expenses? What drove that increase?

Yeah, so it is difficult when you're measuring, so when we're consolidating all of our numbers in these statutory reports, but predominantly that is the acquisition additional cost of Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, predominantly makes up most of that. Another big piece is just the FX rates, those current FX rates in Europe and Japan have improved, so you've got an additional cost there. So removing that, you know, it's effectively about sort of a relatively small increase in line with the revenue growth. In terms of what's included, it's almost everything that doesn't fit into those categories, you know, from professional fees to IT infrastructure costs. a multitude of items but I think probably the question is why was that so significantly up and predominantly it's classification of the additional costs coming in from Malaysia and Singapore which we only had one month in the prior period.

Don, a question for you. With the share price much lower than previous years, could we look to do buybacks in the second half?

Yeah, no, at this stage we're very focused on deleveraging our balance sheet and so that is an open conversation at this point in time.

I'm just going to finalise the last four questions that I've got on my list. Andre, store closures, we obviously mentioned some of those are delayed in France. How many should we be expecting in the second half?

Yes, it's a moving diamond. Last diamond check was less than 10, so it's not a massive amount.

Okay, thank you. Over to you, Josh, in Asia, Japan specifically, just maybe if you could share some more about the progress you've made. You talked about aggregators today. What progress have you made with Uber in Japan, and when do you expect to see some benefits flowing through from that?

yeah look we are active on uh on uber already uh we have been we've always been on aggregators um the micron is actually our biggest aggregator partnership that we have uh so that's that's one thing to think about we've added on uber and now uber is in every single one of our stores and we are seeing some benefit come through through there and these are incremental we're also focusing back on our own channels because we have to we have to grow both if we just one exceeds so That's not a win. We need to grow our own as well, and that's where the rebalancing comes in. But, yeah, expect to play in that marketplace forevermore.

Thank you. Now, just, Don, a question on franchisee payback. Obviously, we've spoken quite a lot about those payback periods. Sam asks, is the store EBITDA representative the actual cashed franchisees, or is there sometimes capex that needs to be paid by franchisees? So is it simply a build cost divided by the profitability?

Yes, you are right. It's the bill costs divided by the profitability of the expectation of that new store. Now, what isn't shown, so you're looking at the base EBITDA right now, and that is a simple calculation. But in some of the markets, many of the markets, we also give an incentive to open store. So, in fact, it's really interesting. In Germany right now, if they continue to annualise their current growth, they will be well below a three-year payback because if we just back out the incentive, you know, if it's But rough calculations, in Germany right now, it's, say, €300,000 to open a brand-new store. We would give them right now approximately €100,000 in incentives over a three-year period. And when you look at where Germany's profitability is right now, it means that they're well below three for a brand-new store right now. And that's really the package to get franchise partners moving. I would like to highlight, just got to get a bit more track record, balance sheet strengthening, franchise partners go after that And that's a similar equation for most markets is what is the build cost? Where are the likely EBITDAs of the new stores? And the incentive can obviously help in those first periods because, you know, for many, even the banks can look at that as reassurance that that's coming off the price. You know, if it's $300,000, $100,000 is going to come straight back to the franchise partner locked from us, which means it's closer to $200,000 build.

Okay. And just regarding the trading update, we've mentioned that we're cycling some softer comps at the moment. So when do these comps step up and what's the delta of this step up?

Pacific market, sorry, Nathan?

Maybe if we start with Australia. I mean, the comps will be there. Do they get easier from here for Australia and then we'll go to Japan and then Europe?

Yeah, so the comp started accelerating from July last year of any notability and got stronger through the half. And so, yeah, we're really well aware of what was stepping those up and what are the strategies this year that will increase. You'll remember I highlighted despite these... quite strong central sales in Australia and New Zealand, we still have a lot of opportunity. There's areas we're underperforming in some media spend that we're aware of and we're getting through the year on that. There's also the offline carrier customers, quite a significant number to chase. That's actually, it's very interesting. Delivery as a category in Australia and New Zealand has been shrinking and we're accelerating against the shrinking business because we've been so focused on our expertise. But pick-up, offline pick-up and pick-up itself has actually been growing significantly. And we've actually been shrinking against that because we haven't had as competitive offering. And so that's an opportunity well into next year that we're going to keep refining and learning. We launched a new menu today for that. And then Family Mundles, big opportunity for us as well. That's just three, let alone the centres of expertise are constantly teaching us and we're being inspired from around the world where there's behaviour that's happening and the centres of expertise will walk in to me as the Australian CEO as well and the CMO and Ellen Collins and and Kent and Kerry and operators say, hey, look, there's an opportunity right here. You should be maximising this. And it's please explain more or less here why we wouldn't be chasing this, what's holding us back, how do we resource this and so on. And that's what Michael's team's doing exceptionally well, actually. He's constantly putting... We leave no customer left behind and the great opportunity right now is we can see a lot of customers that we can still be pursuing. Over to you, Andre.

Yeah, so... I guess you all agree that we've been delivering consolidated over Europe pretty soft sales over the last 12 months. So we don't see that having higher comps to feed. Obviously in markets, so Germany has got a good last six months. They will have that from summer, but then Netherlands has been coming off. So consolidated, we're beating soft comps.

Yeah, same, soft comps for Japan specifically, a little bit higher around May and those sorts of months, but pretty soft from there. I think to characterise it, the difference being it's not all just about price, it was all price. you know, last year in this same half and throughout the year. We've now got product. We've got great product. We've got better channel execution thanks to the centre of expertise. So that'll be the thing that we'll be watching and looking to grow against those comps.

And then maybe, John, if I could just, you know, we've gone through all of the questions today, which I'm pleased to see. Any sort of, you know, final commentary that you wanted to provide on sort of recent trading and what the focus is moving forward.

Yeah, clearly we've been disappointed with our recent results. We're not proud of many parts of the business and hopefully today and we'll continue to highlight where those missteps have been and what we're doing about those missteps. I think it's really important. It is still worth highlighting for the teams that have worked exceptionally hard in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Singapore has gone through some really impressive restructuring in just such a short time, closing the commissary, moving to back a house of dough in every store, rolling out a brand new app, embracing a whole new approach to their menu. It's a small market, but they've done an exceptional job and it shows what we can do when the team executes well against that. In fact, it's the highest percentage of sales business for us in recent periods. And then the great work the team in Australia and New Zealand has been doing. The Australia and New Zealand business was stagnant for a few years. You can see that in our comps and in franchise performance. And we've got very strong commitments with our franchise partners on together what we're going to do. And I think that's also helping to inspire the rest of the business on what's possible and how we go about rebuilding those profits. But, yeah, the message we have today, we're still in build mode. We still, you know, seven weeks is not a track record in Asia yet, particularly in Japan. We obviously have some macro issues in the Malaysia business that is putting some tension on our regional sales. And that's something we're not fully in control of. It's externally influenced. And so we look forward to that coming to an end and being able to rebound from that. but yeah, this is a work to share this results about showing exactly what's working, what's not working and what we're doing about it. So thank you everybody for giving us your time today and we look forward to some of our one-on-ones.

Thank you so much Don and thank you to all of the speakers and as I mentioned a couple of times on the call there'll be some of our mute tacks going to our charity Minds and Meals. For those who are not aware of it, that's at www.dominoesmindsandmeals.org. I'm sure both our charity partners will appreciate the donations from our speakers today, as I hope that all of our attendees have appreciated the answers that we've been giving. We look forward to seeing you on the Roadshow. We'll talk to you very soon. Thank you so much.