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spk22: Greetings, and welcome to the Blumenbrand's Fiscal First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following a question and answer session, a question and answer session will follow management's prepared remarks. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tammy Dean, Senior Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you, Ms. Dean. You may begin.
spk28: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are David Dino, our Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Meyer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have access to our fiscal first quarter 2023 earnings release. It can also be found on our website at blumenbrands.com in the investor section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting results on an adjusted basis. and explanation of our use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our earnings release and on our website as previously described. Before we begin formal remarks, I'd like to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including a discussion of recent trends. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ in a material way from our forward-looking statements. Some of these risks are mentioned in our earnings release. Others are discussed in our SEC filings, which are available at sec.gov. During today's call, we will provide a brief recap of our financial performance for the fiscal first quarter 2023, an overview of company highlights, and current thoughts on 2023 guidance. Once we've completed these remarks, we'll open the call up for questions. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to David Deno.
spk18: Well, thank you, Tammy, and welcome to everyone listening today. As noted in this morning's earnings release, adjusted Q1 2023 diluted earnings per share was $0.98, which compares to $0.80 in Q1 2022, up 23%. Key One 2023 marks the best quarterly diluted earnings per share in the company's history. Combined U.S. comparable sales are up 5.1%, with each brand having positive same-store sales. The first quarter results further validate the strategic and operational framework we outlined for the year and set us up to deliver our commitments. I will be giving an update on our plans in a minute. Before doing that, I would like to thank our teams in the restaurants and Restaurant Support Center for their unwavering commitment to serving our guests. Your dedication to great hospitality and service and experience is what makes our company so successful. As we look to build upon the momentum of the first quarter, we continue to remain focused on executing our plan to grow the business. As a reminder, our priorities include driving same-store sales growth, maintaining off-premises momentum, sustaining the progress in operating margins, becoming a more digitally savvy company, and increasing new restaurant openings. Let me now turn to our first priority, which is to grow sales and traffic in our restaurants. Growing sustainable traffic, especially at Outback, is our biggest priority. To achieve this goal, we are executing a number of initiatives. To start, let me provide a brief update on our use of technology to improve execution and consistency in the restaurants. The handheld technology roll-up for our servers was completed at the end of Q4. The Outback team is now focused on optimizing the experience in the dining room to deliver a differentiated guest experience. The tablets allow our servers to cover more tables while providing an even better experience to our guests. Tablets are not replacing personal interaction. They are enhancing it as servers now spend more time with guests. In addition, we continue to roll out new cooking technology, including advanced grills and ovens. The rollout is on track to be completed in the third quarter. This cooking technology is improving product quality and meal pacing. Like handhelds, the kitchen investments are also improving the customer experience and productivity. The second part of building sales and traffic is more targeted marketing designed to leverage our heritage, build brand equity, and drive frequency. Outback brought back the No Rules, Just Write platform at the beginning of Q1, but this is more than just marketing. It's an attitude. It's how we re-energize our restaurants with new food offerings, exceptional service, and most importantly, it ties back to our past. No Rules, Just Write is aimed at highlighting our great menu and the everyday value that we offer to our guests. In Q1, we leaned into our Aussie roots with both food and beverage innovation. The third element to our sales building strategy is an introduction of new layers in all of our brands. For example, during the first quarter, Fleming's launched Social Hour. It captures our wonderful food and drink offerings during the early evening. We also continue to grow our event catering business within Fleming's and look forward to the innovation that's coming from this business. Another sales layer is wine dinners at Carrabba's. Wine dinners showcase the innovation and product quality Krobs is known for while providing a great value for the guest and a good return for the company. We will continue to provide updates on sales layers at all of our brands throughout the year. The final sales driving strategy is additional spending on remodels this year. We paused our remodel efforts during the pandemic and have since developed a variety of scopes that can be deployed based on varying needs of our restaurants. We are on track to remodel over 100 locations this year. This is the beginning of a multi-year effort to touch a large percentage of our business. Keeping our assets looking their best is a key element of growing traffic. All the initiatives I've just described are designed to build sustainable traffic now and over the long term. Turning to our second priority, continuing the momentum in the off-premises business. The total off-premises business was 23% of U.S. sales in Q1, and our third-party delivery business continues to perform well. Importantly, off-premises profit margins are comparable to margins of the in-restaurant business. In addition, catering is becoming an important and growing opportunity for our brands. The Carabas team remains an industry leader in this space. Both Outback and Bonefish are also seeing momentum in catering. As a result of all of the above, we expect off-premises to remain a large part of our business. Our third priority is to sustain the major projects we have made in operating margins over the last four years in a highly inflationary environment. Margin improvements start with growing healthy traffic across the in-restaurant and off-premises channels. We also reduced the reliance on discounting and promotional LTOs and pivoted advertising spend towards more targeted, higher-return digital channels. Additionally, we remain disciplined in managing the middle of the P&L and are aggressively pursuing efficiencies in food, labor, and overhead. As Chris will discuss, despite persistent inflation, we've been able to achieve our margins well above 2019. We remain committed to achieving 8% operating margins over the long term. The fourth priority is to capitalize on our progress to become a more digitally savvy company. In Q1, approximately 79% of total U.S. off-premises sales were through digital channels. The new online ordering system and mobile app have exceeded our expectations. The new app has 3 million users. You can expect to see further activity as we improve the functionality and features of our app and digital offerings. And the final priority is to build more new restaurants, especially at Outback, Fleming's, and in Brazil. Each of these brands have strong sales and profit margins and offer great returns. Outback has the opportunity to significantly expand its restaurant base. We will continue to invest and grow Fleming's. And we also have the ability to more than double our footprint in Brazil. In summary, we are off to a terrific start. We are focusing on achieving our 2023 goals while building a great business that will continue to thrive. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Chris.
spk15: Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by providing a recap of our financial performance for the fiscal first quarter of 2023. Total revenues in Q1 were $1.2 billion, which was up 9.1% from 2022, driven by a 5.1% increase in U.S. comparable restaurant sales, as well as a 14.3% comp sales increase in Brazil. In our US brands, traffic was down 70 basis points in Q1. This was a significant improvement from Q4, even after factoring in a 330 basis point favorable impact on Q1 traffic from the lapping of Omicron and unfavorable weather. As we indicated in our last call, we began to see improvements in traffic in December, and these trends continued into the first quarter. Average check was up 5.8% in Q1 versus 2022. This is in line with what we discussed on last quarter's call. In terms of pricing, we would expect to see the impact of pricing slowly come down as the year progresses. There will be a larger step down towards the end of Q3 as we lap price changes from last year. We will consider taking some level of new pricing later in the year, but our goal is to take as little pricing as possible in this environment. At 23% of U.S. sales, Q1 off-premises was down 100 basis points from Q4. Given the heavier volumes we tend to see in Q1, this change was expected and was primarily a migration from our curbside business to in-restaurant dining. In recent weeks, we have seen off-premises return to 24% of U.S. sales. Importantly, the highly incremental third-party delivery business was flat from Q4 at roughly 12% of U.S. sales. third-party has remained at approximately 12% over each of the past five quarters, even as in-restaurant dining has returned. In terms of brand performance, Outback total off-premises mix was 26% of sales, and Carrabba's was 30% of sales. Off-premises remains sticky and is a large part of our ongoing success, and as Dave mentioned, it will be a key part of our growth strategy moving forward. And a final note on Q1 sales, Brazil Q1 comps were up 14.3%. Brazil's first quarter reflected the lapping of COVID-related operating restrictions from early 2022. Q1 was the last quarter where favorable COVID lapse will have a significant impact on year-over-year trends. Also, as a reminder, Brazil comp sales do not include the benefit from the Brazil tax exemption we discussed on the last earnings call. As it relates to other aspects of our Q1 financial performance, GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter was 93 cents versus 73 cents of diluted earnings per share in 2022. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was 98 cents versus 80 cents of adjusted diluted earnings per share in 2022. This represented the most profitable quarter in our company's history. The difference between our gap and adjusted results was in our share count and was related to required accounting treatment for the hedge we have on our convertible bonds. Operating income margin was 9.7% in Q1 versus 9.4% in 2022. Restaurant level operating margins were 17.9% versus 17.1% last year. Margins improved for a couple of reasons. First, international operating margins were up 770 basis points driven by Brazil as they are lapping COVID impacts from Q1 2022. Second, the benefits from our U.S. pricing and productivity initiatives more than offset inflation. As it relates to inflation, commodity inflation was up 6.6% in Q1, and labor inflation was up 6.4%. Restaurant operating expense inflation improved from Q4, but remained elevated at 9.4%. This was driven by higher utilities, R&M, and advertising. Overall, inflation in the first quarter was in line with expectations. Depreciation expense and general and administrative expense were both up in Q1 relative to last year in absolute dollars. This is consistent with our increased levels of capital spending and our investments in infrastructure to support growth. Overall, we feel good about our margins and we remain well above pre-pandemic levels. Also in Q1, our adjusted tax rate was 14% and includes the benefit from the Brazil tax exemption. Turning to our capital structure, total debt was $768 million at the end of Q1. This puts our current lease-adjusted leverage ratio below three times. In terms of share repurchases, year-to-date, we have repurchased 1.1 million shares of stock for $27 million. We still have $113 million remaining on the new authorization that the Board approved on February 7th. The Board also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.24 a share payable on May 24th. We are pleased with our balanced deployment of free cash flow and will continue to deploy dollars against additional debt pay down, share repurchases, and our dividend. Now, turning to our 2023 and Q2 guidance. First, we are reaffirming all aspects of our 2023 guidance previously provided on our February 16th earnings call. And second, As it relates to the second quarter, we expect U.S. comparable restaurant sales to be 0.5% to 1.5%, and we expect Q2 adjusted earnings per share to be between $0.62 and $0.67. Year-over-year comparisons will become more difficult in Q2 relative to Q1 as we will not have the same level of benefits either domestically or internationally from lapping COVID impacts in 2022. In addition, strong Q2 trends from last year make it our most challenging lap of the year. In summary, this was another successful quarter for Blumen Brands, and we are well on our way to becoming a better, stronger, operations-focused company. And with that, we will open up the call for questions.
spk22: Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. If you would like to remove your question, please press star 2. In the interest of time, we do ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, that's star 1 to register a question at this time. Today's first question is coming from Jeffrey Bernstein of Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk07: Great. Thank you very much. One question, one follow-up. The question would be on the... the second quarter guidance. I think there's some industry and investor concerns of slowing comps at least in April, although clearly choppy with the shifts and whatnot. But your guidance maybe corroborates that. I think, Chris, you mentioned that the compares get tougher and no longer you have the Omicron benefit and whatnot. But can you just talk about maybe the exit rate you saw for the first quarter or maybe what you're running in april any change in consumer behaviors you're seeing in any of these brands just trying to get a sense for whether or not there's any validity to uh to fears of most recent slowdown in the underlying thank you and then one follow-up yeah hey jeff good morning um look our q2 performance is tied directly into uh what chris guided so far um you know for the quarter so if you look at the trends in the quarter
spk18: That's incorporated in our Q2 guidance. And as we mentioned, March, April, and May are really our biggest overlaps of the year. So our trends still are good, and our customers are hanging in there. So we feel good about where the guide looks, and we feel good about the full year as we've reiterated our full year guidance.
spk15: Yeah, and just to give you some math behind the guide, so if you look at the guidance range of, call it 50 basis points to 1.5%, I would say you could expect in that guide maybe a 5% or maybe a little higher average check built into that guide. So that would put your traffic basically at the midpoint at down four, which if you stripped out Omicron and unfavorable weather from the Q1 result, it basically is flat from Q1 in terms of our overall traffic guide for the quarter. And then, you know, again, I know we tend to not like 2019 as much, but I know that some folks are still looking at 2019. If you look at 2019 results from Q1 to Q2, we've actually seen a tick up in both comps and traffic versus 2019 in pretty material checkup in comps and traffic versus where we were in 2019 in both, you know, based on what the last five weeks or so of Q1 looked like versus the first three or four weeks of Q2. So we feel pretty good about the overall guide, at least in terms of where the consumer is. I think a lot of the noise about Q2 has more to do with the lap than our trends today.
spk07: Understood. And then just the The follow-up is on the menu pricing. I think you mentioned in the first quarter you had close to a 6% average check. I'm just wondering specifically how much are you running in pricing in the first quarter? Maybe any resistance that you're seeing here to date or what your expectations are for pricing as we move through the year? I feel like there's a most recent concern on taking new pricing with food at home now falling below food away from home, which seems to have been a nice move.
spk15: level of protection for our restaurants for such a long time maybe there's reason to feel the need to be more cautious on the pricing going forward thank you yeah a few things so pricing was about seven and a half like 7.6 percent in q1 we would expect that to tick down as the year progresses and look i think we've done pretty well in relative pricing you know particularly versus the competition we took effectively zero pricing in 2020 we maybe took two percent or so in 2021 and then 7% or so last year. So through the end of 2022, we were less than 10% higher in pricing versus where we were at the start of the pandemic. And our pricing is still well below inflation that we've seen over that same time period. We do have some pricing built into the back half of the year that we think can help given some of this persistent inflation, but it won't be near the amount that we took in Q3 or Q4 of last year. Our predisposition, as we said in the prepared remarks, is to take as little pricing as possible this year, and it just depends on how this year plays out. If we don't think we have the pricing power with the consumer, then we may not take it. But given our strong start in Q1, we may have some flexibility on taking less pricing as the year progresses, but we're not going to make those decisions until as late as possible.
spk07: Got it. And you just mentioned the strong start with the first quarter. The fact that you reiterated the full-year guidance with the first quarter being – such a healthy beat from at least an earnings perspective. The reason why there was perhaps no raise to that guidance, is there anything particular going on that leaves you a little bit more cautious for the rest of the year, or is that just prudency, which I would think would be important in this environment? Thank you.
spk15: Yeah, prudent's a good word. I think there's two things to that, right? So we feel really good about our full-year guide. Q1 was obviously a great start to the year, but there's a lot that can unfold in the next nine months, and it just feels a little bit early to be changing guidance. And I'd say one technical thing is what I just mentioned. I mean, to the point To this point, the consumer seems to be doing pretty well, but again, there is some uncertainty out there, so we want to preserve the flexibility potentially to take as little pricing as possible in the back half of the year. Pricing can have a big impact on your financial results, but it also, in terms of traffic, can have longer-term implications, so we want to reserve the right to take less pricing if we need to.
spk29: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Alex Lagle of Jefferies, please go ahead.
spk12: Good morning. Um, on the, uh, the cost of goods being 31.3%, I mean, I imagine Brazil tax benefit may be helped to some degree, but other than, you know, the first quarter of 21, I don't think I've kind of seen it that low. Um, going back really ever. I mean, it seems like inflation and pricing outlooks remain the same. So I'm curious if you could offer more perspective on what's driving that.
spk18: Yeah, I think a couple things before Chris gets into some of the details. And we talked about the investment in technology, you know, in the script. We talked about it in other conference calls. And clearly the technology investments we're making in the restaurants and in the kitchen and everything else is paying off. And we're seeing that. And you see it not only in cost, but we hope to see it over the long term in customer satisfaction. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris.
spk15: Yeah, and we talked about the tax benefit maybe helping overall margins by like 30 basis points or so. So that isn't the big, big driver here in cost of goods sold. It goes back to a little bit of what Dave said. I mean, I think that the piece that we expected in Q1, cost of sales performance, was the pricing piece because that is pretty predictable. But I think the piece that was maybe a little bit of a surprise is how efficient we're running these restaurants and how smart we've gotten with this technology. It's a really, really good sign for us that the things that we're doing from an investment standpoint – are going to pay off big time for the company moving forward.
spk12: Thanks. As a follow-up, in South Korea, I see your partners have closed down a bunch of the virtual kitchens and been opening a higher number of traditional restaurants, it seems. I'm wondering if you could offer any color on the approach there or if there's anything you should think about more broadly and how you're going about development in the international franchise and JV markets.
spk18: Yeah. Throughout our whole company, we really see the opportunity to build restaurants. And they'll be delivery and carryout enabled, but we see the opportunity to go beyond virtual kitchens and build efficient, wonderful boxes that are in-restaurant enabled and also can do delivery and carryout in any virtual work at all. But our strategy is going up against our traditional development both here and overseas.
spk00: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Lauren Silverman of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Thank you, guys, and congrats on the quarter.
spk20: I wanted to ask you more about what you're seeing with the consumer. Any signs of changes in behavior, check management, trade down, any differences you're seeing across brands? Yeah.
spk18: Let me break the brand apart between fine dining and casual dining. Fine dining customers is really doing well and continues to do well. So that segment's strong. On casual dining, basically, we're seeing the customer hang tight overall. We're seeing our higher-end customers come in. with similar frequency, using our restaurants, and we're especially seeing it around special occasions. We had the best week ever in our history on Valentine's Day, and we're hoping for a really wonderful Mother's Day. So we're seeing that piece of the consumer doing pretty well. On the lower end consumer, we are seeing continued frequency, but maybe a little bit of management on the guest check side as they come into our restaurants. And our offers in our LTOs that we're offering, like, for instance, the steak and lobster macaroni and cheese for $16.99 at the entry point and outback, helps address some of that. So that's what we're seeing from the consumer right now.
spk15: Yeah, and I'd say just to give you, you mentioned trade down and mix, just to give you some perspective. So we talked about pricing, so that does imply that mix was down like 180 basis points or so in the quarter, so it's probably important to provide some perspective on that. As Dave said, there is a piece of that that we think is consumer trade. Our app mix is lower. But the majority of that mix has to do with revenue center shifts. So we know we got some of the areas where we are seeing some of our strongest growth also carry a lower check average. Catering sales, for example, have basically doubled from where they were a year ago and continue to grow. But the average check per person is much lower on a catering transaction. But again, it's very profitable for us. Lunch is another area where we're continuing to see growth. Again, the check on lunch is lower than a check you would see on dinner. LTOs have been very popular, right? And again, they carry a little bit lower check average. So there's a lot of things that I would call more engineered in terms of our check that we're seeing, our mix that we're seeing in Q1 and then continuing into Q2. But at the same time, it is fair to say there is a bit of check management.
spk20: Super helpful. Thank you. And then just to follow up on the 2Q guide, can you just break down what's embedded for operating margins, I guess the puts and takes relative to 1Q? Is there anything outside of sales leveraged? Thank you.
spk15: No, it's mostly sales leverage. I think you might see a stitch lower commodity inflation as well as labor inflation. I think just as we start to lap some of the areas from a year ago, those things will continue to get a little bit better in Q2. But it really is. I mean, honestly, if you look at the Q1 result in our Q2 guide and you just take the implied sales change and you do a flow through on that, that pretty much gets you close to our guide for the quarter. So It really is more of a sales flow-through conversation than anything else.
spk20: Great.
spk22: Thank you, guys.
spk15: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from John Ivanco of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi. Thank you. I want to ask a bigger picture question than maybe some specifics around it. So, you know, Dave, obviously very experienced in this industry, and we've certainly seen customer bases change in this industry, use cases change, competition change. One of the things, and this is industry expert commentary that you hear, is that the millennial and Gen Z consumer, at least those without families, aren't casual dining customers and may not even be casual dining customers. you know, there's, especially given these April numbers that have kind of come out, you know, we're kind of hearing this secular argument of, you know, casual dining is in decline. It's a leaking bucket. It just depends how fast the bucket is leaking of, you know, basically traffic will be in perpetual decline. I mean, some years might be down two, some years might be down five, you know, so, I mean, those are the kind of comments, you know, that kind of come out. I want you to, I guess, you know, address that, you know, just in terms of, hey, this is, this is a good growing segment that, you know, can generate positive same store traffic, you know, through a cycle or, you know, if you just, you know, you say, you know what, this is, you know, this is something that you can still create value and this is an industry or this is a segment, this is a brand, um, you know, that can create value for shareholders, even in a perpetually negative same store traffic environment. Hopefully that's clear.
spk18: Yeah, that's very clear, John. I think it's an excellent question. Um, So it's a very broad question. I'll try and answer it as concisely as possible. But in my own background, I've got a lot of experience in QSR and a lot of experience in casual dining. And I can tell you, I am thrilled to be in casual dining, an $80 billion category without a huge market share leader with a lot of chance to grow and take share. So is convenience more important? Absolutely, John. And we're seeing that in our delivery carryout business, and our third-party delivery continues to be very strong. Now, what we saw in the pandemic was when restaurants opened back up, people missed restaurants, and I even think those millennials will graduate into casual dining as they enjoy the experience. It's up to us to offer a fantastic occasion at great value. So that's part one of this. Part two is... John, we're seeing as we open new restaurants, especially at Outback, the volumes are way exceeding what our base is. And so when we go into new territories with good assets, the customers are there. So I strongly reject the argument that casual dining is an industry that's fading away. It's got great opportunity. And I think, importantly, if you look at some of our price points that we offer versus maybe other parts of the industry, be it fast casual or QSR, we offer pretty good value, John, compared to some of those other players. So I think I'm very bullish on the casual dining industry. New development, new channels of distribution, carryout and delivery. The digital opportunity is there. It's big. We got to know our customers. And so I'm very bullish on casual dining.
spk05: Some old friends of ours used to talk about earn the right to own and maybe related to that, earn the right to grow. And I want to ask this in the context of that Outback unit growth, if same-store traffic is down 5%, And we're talking about growing units. I mean, you know, those are things, you know, again, looking at it dispassionately from the outside, you know, those are two comments that don't really jibe with each other. I mean, many people would say you don't have the right to grow until you stabilize your same store traffic. Because the new stores that you're opening, even if they open high in year one, they're going to decline like the rest of the base. So, you know, talk about that decision a little bit more, the decision to open more. more units, more outbacks, U.S. specifically? And I do want you to address if there's any changes in the fiscal 23 CapEx budget and what you think 24 will be higher or lower than 23.
spk18: Yeah, 23, no major changes there, John, in our CapEx guide. But on the openings, Clearly, we're seeing strong new unit openings, and we have earned the right to own and grow. And I'm very familiar with that phrase, and used it my entire career. I think, John, what Chris mentioned, we are looking at a point in time right now that we're lapping the strongest period from last year. We expect in our guide traffic trends to improve the balance of the year. And the industry itself will grow, especially those strong players. But, John, if you could see our new unit investment returns Where we're going in and how those units are performing, they're really, really terrific. In fact, we opened a new Carrabba's just north of Tampa here that has among the highest volume in the entire system. So clearly there's an opportunity to grow these brands beyond where they are today. you know, as we go forward. And I think the traffic trends, as you will see, as we begin to lap some of the wonkiness from last year, our traffic trends will improve. And I remain very bullish on the industry and our company.
spk15: Yeah. And let me just add on that, John. If you look at the financial performance of, you know, Outback specifically relative to where it was pre-pandemic, it looks like a very different financial performance in the sense that the P&L is far more efficient and The returns, you know, again, I mean, you go back to 2018, 2019, it was harder to make that argument to grow because the returns weren't there because the P&L wasn't in a great place. The P&L is in a much better shape now at Outback. One of the compromises, though, that we made with that in 2019 is we stripped out all the discounted occasions from 2019 out of the numbers. And we have not built all of that back into our traffic to this point. But, again, we're okay with that at this point because the P&L is in much better shape. Now is the time, to the point we keep raising, to build back that healthy traffic into our basement. 2023, 2024, as we layer in all these layers, that's when that's going to start to seed in. We feel really good about new unit opportunities with the P&L that we have today.
spk18: And lastly, John, we talked about some of the sales layers, and you've been following closely the technology in our restaurants, and we're going to have that opportunity. And as we talk about 2024, we've got an important off-site for our company coming up at the end of May. We'll discuss where we're going in 2024 with that and provide some more context coming up. But it's a little too early to talk about 2024.
spk05: Okay, understood. And this is related. I mean, obviously, very strong numbers out of Brazil. That's really been the case kind of pre-pandemic, post-pandemic. Are there any lessons? How have you solved the quote-unquote customer issue or the secular issue in Brazil to have such strong performance? Are there any lessons? And I know you've obviously taken some of the kitchen technology from Brazil and brought it into the U.S., so that's back-end stuff. Is there anything that you could do with the front-end or really customer-facing brands? you know, work from Brazil that can be applied to U.S. of just like, hey, listen, you know, there's really some best practices that can be done here to make, you know, Brazil and the U.S. the relevant brand that it was, you know, really, you know, in the last couple of decades.
spk18: Yeah, no, I agree with you, John. And with that, I took our brand presidents down to Brazil earlier this year, and we talked that through in great detail. We talked about it all the time. Two things that Brazil does really well that we're continuing to push in the U.S. Number one, Innovation, product innovation, marketing innovation, and you're seeing that down there, and we're helping, we're talking more with each other, and you're going to see more of that from us, and I'm not going to get into that for competitive reasons. Number two, the use of technology and data. They've been fantastic down there. We're good here. We can do even better here. Now, in fairness to the Outback US team, it's a completely different competitive set down there. Outback is the only company steakhouse down there by far and we own a great position there and we leverage it like you can't believe and we're going to continue to grow it but there is really no major steak competition down there other than Outback but the innovation and the technology is terrific terrific there thanks for all the questions thanks guys thanks John thank you the next question is coming from Sharon Zekvia of William Blair please go ahead hi good morning
spk21: I have two questions. I'm curious whether you're seeing any changes in the competitive or promotional environment in the U.S. And then secondarily, I don't think I heard how labor turnover is trending. So if you could talk about that and any corollary benefits you might be seeing in kind of order accuracy or table turns or customer satisfaction. Thanks.
spk18: Yeah, we have long been a leader in in retention in the industry. Our turnover rates are very good. The trends are good. There's a managing partner that runs a restaurant, whether it's the manager, whether it's our team members. So I'll put our numbers up against anybody. It's really good. And Sharon, you see that in customer measures, right? You see it in service measures. You see it in food measures. And we're making remarkable progress against that And our measures are just as good, especially at Alpac and anywhere in the industry. So we're very pleased about that. On the customer side, we are seeing an uptick in discounting in the industry, but not against the folks that we directly compete with. And so, you know, obviously we can't control what the customer does, but we want to be very prudent with our discounting and promotions. We want to continue to offer discounts. things that work great for the customer and also offer good return for the company. That's one of the reasons why our margins are hanging in there so well. But we want to build healthy traffic through sales layers. We don't want to participate in any big-time discounting or promotion, even though we've seen an uptick in parts of the industry. And I'd stress again, some of the things that we're offering, for instance, the sirloin and lobster mac and cheese for $16.99 at Outback is really a terrific product. So that's where we tend to play, Sharon.
spk31: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Jeff Farmer of Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead.
spk13: Great. Thanks. Good morning. Just really a couple follow-ups. So we touched on this, but a casual dining peer attributed the lion's share of some of the April same-store sales choppiness to Easter holiday and spring break shifts. Sounds like you guys have sort of a similar view, but the question is, why are you so confident that the casual dining consumer is not
spk18: changing behavior and what is increasingly looking like sort of a more challenging consumer environment because jeff we haven't we've seen our trends hold up and you know you have to be really you look at restaurant industry we've been talking about this ever since coven and the emergence of kobe you have to look at week to week in in the month-to-month trends and the wonkiness of last year is really going to take into account so like we said on this call, the trends we are seeing remain good. And we're just trying to provide our best thinking as far as what Q2 and the rest of the year looks like in our guides.
spk15: Yeah. And again, I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. If you look at the last five weeks or so of Q1 and the first five weeks or so of Q2, we've seen a pretty decent step up in terms of sales and traffic relative to 2019. And again, it's not always the best litmus test because there's a lot in 2019 as well, but it is a little more consistent in terms of what we're seeing compared to last year, which did have quite a bit of up and down.
spk13: Okay. And then second and last question, I think you just said that pricing was 7.6% in Q1. Pricing in Q2 and Q3, can you just provide us with those numbers assuming no additional price increases are coming?
spk15: Yeah, if there's no additional price increases, it'll definitely kick down into the, yeah, it might still be at seven or so in Q2, but then Q3, it takes a pretty decent chunk down from there, and then you would end the year with, again, if we didn't replicate anything, you would end up with low single-digit pricing.
spk18: Yeah, I also want to reiterate what Chris said earlier, Jeff. When you look at pricing, you've got to look at the last three years. I mean, we've been very moderate in all three of our, in our three-year look on this, and that's what we're trying to do going forward.
spk24: All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Sarah, Senator of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk32: Oh, thank you very much. I just wanted to sort of go back to this idea when you talked about reduced discounting traffic and now you've got a new sort of more profitable base to build on. But I was trying to understand, I guess, a couple of things about that. One is You know, that's versus 2019. I'm curious, like, sort of how long that evolution took. You know, we're sort of three years plus into this. So, you know, is it just the case that it took a long time? Or, you know, as we think about building off a new base, I guess, why now versus maybe in the last year or two, acknowledging that COVID was a little disruptive? And then related to that, Could you talk a little bit about that, sort of how you think about that margin traffic trade-off? Because as you said, you've done a really nice job with the margin. Traffic is still, I think, you know, modestly negative and has been for a little while. So, you know, as we think through kind of the outlook ahead, I understand you have a lot of sales layers, but, you know, if sort of forced to make that trade-off, you know, how would you approach it? Thanks.
spk18: Well, first of all, we always want both. And, you know, there's a top line to traffic too, which is great service product and, you know, innovation. So that's the first part of it. We want to manage the traffic equation and the margin equation. And, you know, it took us a while at Outback to work through the discounting. And obviously COVID was a huge interrupter to all that. That took two years or however long you want to say. But like we talked earlier today, we feel like where that's behind us. We have like-for-like traffic we can look at. We see in our guides traffic builds coming as the year progresses and we get a little past the wonkiness of 2022. But most importantly, the sales layers we talked about, right? The innovations in food, the no rules, just ride it out back, the remodels, the investments in technology. Those are the things that we're driving against to continue to make progress on traffic. And they have the ancillary benefit, especially with our technology investments, to help with margins. So that's how we're trying to manage both. We don't have an interest in getting involved in deep discounting to drive sales. We want to offer great food and value at a fair price and continue to make progress on productivity to help protect margins.
spk32: Okay, and then just in terms of, you know, those drivers that you talked about, are you able to sort of give a sense of like the magnitude as you think about the contributions? Just again, in the context of, you know, 2Q, I think the implied traffic is perhaps, you know, still not positive. And so, you know, as you roll these things on, I guess, what does the build look like?
spk18: Yeah, so basically what we're going to see is during the year, traffic will build from some of these sales layers. I'm not going to get into, you know, is it worth this much or worth this, this much or worth that much, but they will come together and build, and you'll see as a result, especially, you know, as you look at our full year guide, improvement in traffic trends as the year goes along. So it's those particular sales layers that we're trying to work through on the food side and the technology side and bring them in quarter by quarter by quarter to help build traffic in our restaurants.
spk15: And some of these are going to have a little bit longer tail as well, right? I mean, some of the technology investments we're making, again, it's hard to quantify an exact traffic lift from putting in new technology that makes you more efficient. But that's going to have a tail heading into 2024, not just from a productivity standpoint, but really from a sales standpoint as well. So every one of these things is paced and sequenced. The catering, for example, we're already seeing it. We've doubled our catering sales year over year. That's already starting to show up in the numbers. So they're all going to play a different role in terms of how it seeds in through the year in this environment.
spk18: What I've found after all these years in the business is you have to have multiple sustainable layers, not just LTOs and promotions, multiple sustainable sales layers to consistently grow the business, and that's what we're trying to do.
spk31: Got it. Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Brian Harbor of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk17: Yeah, thank you. Good morning, guys. You know, Chris, you talked about kind of the improved, you know, P&L at Outback units. How much is the build cost up on a new Outback? And, you know, so I'm curious just what the returns are today, how you think about the hurdle rate on a new Outback or, you know, maybe also a remodel perhaps.
spk15: Yeah, we're looking at 20%, you know, cash on cash returns at Outback for a new unit. You know, I think the build cost is, you know, it's, yeah, it's about 20%. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's about 20% up from where it was.
spk17: Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe just on delivery, too. Sounds like, I mean, obviously that continues to grow on a year-on-year basis. What have you been doing specifically to kind of continue to grow that channel? You know, what else can you do to kind of continue to expand the delivery business?
spk18: Yeah, the third-party delivery business continues to be strong for us. And it is a segment of customer base. that a younger customer base that continues to grow and we're capturing that. And so what we're doing basically are two things, three things, excuse me. One, we're making sure our assets are in shape for delivery and they've got delivery rooms and enabled that way. Two, we've trained all of our people to work with our third-party providers to provide the delivery experience that they've really come to know and trust. Three, we have wonderful Family offers, family bundled offers, especially at Carrabba's, that is tremendous food and tremendous value. And we're playing, you know, casual dining has the opportunity to play in the delivery space that for many years we didn't play in. And I think we have a chance to take share and grow as a result. And so we're seeing that in our business.
spk01: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Brian Vaccaro of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, thanks and good morning. I just wanted to clarify some of the comments on recent sales trends just to make sure I interpreted them correctly. So first, did you say that quarter-to-date comps are in line with the Q2 guide of 0.5 to 1.5% or did you embed an acceleration versus what you're seeing here in April. And then second, Chris, did you say comps versus 19 started to accelerate in March and April? If so, could you put some numbers around that? And I'm just curious what you think is driving that sequential improvement.
spk18: Yeah, I'll take the first part and turn it over to Chris. So the guide that we gave for the quarter, our trends are consistent with that guide. They're not exact with that guide, but they're consistent, embedded in that guide. So that's how we want to lay that out, and you'll see, I think, that piece come together nicely in Q2. For the improvement versus 2019, it's the stuff we've been talking about, Brian, which is the sales layers, the operations, the technology. And I'll turn it over to Chris for anything else that he'd like to add.
spk15: Well, the only clarifying – so what I said was if you look at March and you look versus 2019 – And then you look where we are over the first four or so weeks of our second quarter, we have seen a step-up in sales and traffic relative to 2019. So the step-up didn't start occurring in March. In fact, the early part of Q1, as we said on our last call, we had seen some pretty good trends heading into the first part of Q1, and that slowed down a little bit on versus 19 over the back part of the quarter, but we've seen that tick back up again here early in Q2. Hopefully, that provides perspective.
spk18: Right, and that's what gives us the foolishness you're hearing on where we think sales and traffic are going for the longer term for the company.
spk09: Okay, thank you.
spk10: One thing I've been thinking about is just the increased advertising spend at Outback. Can you remind me, when did that begin? How has that impacted sales? And are you pleased with the ROI you're seeing there? And kind of how does it inform your future, your plan over the next few quarters?
spk18: Yeah, we don't anticipate going back to the level of advertising we once had because we know so much about our customer and our digital efforts. But We have upticked our spend it out back the last few months, not tremendously, because we're seeing the returns in the advertising that we expected. And we think we have a great platform with no rules just right to talk about that. And therefore, we'll continue to watch our advertising. And what the beauty of digital, Brian, is you can plus it on or off very, very quickly. And we're not afraid to invest where we're getting the returns. But I don't anticipate it's going back to pre-COVID advertising spending as a percent of sales. But you'll see more from Outback around the no rules, just right platform going forward.
spk10: All right. And then just last one for me. I just had two quick ones on the margins. Chris, your Q1 obviously came in well ahead of your guidance. I'm curious what drove that upside in the store margins versus your expectations?
spk15: Sure. Yeah, I think a few things. One, sales were better than we expected in Q1. Valentine's Day week actually set a weekly sales record for our company. So that was very encouraging. And we also had some, as I mentioned earlier, we had some cogs. favorability above what we were expecting. Some of these productivity opportunities have started to seed really quickly. There was also some, again, being overly specific, some operating supply favorability. The other piece of this, though, is look at the international segment. It was up $16 million. Some of that was a little unexpected in the sense that if you look at Hong Kong, for example, That's a market that opened up much faster than we expected. They were basically shut down. We did not make a penny in Hong Kong last year in Q1. This year in Q1, we made like $4 million. So that was a big improvement that was a little bit unexpected heading into the quarter. We also had some FX favorability that, again, was a little bit unexpected because the currency can be a little volatile. So, look, there's a few things that drove that. But the biggest things are, look, we over-delivered on sales. and some of the efficiencies that we're seeing in our P&L were really, really strong.
spk18: And we were able to do that in a highly inflationary environment, which is really important. And that's part of our productivity as well, sticking it.
spk10: Great. And if you look at that second quarter guidance, it looks like, just quick math, it looks like it embeds store margins, maybe in the high 15s or 16% range or so. Could you confirm that's in the ballpark? And Just some perspective on – I know Q2 is usually lower than Q1, but are there any specific cost dynamics in Q2 worth highlighting versus what we saw in Q1 or anything temporary, unusual in Q1 as we think about Q2?
spk15: Yeah, look, there's always some little things, Brian, but I guess I would tell you that the Q2 guide, you would say – margins are probably down a little in Q2 versus last year, but I would say op margins still in that, you know, seven to seven and a half percent range for the quarter. Restaurant margins probably closer to flat year over year. It would be a ballpark.
spk08: All right. That's great. I'll pass it along. Thank you.
spk15: Thanks, Brian.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from John Tower of Citigroup. Please go ahead.
spk16: Great. Thanks for taking the question. So I'm just curious. you and a number of your competitors in the public market or chains that have talked about recently getting rid of, well not getting rid of, but de-emphasizing discounting and trying to attract a more profitable transaction in their stores. It seems like it's a broadly held goal or effort across the industry and the chain side. So I'm curious, One, if you think you can hang on to that, if the environment worsens going forward, or say one of the competitors get a little bit more rational with discounting. And then two, how kind of the competitive dynamic in the marketplace, particularly with a lot of the closures in the independent side, kind of filters into your thinking around this.
spk18: Yeah, no, clearly, John, we have a chance to take share because some of the closures that happened. And also, you know, the new restaurants coming into play, which we aren't seeing so much right now in the U.S., but we will see in years ahead. So there's some of that going on. But I think, you know, I can't speak for competitors, John. I know where we stand, which is value is service plus food divided by price. And if we can offer consistent, knowable value, value, like some of the promotions at Outback or some of our other things that we're doing at other brands like Carrabba's or Bonefish, consumers respond, especially when you take a look at what the digital marketing environment provides by getting more specific with customers. If we can do that, speaking for our company, we don't have to rely on some of the deep discounting that was done before the pandemic. And we want to stay focused particularly on this. And if some competitor in the very short term decides to do that, we'll continue to do what we do and go up against it and watch what's going on in the competitive marketplace. But we don't have an interest in doing that. We want to stay offering great value with the programs we have. Finally, at Outback, the combos we offer, steak and lobster, steak and chicken, steak and ribs, tremendous value. Very few competitors offer it. Our customers love it. And you look at the price points that we offer. There's a great value with those combos as well. So that's John Howard trying to attract our customers and move forward.
spk16: Got it. In that circumstance, do you see yourselves potentially pulsing media a little bit higher than you have? I know you've cut back quite a bit in recent years, which made sense, but could we see a return back to pre-COVID levels?
spk18: It's not going to be back to pre-COVID levels, but media will follow the idea, follow the money. So if Outback has some tremendous innovation, and we're seeing it with our customers, we're going, right? And you can turn that on and off like that with the digital efforts, right? So we will see that with our customers. Also, we talked earlier about our third-party delivery. We are watching that very carefully, and how do we support that? So those are some of the things that are going on, John, as we manage the traffic and margin dynamics.
spk15: Yeah, John, if you remember, we used to spend, back prior to the pandemic, 3.5% of sales as a company on marketing, and then we laid out sort of our restaurant margin map to get where we needed to be. And at that point, Tom, we were saying, hey, look, we're just thinking about cutting marketing back down in that 3% range. The reality is, is we've been running in the low twos for the last year, year or two. We feel pretty good about where we are in terms of the returns we're seeing. So I think the truth long-term, if the question is where we go long-term, it could be somewhere in between, but we're never going to go back to that three to three and a half percent thought process on marketing.
spk16: Got it. I appreciate that. And then just in terms of going back to the conversation about some of the closures in the marketplace, it does sound like the lending environment is certainly getting more challenging in And I would assume that's going to impact a handful of the independents or smaller regional chains out there. And I know you're still at the emerging part of getting the brand or the company to start growing new stores again. But in that respect, have you started to hear from landlords perhaps better deals than what you were even hearing about a few months ago because the environment's getting more difficult for the competition to open new stores?
spk18: We hope to, John. But it's still – we're looking at quality sites. And it's still a tough negotiation, not with landlords, but with competition to get the best sites. Because that's really important for us because when we look at our site placement, we get good sites in a great trade area, in a great market. The returns are in the sales. They are terrific. So we're not going to go in the C&D players. I'm not saying that's where independents are. We're not going to go to C&D sites. I'm not saying that's where independents are. But in the A and B locations, There's still a fair amount of competition for that but our attention clearly with our new restaurants is to take share Got it.
spk11: Thanks for the time Thank you, the next question is coming from Dennis Geiger of UBS, please go ahead Thank you another one on advertising if I could As I believe it's one of the more impactful drivers of traffic maybe this year you talked about good ROIs but As it relates to how well the marketing is resonating, anything you can share sort of on recent awareness levels, maybe relative to peers, how that's trended? I'm not sure if that's the best metric necessarily, but is there anything to share on the awareness perhaps that's benefiting from some of the marketing?
spk18: Yeah, I think awareness is hanging in there. There's nothing really trends that I can speak to quite yet. But I think as we continue to do this work, our awareness levels will improve. I'm also hoping that in some of our smaller brands like Carrabba's, you know, we can continue to build awareness. But nothing I can really report yet on the awareness front that's really building for our company.
spk15: And I would say one of the reasons why you do go on television as a medium, though, is to build up that awareness. So that's sort of the first part of the funnel that we're trying to build from a marketing perspective. We are back on TV. We know that that helps with awareness. And so you're going to – you've probably seen us, but you're going to see us more on TV than maybe we have been in the last couple of years.
spk11: Very helpful. And one more semi-related. Just some of the work you've done the last few years enhancing, you know, etc. Are you getting that credit from the customer yet, given how many times the customer comes a year, or does that take time to build, and you're still maybe not seeing the benefit from some of the work you've done over the last couple years, and that's kind of still on the way to come?
spk18: Yeah, given casual dining is a relatively light-use occasion overall, we do have people that come frequently. It will take some time to build, but I am thrilled with the progress we're making in their customer measures in all of our brands. And where we stand versus competition, the progress we're making, and I've seen this in the industry over the years, we continue to make progress like this, it'll show up on our sales. But because of the relatively light frequency of casual dining, it's not going to show up as quickly as maybe some other parts of the industry. But it's the things we've been talking about, it's the technology investments, and it's our retention levels are really helping us.
spk25: Great, thank you.
spk22: Thank you. We're showing time for one last question today. The final question will be coming from Andrew Strzelczyk of BMO. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in here. I just had a question, another one on the value proposition over time. And I guess a couple quick things. Number one, do you think that grocery prices impact business trends for your business? And You know, do you think about or how do you think about what gives you the confidence that if grocery prices were to reset lower, you know, that wouldn't create a challenge for your value proposition? And do you have, I guess, lastly, more opportunity maybe for your digital assets or otherwise? Are there ways in which maybe you're more nimble now than in the past? And I know this is more of an industry question, but I would love to get your perspective for your brands.
spk18: Thanks. Sure. Grocery prices is something that, you know, informs us and we watch. But what drives our performance is what we do, okay, on the value side and the customer service side. Obviously, we've talked today a lot about not getting ahead of our skis on price increases. We've been very careful about that. We're watching what's going on with the grocery space. But, boy, I tell you, you come into Outback Steakhouse or Carrabba's and get a prepared meal with great service and not have to cook, that's a huge value, huge value for our company. So that is what we're driving to grow our business. On the technology front, absolutely. On the digital side, this is much more of an opportunity than it was, you know, years ago. And we tend to be on the forefront of that within casual dining and use that asset and use our customer information and invest behind it to grow our business and our traffic. That is absolutely top priority for us.
spk30: Great. Thank you very much.
spk22: Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Dino for closing comments.
spk18: Well, thank you, everybody, for attending the call today. We appreciate it. We look forward to updating you on our second quarter results in July. Thanks, everybody.
spk22: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines at this time or log off the webcast and enjoy the rest of your day. Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Greetings and welcome to the Blumenbrand's Fiscal First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following a question and answer session, a question and answer session will follow management's prepared remarks. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tammy Dean, Senior Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you, Ms. Dean. You may begin.
spk28: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are David Dino, our Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Meyer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have access to our fiscal first quarter 2023 earnings release. It can also be found on our website at blumenbrands.com in the investor section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting results on an adjusted basis. and explanation of our use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our earnings release and on our website as previously described. Before we begin formal remarks, I'd like to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including a discussion of recent trends. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ in a material way from our forward-looking statements. Some of these risks are mentioned in our earnings release. Others are discussed in our SEC filings, which are available at sec.gov. During today's call, we will provide a brief recap of our financial performance for the fiscal first quarter 2023, an overview of company highlights, and current thoughts on 2023 guidance. Once we've completed these remarks, we'll open the call up for questions. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to David Deno.
spk18: Well, thank you, Tammy, and welcome to everyone listening today. As noted in this morning's earnings release, adjusted Q1 2023 diluted earnings per share was $0.98, which compares to $0.80 in Q1 2022, up 23%. Q1 2023 marks the best quarterly diluted earnings per share in the company's history. Combined U.S. comparable sales are up 5.1% with each brand having positive same-store sales. The first quarter results further validate the strategic and operational framework we outlined for the year and set us up to deliver our commitments. I will be giving an update on our plans in a minute. Before doing that, I would like to thank our teams in the restaurants and Restaurant Support Center for their unwavering commitment to serving our guests. Your dedication to great hospitality and service and experience is what makes our company so successful. As we look to build upon the momentum of the first quarter, we continue to remain focused on executing our plan to grow the business. As a reminder, our priorities include driving same-store sales growth, maintaining off-premises momentum, sustaining the progress in operating margins, becoming a more digitally savvy company, and increasing new restaurant openings. Let me now turn to our first priority, which is to grow sales and traffic in our restaurants. Growing sustainable traffic, especially at Outback, is our biggest priority. To achieve this goal, we are executing a number of initiatives. To start, let me provide a brief update on our use of technology to improve execution and consistency in the restaurants. The handheld technology roll-up for our servers was completed at the end of Q4. The Outback team is now focused on optimizing the experience in the dining room to deliver a differentiated guest experience. The tablets allow our servers to cover more tables while providing an even better experience to our guests. Tablets are not replacing personal interaction. They are enhancing it as servers now spend more time with guests. In addition, we continue to roll out new cooking technology, including advanced grills and ovens. The rollout is on track to be completed in the third quarter. This cooking technology is improving product quality and meal pacing. Like handhelds, the kitchen investments are also improving the customer experience and productivity. The second part of building sales and traffic is more targeted marketing designed to leverage our heritage, build brand equity, and drive frequency. Outback brought back the No Rules, Just Write platform at the beginning of Q1, but this is more than just marketing. It's an attitude. It's how we re-energize our restaurants with new food offerings, exceptional service, and most importantly, it ties back to our past. No Rules, Just Write is aimed at highlighting our great menu and the everyday value that we offer to our guests. In Q1, we leaned into our Aussie roots with both food and beverage innovation. The third element to our sales building strategy is an introduction of new layers in all of our brands. For example, during the first quarter, Fleming's launched Social Hour. It captures our wonderful food and drink offerings during the early evening. We also continue to grow our event catering business within Fleming's and look forward to the innovation that's coming from this business. Another sales layer is Wine Dinners at Carrabba's. Wine dinners showcase the innovation and product quality Krobs is known for while providing a great value for the guests and a good return for the company. We will continue to provide updates on sales layers at all of our brands throughout the year. The final sales driving strategy is additional spending on remodels this year. We paused our remodel efforts during the pandemic and have since developed a variety of scopes that can be deployed based on varying needs of our restaurants. We are on track to remodel over 100 locations this year. This is the beginning of a multi-year effort to touch a large percentage of our business. Keeping our assets looking their best is a key element of growing traffic. All the initiatives I've just described are designed to build sustainable traffic now and over the long term. Turning to our second priority, continuing the momentum in the off-premises business. The total off-premises business was 23% of U.S. sales in Q1, and our third-party delivery business continues to perform well. Importantly, off-premises profit margins are comparable to margins of the in-restaurant business. In addition, catering is becoming an important and growing opportunity for our brands. The Carabas team remains an industry leader in this space. Both Outback and Bonefish are also seeing momentum in catering. As a result of all of the above, we expect off-premises to remain a large part of our business. Our third priority is to sustain the major progress we have made in operating margins over the last four years in a highly inflationary environment. Margin improvements start with growing healthy traffic across the in-restaurant and off-premises channels. We also reduced the reliance on discounting and promotional LTOs and pivoted advertising spend towards more targeted, higher-return digital channels. Additionally, we remain disciplined in managing the middle of the P&L and are aggressively pursuing efficiencies in food, labor, and overhead. As Chris will discuss, despite persistent inflation, we've been able to achieve our margins well above 2019. We remain committed to achieving 8% operating margins over the long term. The fourth priority is to capitalize on our progress to become a more digitally savvy company. In Q1, approximately 79% of total U.S. off-premises sales were through digital channels. The new online ordering system and mobile app have exceeded our expectations. The new app has 3 million users. You can expect to see further activity as we improve the functionality and features of our app and digital offerings. And the final priority is to build more new restaurants, especially at Outback, Fleming's, and in Brazil. Each of these brands have strong sales and profit margins and offer great returns. Outback has the opportunity to significantly expand its restaurant base. We will continue to invest and grow Fleming's. We also have the ability to more than double our footprint in Brazil. In summary, we are off to a terrific start. We are focusing on achieving our 2023 goals while building a great business that will continue to thrive. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Chris.
spk15: Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by providing a recap of our financial performance for the fiscal first quarter of 2023. Total revenues in Q1 were $1.2 billion, which was up 9.1% from 2022, driven by a 5.1% increase in U.S. comparable restaurant sales, as well as a 14.3% comp sales increase in Brazil. In our US brands, traffic was down 70 basis points in Q1. This was a significant improvement from Q4, even after factoring in a 330 basis point favorable impact on Q1 traffic from the lapping of Omicron and unfavorable weather. As we indicated in our last call, we began to see improvements in traffic in December, and these trends continued into the first quarter. Average check was up 5.8% in Q1 versus 2022. This is in line with what we discussed on last quarter's call. In terms of pricing, we would expect to see the impact of pricing slowly come down as the year progresses. There will be a larger step down towards the end of Q3 as we lap price changes from last year. We will consider taking some level of new pricing later in the year, but our goal is to take as little pricing as possible in this environment. At 23% of U.S. sales, Q1 off-premises was down 100 basis points from Q4. Given the heavier volumes we tend to see in Q1, this change was expected and was primarily a migration from our curbside business to in-restaurant dining. In recent weeks, we have seen off-premises return to 24% of U.S. sales. Importantly, the highly incremental third-party delivery business was flat from Q4 at roughly 12% of U.S. sales. third-party has remained at approximately 12% over each of the past five quarters, even as in-restaurant dining has returned. In terms of brand performance, Outback total off-premises mix was 26% of sales, and Carrabba's was 30% of sales. Off-premises remains sticky and is a large part of our ongoing success, and as Dave mentioned, it will be a key part of our growth strategy moving forward. And a final note on Q1 sales. Brazil Q1 comps were up 14.3%. Brazil's first quarter reflected the lapping of COVID-related operating restrictions from early 2022. Q1 was the last quarter where favorable COVID laps will have a significant impact on year-over-year trends. Also, as a reminder, Brazil comp sales do not include the benefit from the Brazil tax exemption we discussed on the last earnings call. As it relates to other aspects of our Q1 financial performance, GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter was 93 cents versus 73 cents of diluted earnings per share in 2022. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was 98 cents versus 80 cents of adjusted diluted earnings per share in 2022. This represented the most profitable quarter in our company's history. The difference between our gap and adjusted results was in our share count and was related to required accounting treatment for the hedge we have on our convertible bonds. Operating income margin was 9.7% in Q1 versus 9.4% in 2022. Restaurant-level operating margins were 17.9% versus 17.1% last year. Margins improved for a couple of reasons. First, international operating margins were up 770 basis points driven by Brazil as they are lapping COVID impacts from Q1 2022. Second, the benefits from our U.S. pricing and productivity initiatives more than offset inflation. As it relates to inflation, commodity inflation was up 6.6% in Q1, and labor inflation was up 6.4%. Restaurant operating expense inflation improved from Q4 but remained elevated at 9.4%. This was driven by higher utilities, R&M, and advertising. Overall, inflation in the first quarter was in line with expectations. Depreciation expense and general and administrative expense were both up in Q1 relative to last year in absolute dollars. This is consistent with our increased levels of capital spending and our investments in infrastructure to support growth. Overall, we feel good about our margins and we remain well above pre-pandemic levels. Also in Q1, our adjusted tax rate was 14% and includes the benefit from the Brazil tax exemption. Turning to our capital structure, total debt was $768 million at the end of Q1. This puts our current lease-adjusted leverage ratio below three times. In terms of share repurchases, year-to-date, we have repurchased 1.1 million shares of stock for $27 million. We still have $113 million remaining on the new authorization that the Board approved on February 7th. The Board also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.24 a share payable on May 24th. We are pleased with our balanced deployment of free cash flow and will continue to deploy dollars against additional debt pay down, share repurchases, and our dividend. Now, turning to our 2023 and Q2 guidance. First, we are reaffirming all aspects of our 2023 guidance previously provided on our February 16th earnings call. And second, as it relates to the second quarter, We expect U.S. comparable restaurant sales to be 0.5% to 1.5%, and we expect Q2 adjusted earnings per share to be between $0.62 and $0.67. Year-over-year comparisons will become more difficult in Q2 relative to Q1 as we will not have the same level of benefits either domestically or internationally from lapping COVID impacts in 2022. In addition, strong Q2 trends from last year make it our most challenging lap of the year. In summary, this was another successful quarter for Blumen Brands, and we are well on our way to becoming a better, stronger, operations-focused company. And with that, we will open up the call for questions.
spk22: Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. If you would like to remove your question, please press star 2. In the interest of time, we do ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, that's star 1 to register a question at this time. Today's first question is coming from Jeffrey Bernstein of Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk07: Great. Thank you very much. One question, one follow-up. The question would be on the... the second quarter guidance. I think there's some industry and investor concerns of slowing comps at least in April, although clearly choppy with the shifts and whatnot. But your guidance maybe corroborates that. I think, Chris, you mentioned that the compares get tougher and no longer you have the Omicron benefit and whatnot. But can you just talk about maybe the the exit rate you saw for the first quarter, or maybe what you're running in April, any change in consumer behaviors you're seeing in any of these brands, just trying to get a sense for whether or not there's any validity to fears of most recent slowdown in the underlying. Thank you, and then one follow-up.
spk18: Yeah, hey, Jeff, good morning. Look, our Q2 performance is tied directly into what Chris guided so far. for the quarter. So if you look at the trends in the quarter, that's incorporated in our Q2 guidance. And as we mentioned, March, April, and May are really our biggest overlaps of the year. So our trends still are good, and our customers are hanging in there. So we feel good about where the guide looks, and we feel good about the full year as we're entering our full year guidance.
spk15: Yeah, and just to give you some math behind the guide, so if you look at the guidance range of, call it 50 basis points to 1.5%, I would say you could expect in that guide maybe a 5% or maybe a little higher average check built into that guide. So that would put your traffic basically at the midpoint at down 4, which if you stripped out Omicron and unfavorable weather from the Q1 result, it basically is flat from Q1 in terms of our overall traffic guide for the quarter. And then, you know, again, I know we tend to not like 2019 as much, but I know that some folks are still looking at 2019. If you look at 2019 results from Q1 to Q2, we've actually seen a tick up in both comps and traffic versus 2019. pretty material checkup in Thompson traffic versus where we were in 2019 and both, you know, based on what the last five weeks or so of Q1 looked like versus the first three or four weeks of Q2. So we feel pretty good about the overall guide, at least in terms of where the consumer is. I think a lot of the noise about Q2 has more to do with the lap than our trends today.
spk07: Understood. And then just the, The follow-up is on the menu pricing. I think you mentioned in the first quarter you had close to a 6% average check. I'm just wondering specifically how much are you running in pricing in the first quarter? Maybe any resistance that you're seeing year-to-date or what your expectations are for pricing as we move through the year? I feel like there's a most recent concern on taking new pricing with food at home now falling below food away from home, which seems to have been a nice move.
spk15: level of protection for our restaurants for such a long time maybe there's reason to feel the need to be more cautious on the pricing going forward thank you yeah a few things so pricing was about seven and a half like 7.6 percent in q1 we would expect that to kick down as the year progresses and look i think we've done pretty well in relative pricing you know particularly versus the competition we took effectively zero pricing in 2020 we maybe took two percent or so in 2021 and then 7% or so last year. So through the end of 2022, we were less than 10% higher in pricing versus where we were at the start of the pandemic. And Our pricing is still well below inflation that we've seen over that same time period. We do have some pricing built into the back half of the year that we think can help given some of this persistent inflation, but it won't be near the amount that we took in Q3 or Q4 of last year. Our predisposition, as we said in the prepared remarks, is to take as little pricing as possible this year, and it just depends on how this year plays out. If we don't think we have the pricing power with the consumer, then we may not take it. But given our strong start in Q1, We may have some flexibility on taking less pricing as the year progresses, but we're not going to make those decisions until as late as possible.
spk07: Got it. And you just mentioned the strong start with the first quarter. The fact that you reiterated the full-year guidance with the first quarter being such a healthy beat from at least an earnings perspective, the reason why there was perhaps no raise to that guidance, is there anything particular going on that leaves you a little bit more cautious for the rest of the year, or is that just prudency, which I would think would be important in this environment? Thank you.
spk15: Yeah, prudent's a good word. I think there's two things to that, right? So we feel really good about our full-year guide. Q1 was obviously a great start to the year, but there's a lot that can unfold in the next nine months, and it just feels a little bit early to be changing guidance. And I'd say one technical thing is what I just mentioned. I mean, to the point... To this point, the consumer seems to be doing pretty well, but again, there is some uncertainty out there, so we want to preserve the flexibility potentially to take as little pricing as possible in the back half of the year. Pricing can have a big impact on your financial results, but it also, in terms of traffic, can have longer-term implications, so we want to reserve the right to take less pricing if we need to.
spk29: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Alex Lagle of Jefferies, please go ahead.
spk12: Good morning. On the cost of goods being 31.3%, I mean, I imagine Brazil tax benefit may be helped to some degree, but other than the first quarter of 21, I don't think I've kind of seen it that low yet. going back really ever. I mean, it seems like inflation and pricing outlooks remain the same. So I'm curious if you could offer more perspective on what's driving that.
spk18: Yeah, I think a couple things before Chris gets into some of the details. And we talked about the investment in technology, you know, in the script. We talked about it in other conference calls. And clearly the technology investments we're making in the restaurants and in the kitchen and everything else is paying off. And we're seeing that. And you see it not only in cost, but we hope to see it over the long term in customer satisfaction. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris.
spk15: Yeah, and we talked about the tax benefit maybe helping overall margins by like 30 basis points or so. So that isn't the big, big driver here in cost of goods sold. It goes back to a little bit of what Dave said. I mean, I think that the piece that we expected in Q1, cost of sales performance, was the pricing piece because that is pretty predictable. But I think the piece that was maybe a little bit of a surprise is how efficient we're running these restaurants and how smart we've gotten with this technology. It's a really, really good sign for us that the things that we're doing from an investment standpoint are are going to pay off big time for the company moving forward.
spk12: Thanks. As a follow-up, in South Korea, I see your partners have closed down a bunch of the virtual kitchens and been opening a higher number of traditional restaurants, it seems. I wonder if you could offer any color on the approach there, if there's anything you should think about more broadly and how you're going about development in the international franchise and JV markets.
spk18: Yeah, throughout our whole company, we really see the opportunity to build restaurants. And they'll be delivery and carryout enabled, but we see the opportunity to go beyond virtual kitchens and build efficient, wonderful boxes that are in-restaurant enabled and also can do delivery and carryout in any virtual work at all. But our strategy is going up against our traditional development, both here and overseas.
spk00: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Lauren Silverman of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
spk20: Thank you, guys, and congrats on the quarter. I wanted to ask you more about what you're seeing with the consumer. Any signs of changes in behavior, check management, trade down, any differences you're seeing across brands? Yeah.
spk18: Let me break the brand apart between fine dining and casual dining. Fine dining customers is really doing well and continues to do well. So that segment's strong. On casual dining, basically, we're seeing the customer hang tight overall. We're seeing our higher end customers come in with similar frequency. using our restaurants, and we're especially seeing it around special occasions. We had the best week ever in our history on Valentine's Day, and we're hoping for a really wonderful Mother's Day. So we're seeing that piece of the consumer doing pretty well. On the lower end consumer, we are seeing continued frequency, but maybe a little bit of management on the guest check side as they come into our restaurants. And our offers in our LTOs that we're offering, like, for instance, the steak and lobster macaroni and cheese for $16.99 at the entry point and outback, helps address some of that. So that's what we're seeing from the consumer right now.
spk15: Yeah, and I'd say just to give you, you mentioned trade down and mix, just to give you some perspective. So we talked about pricing, so that does imply that mix was down like 180 basis points or so in the quarter, so it's probably important to provide some perspective on that. As Dave said, there is a piece of that that we think is consumer trade. Our app mix is lower. But the majority of that mix has to do with revenue center shifts. So we know we got some of the areas where we are seeing some of our strongest growth also carry a lower check average. Catering sales, for example, have basically doubled from where they were a year ago and continue to grow, but the average check per person is much lower on a catering transaction. But again, it's very profitable for us. Lunch is another area where we're continuing to see growth. Again, the check on lunch is lower than a check you would see on dinner. LTOs have been very popular, right? And again, they carry a little bit lower check average. So there's a lot of things that I would call more engineered in terms of our check that we're seeing, our mix that we're seeing in Q1 and then continuing into Q2. But at the same time, it is fair to say there is a bit of check management.
spk20: Super helpful. Thank you. And then just to follow up on the 2Q guide, can you just break down what's embedded for operating margins, I guess the puts and takes relative to 1Q? Is there anything outside of sales leveraged? Thank you.
spk15: No, it's mostly sales leverage. I think you might see a stitch lower commodity inflation as well as labor inflation. I think just as we start to lap some of the areas from a year ago, those things will continue to get a little bit better in Q2. But it really is. I mean, honestly, if you look at the Q1 result in our Q2 guide and you just take the implied sales change and you do a flow-through on that, that pretty much gets you close to our guide for the quarter. So it really is more of a sales flow-through conversation than anything else.
spk22: Great. Thank you, guys.
spk15: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from John Ivanco of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, thank you. I want to ask a bigger picture question than maybe some specifics around it. So, you know, Dave, obviously very experienced in this industry, and we've certainly seen customer bases change in this industry, use cases change, you know, competition change, and One of the things, and listen, this is kind of industry expert commentary that you kind of hear, is that the millennial and Gen Z consumer, at least those without families, aren't casual dining customers and may not even be casual dining customers. So especially given these April numbers that have kind of come out, we're kind of hearing this secular argument of, you know, casual dining is in decline. It's a leaking bucket. It just depends how fast the bucket is leaking of, you know, basically traffic will be in perpetual decline. I mean, some years might be down to some years might be down five, you know, so you, I mean, those are the kinds of comments, you know, that kind of come out. I want you to, I guess, you know, address that, you know, just in terms of, Hey, this is, this is a good growing segment that, you know, can generate positive same store traffic and, you know, through a cycle or, you know, if you just, you know, you say, you know what, this is, you know, this is something that you can still create value and this is an industry or this is a segment, this is a brand, you know, that can create value for shareholders even in a perpetually negative same store traffic environment. Hopefully that's clear.
spk18: Yeah, that's very clear, John. I think it's an excellent question. So it's a very broad question. I'll try and answer it as concisely as possible. But in my own background, I've got a lot of experience in QSR and a lot of experience in casual dining. And I can tell you, I am thrilled to be in casual dining. It's an $80 billion category without a huge market share leader with a lot of chance to grow and take share. So is convenience more important? Absolutely, John. And we're seeing that in our delivery carryout business, and our third-party delivery continues to be very strong. Now, what we saw in the pandemic was when restaurants opened back up, people missed restaurants. And I even think those millennials will graduate into casual dining as they enjoy the experience. It's up to us to offer a fantastic occasion at great value. So that's part one of this. Part two is... John, we're seeing as we open new restaurants, especially at Outback, the volumes are way exceeding what our base is. And so when we go into new territories with good assets, the customers are there. So I strongly reject the argument that casual dining is an industry that's fading away. It's got great opportunity. And I think, importantly, if you look at some of our price points that we offer versus maybe other parts of the industry, be it fast casual or QSR, we offer pretty good value, John, compared to some of those other players. So I think I'm very bullish on the casual dining industry. New development, new channels of distribution, carryout and delivery. The digital opportunity is there. It's big. We got to know our customers. And so I'm very bullish on casual dining.
spk05: Some old friends of ours used to talk about earn the right to own and maybe related to that, earn the right to grow. And I want to ask this in the context of that Outback unit growth, if same store traffic is down five, And we're talking about growing units. I mean, you know, those are things, you know, again, looking at it dispassionately from the outside, you know, those are two comments that don't really jibe with each other. I mean, many people would say you don't have the right to grow until you stabilize your same store traffic. Because the new stores that you're opening, even if they open high in year one, they're going to decline like the rest of the base. So, you know, talk about that decision a little bit more, the decision to open more. more units, more outbacks, U.S. specifically? And I do want you to address if there's any changes in the fiscal 23 CapEx budget and what you think 24 will be higher or lower than 23.
spk18: Yeah, 23, no major changes there, John, in our CapEx guide. But on the openings, Clearly, we're seeing strong new unit openings, and we have earned the right to own and grow, and I'm very familiar with that phrase, and use it my entire career. I think, John, what Chris mentioned, we are looking at a point in time right now that we're lapping the strongest period from last year. We expect in our guide traffic trends to improve the balance of the year, and the industry itself will grow, especially those strong players. But, John, if you could see our new unit investment returns Where we're going in and how those units are performing, it's really, really terrific. In fact, we opened a new Carrabba's just north of Tampa here that has among the highest volume in the entire system. So clearly, there's an opportunity to grow these brands beyond where they are today. you know, as we go forward. And I think the traffic trends, as you will see, as we begin to lap some of the wonkiness from last year, our traffic trends will improve. And I remain very bullish on the industry and our company.
spk15: Yeah. And let me just add on that, John. If you look at the financial performance of, you know, Outback specifically relative to where it was pre-pandemic, it looks like a very different financial performance in the sense that the P&L is far more efficient and The returns, you know, again, I mean, you go back to 2018, 2019, it was harder to make that argument to grow because the returns weren't there because the P&L wasn't in a great place. The P&L is in a much better shape now at Outback. One of the compromises, though, that we made with that in 2019 is we stripped out all the discounted occasions from 2019 out of the numbers. And we have not built all of that back into our traffic to this point. But, again, we're okay with that at this point because the P&L is in much better shape. Now is the time, to the point we keep raising, to build back that healthy traffic into our bases. 2023, 2024, as we layer in all these layers, that's when that's going to start to seed in. We feel really good about new unit opportunities with the P&L that we have today.
spk18: And lastly, John, we talked about some of the sales layers, and you've been following closely the technology in our restaurants, and we're going to have that opportunity. And as we talk about 2024, we've got an important off-site for our company coming up at the end of May. We'll discuss where we're going in 2024 with that and provide some more context coming up. But it's a little too early to talk about 2024.
spk05: Okay, understood. And this is related. I mean, obviously, very strong numbers out of Brazil. That's really been the case kind of pre-pandemic, post-pandemic. Are there any lessons? How have you solved the quote-unquote customer issue or the secular issue in Brazil to have such strong performance? Are there any lessons? And I know you've obviously taken some of the kitchen technology from Brazil and brought it into the U.S., so that's back-end stuff. Is there anything that you could do with the front-end or really customer-facing brands? you know, work from Brazil that can be applied to U.S. of just like, hey, listen, you know, there's really some best practices that can be done here to make, you know, Brazil and the U.S. the relevant brand that it was, you know, really, you know, in the last couple of decades.
spk18: Yeah, no, I agree with you, John. And with that, I took our brand presence down to Brazil earlier this year, and we talked that through in great detail. We talk about it all the time. Two things that Brazil does really well that we're continuing to push in the U.S. Number one, Innovation, product innovation, marketing innovation, and you're seeing that down there, and we're helping, we're talking more with each other, and you're going to see more of that from us, and I'm not going to get into that for competitive reasons. Number two, the use of technology and data. They've been fantastic down there. We're good here. We can do even better here. Now, in fairness to the Outback US team, it's a completely different competitive set down there. Outback is the only company steakhouse down there by far, and we own a great position there, and we leverage it like you can't believe, and we're going to continue to grow it. But there is really no major steak competition down there other than Outback. But the innovation and the technology is terrific there.
spk04: Thanks for all the questions. Thanks, guys. Thanks, John.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Sharon Zekvia of William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk21: Hi. Good morning. I have two questions. I'm curious whether you're seeing any changes in the competitive or promotional environment in the US. And then secondarily, I don't think I heard how labor turnover is trending. So if you could talk about that and any corollary benefits you might be seeing in kind of order accuracy or table turns or customer satisfaction. Thanks.
spk18: Yeah, we have long been a leader in retention in the industry. Our turnover rates are very good. The trends are good. That's a managing partner that runs a restaurant, whether it's the manager, whether it's our team members. So I'll put our numbers up against anybody. It's really good. And Sharon, you see that in customer measures, right? You see it in service measures. You see it in food measures. And we're making remarkable progress against that And our measures are just as good, especially at Alpac and anywhere in the industry. So we're very pleased about that. On the customer side, we are seeing an uptick in discounting in the industry, but not against the folks that we directly compete with. And so, you know, obviously we can't control what the customer does, but we want to be very prudent with our discounting and promotions. We want to continue to offer discounts. things that work great for the customer and also offer good return for the company. That's one of the reasons why our margins are hanging in there so well. But we want to build healthy traffic through sales layers. We don't want to participate in any big-time discounting or promotion, even though we've seen an uptick in parts of the industry. And I'd stress again, some of the things that we're offering, for instance, the sirloin and lobster mac and cheese for $16.99 at Outback is really a terrific product. So that's where we tend to play, Sharon.
spk22: Thank you. Thank you. The next question is coming from Jeff Farmer of Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead.
spk13: Great. Thanks. Good morning. Just really a couple follow-ups. So we touched on this, but a casual dining peer attributed the lion's share of some of the April same-store sales choppiness to Easter holiday and spring break shifts. Sounds like you guys have sort of a similar view. But the question is, why are you so confident that the casual dining consumer is not changing behavior and what is increasingly looking like sort of a more challenging consumer environment?
spk18: Because, Jeff, we haven't, we've seen our trends hold up. And, you know, you have to be really, when you look at restaurant industry, we've been talking about this ever since COVID and the emergence of COVID, you have to look at week-to-week and month-to-month trends, and the wonkiness of last year is really got to take into account. So, like we said on this call, the trends we are seeing remain good. And we're just trying to provide our best thinking as far as what Q2 and the rest of the year looks like in our guides.
spk15: Yeah. And again, I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. If you look at the last five weeks or so of Q1 and the first five weeks or so of Q2, we've seen a pretty decent step up in terms of sales and traffic relative to 2019. And again, it's not always the best litmus test because there's a lot in 2019 as well, but it is a little more consistent in terms of what we're seeing compared to last year, which did have quite a bit of up and down.
spk13: Okay. And then second and last question, I think you just said that pricing was 7.6% in Q1. Pricing in Q2 and Q3, can you just provide us with those numbers assuming no additional price increases are coming?
spk15: Yeah, if there's no additional price increases, it'll definitely kick down into the, yeah, it might still be at seven or so in Q2, but then Q3, it takes a pretty decent chunk down from there, and then you would end the year with, again, if we didn't replicate anything, you would end up with low single-digit pricing.
spk18: Yeah, I also want to reiterate what Chris said earlier, Jeff. When you look at pricing, you've got to look at the last three years. I mean, we've been very moderate in our three-year look on this, and that's what we're trying to do going forward.
spk24: All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Sarah, a senator of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk32: Oh, thank you very much. I just wanted to sort of go back to this idea when you talked about reduced discounting traffic and now you've got a new sort of more profitable base to build on. But I was trying to understand, I guess, a couple of things about that. One is You know, that's versus 2019. I'm curious, like, sort of how long that evolution took. You know, we're sort of three years plus into this. So, you know, is it just the case that it took a long time? Or, you know, as we think about building off a new base, I guess, why now versus maybe in the last year or two, acknowledging that COVID was a little disruptive? And then related to that, Could you talk a little bit about that, sort of how you think about that margin traffic trade-off? Because as you said, you've done a really nice job with the margin. Traffic is still, I think, you know, modestly negative and has been for a little while. So, you know, as we think through kind of the outlook ahead, I understand you have a lot of sales layers, but, you know, if sort of forced to make that trade-off, you know, how would you approach it? Thanks.
spk18: Well, first of all, we always want both. And there's a top line to traffic, too, which is great service, product, and innovation. So that's the first part of it. We want to manage the traffic equation and the margin equation. And it took us a while at Outback to work through the discounting. And obviously, COVID was a huge interrupter to all that. That took two years or however long you want to say. But like we talked earlier today, we feel like that's behind us. We have like-for-like traffic we can look at. We see in our guides traffic builds coming as the year progresses and we get a little past the wonkiness of 2022. But most importantly, the sales layers we talked about, right, the innovations in food, the no rules, just ride it out back, the remodels, the investments in technology. Those are the things that we're driving against to continue to make progress on traffic. And they have the ancillary benefit, especially with our technology investments, to help with margins. So that's how we're trying to manage both. We don't have an interest in getting involved in deep discounting to drive sales. We want to offer great food and value at a fair price and continue to make progress on productivity to help protect margins.
spk32: Okay, and then just in terms of, you know, those drivers that you talked about, are you able to sort of give a sense of, like, the magnitude as you think about the contributions? Just, again, in the context of, you know, 2Q, I think the implied traffic is perhaps, you know, still not positive. And so, you know, as you roll these things on, I guess, what does the build look like?
spk18: Yeah, so basically what we're going to see is during the year, traffic will build from some of these sales layers. I'm not going to get into, you know, is it worth this much or worth this, this much or worth that much, but they will come together and build, and you'll see as a result, especially, you know, as you look at our full year guide, improvement in traffic trends as the year goes along. So it's those particular sales layers that we're trying to work through on the food side and the technology side and bring them in quarter by quarter by quarter to help build traffic in our restaurants.
spk15: And some of these are going to have a little bit longer tail as well, right? I mean, some of the technology investments we're making, again, it's hard to quantify an exact traffic lift from putting in new technology that makes you more efficient. But that's going to have a tail heading into 2024, not just from a productivity standpoint, but really from a sales standpoint as well. So every one of these things is paced and sequenced. The catering, for example, we're already seeing it. We've doubled our catering sales year over year. That's already starting to show up in the numbers. So they're all going to play a different role in terms of how it seeds in through the year in this environment.
spk18: What I've found after all these years in the business is you have to have multiple sustainable layers, not just LTOs and promotions, multiple sustainable sales layers to consistently grow the business, and that's what we're trying to do. Got it.
spk31: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Brian Harbor of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk17: Yeah, thank you. Good morning, guys. You know, Chris, you talked about kind of the improved, you know, P&L at Outback units. How much is the build cost up on a new Outback? And, you know, so I'm curious just what the returns are today, how you think about the hurdle rate on a new Outback or, you know, maybe also a remodel perhaps.
spk15: Yeah, we're looking at 20%, you know, cash on cash returns at Outback for a new unit. You know, I think the build cost is, you know, it's, yeah, it's about 20%. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's about 20% up from where it was.
spk17: Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe just on delivery, too. Sounds like, I mean, obviously that continues to grow on a year-over-year basis. What have you been doing specifically to kind of continue to grow that channel? You know, what else can you do to kind of continue to expand the delivery business?
spk18: Yeah, the third-party delivery business continues to be strong for us. And it is a segment of customer base. that a younger customer base that continues to grow, and we're capturing that. And so what we're doing, basically, are two things, three things, excuse me. One, we're making sure our assets are in shape for delivery, and they've got delivery rooms and enabled that way. Two, we've trained all of our people to work with our third-party providers to provide the delivery experience that they've really come to know and trust. Three, we have wonderful... Family offers, family bundled offers, especially at Carrabba's, that is tremendous food and tremendous value. And we're playing, you know, casual dining has the opportunity to play in the delivery space that for many years we didn't play in. And I think we have a chance to take share and grow as a result. And so we're seeing that in our business.
spk01: Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from Brian Vaccaro of Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, thanks and good morning. I just wanted to clarify some of the comments on recent sales trends just to make sure I interpreted them correctly. So first, did you say that quarter-to-date comps are in line with the Q2 guide of 0.5 to 1.5% or did you embed an acceleration versus what you're seeing here in April. And then second, Chris, did you say comps versus 19 started to accelerate in March and April? If so, could you put some numbers around that? And I'm just curious what you think is driving that sequential improvement.
spk18: Yeah, I'll take the first part and turn it over to Chris. So the guide that we gave for the quarter, our trends are consistent with that guide. They're not exactly that guide, but they're consistent, embedded in that guide. So that's how I want to lay that out. And you'll see, I think, that piece come together nicely in Q2. For the improvement versus 2019, it's the stuff we've been talking about, Brian, which is the sales layers, the operations, the technology. And I'll turn it over to Chris for anything else that he'd like to add.
spk15: Well, the only clarifying. So what I said was if you look at March and you look versus 2019 and then you look where we are over the first four or so weeks, of our second quarter, we have seen a step up in sales and traffic relative to 2019. So the step up didn't start occurring in March. In fact, the early part of Q1, as we said on our last call, we had seen some pretty good trends heading into the first part of Q1, and that slowed down a little bit on versus 19 over the back part of the quarter, but we've seen that tick back up again here early in Q2. Hopefully, that provides perspective.
spk18: Right, and that's what gives us the bullishness you're hearing on where we think sales and traffic are going for the longer term for the company.
spk09: Okay, thank you.
spk10: One thing I've been thinking about is just the increased advertising spend at Outback. Can you remind me, when did that begin? How has that impacted sales? And are you pleased with the ROI you're seeing there? And kind of how does it inform your future, your plan over the next few quarters?
spk18: Yeah, we don't anticipate going back to the level of advertising we once had because we know so much about our customer and our digital efforts. But We have upticked our spend it out back the last few months, not tremendously, because we're seeing the returns in the advertising that we expected. And we think we have a great platform with no rules just right to talk about that. And therefore, we'll continue to watch our advertising. And what the beauty of digital, Brian, is you can plus it on or off very, very quickly. And we're not afraid to invest where we're getting the returns. But I don't anticipate it's going back to pre-COVID advertising spending as a percent of sales. But you'll see more from Outback around the no rules, just right platform going forward.
spk10: All right. And then just last one for me. I just had two quick ones on the margins. Chris, your Q1 obviously came in well ahead of your guidance. I'm curious what drove that upside in the store margins versus your expectations?
spk15: Sure. Yeah, I think a few things. One, sales were better than we expected in Q1. Valentine's Day week actually set a weekly sales record for our company. So that was very encouraging. And we also had some, as I mentioned earlier, we had some COGS favorability above what we were expecting. Some of these productivity opportunities have started to seed really quickly. There was also some, you know, again, being overly specific of some operating supply favorability. The other piece of this, though, is, you know, look at your – in the press release, look at the international segment. It was up $16 million. Some of that, you know, was a little unexpected in the sense that if you look at Hong Kong, for example – That's a market that opened up much faster than we expected. They were basically shut down. We did not make a penny in Hong Kong last year in Q1. This year in Q1, we made like $4 million. So that was a big improvement that was a little bit unexpected heading into the quarter. We also had some FX favorability that, again, was a little bit unexpected because the currency can be a little volatile. So, look, there's a few things that drove that. But the biggest things are, look, we over-delivered on sales. and some of the efficiencies that we're seeing in our P&L were really, really strong.
spk18: And we were able to do that in a highly inflationary environment, which is really important. And that's part of our productivity as well, sticking in.
spk10: Great. And if you look at that second quarter guidance, it looks like, just quick math, it looks like it embeds store margins, maybe in the high 15s or 16% range or so. Could you confirm that's in the ballpark? And Just some perspective on – I know Q2 is usually lower than Q1, but are there any specific cost dynamics in Q2 worth highlighting versus what we saw in Q1 or anything temporary, unusual in Q1 as we think about Q2?
spk15: Yeah, look, there's always some little things, Brian, but I guess I would tell you that the Q2 guide, you would say – Margins are probably down a little in Q2 versus last year, but I would say op margins still in that 7% to 7.5% range for the quarter. Restaurant margins probably closer to flat year over year. It would be a ballpark.
spk08: All right. That's great. I'll pass it along. Thank you.
spk18: Thanks, Brian.
spk22: Thank you. The next question is coming from John Tower of Citigroup. Please go ahead.
spk16: Great. Thanks for taking the question. So I'm just curious. You and a number of your competitors in the public market or chains that have talked about recently getting rid of – well, not getting rid of, but de-emphasizing discounting and trying to attract a more profitable transaction in their stores. It seems like it's a broadly held goal or effort across the industry and the chain side. So I'm curious, one – If you think you can hang on to that, if the environment worsens going forward, or say one of the competitors get a little bit more rational with discounting. And then two, how kind of the competitive dynamic in the marketplace, particularly with a lot of the closures in the independent side, kind of filters into your thinking around this.
spk18: Yeah, no, clearly, John, we have a chance to take share because some of the closures that happened. And also, you know, the new restaurants coming into play, which we aren't seeing so much right now in the U.S., but we will see in years ahead. So there's some of that going on. But I think, you know, I can't speak for competitors, John. I know where we stand, which is value is service plus food divided by price. And if we can offer consistent, knowable value, value, like some of the promotions at Outback or some of our other things that we're doing at other brands like Carrabba's or Bonefish, consumers respond, especially when you take a look at what the digital marketing environment provides by getting more specific with customers. If we can do that, speaking for our company, we don't have to rely on some of the deep discount that was done before the pandemic. And we want to stay focused particularly on this. And if some competitor in the very short term decides to do that, we'll continue to do what we do and go up against it and watch what's going on in the competitive marketplace. But we don't have an interest in doing that. We want to stay offering great value with the programs we have. Finally, at Outback, the combos we offer, steak and lobster, steak and chicken, steak and ribs, tremendous value. Very few competitors offer it. Our customers love it. And you look at the price points that we offer. there's a great value with those combos as well. So that's trying to, that's John, how we're trying to attract our customers and move forward.
spk16: Got it. In, in, in that circumstance, do you see yourselves potentially pulsing media a little bit higher than you have? I know you've cut back quite a bit in recent years, which made sense, but could we see a return back to pre COVID levels?
spk18: We have not to be back to pre COVID levels, but media will follow the idea, follow the money. So if Outback has some tremendous innovation, and we're seeing it with our customers, we're going, right? And you can turn that on and off like that with the digital efforts, right? So we will see that with our customers. Also, we talked earlier about our third-party deliveries. We are watching that very carefully. How do we support that? So those are some of the things that are going on, John, as we manage the traffic and margin dynamics.
spk15: Yeah, John, if you remember, we used to spend, you know, back prior to the pandemic, 3.5% of sales as a company on marketing. And then we laid out sort of our restaurant margin map to get where we needed to be. And at that point, Tom, we were saying, hey, look, we're just thinking about cutting, you know, marketing back down in that 3% range. The reality is, is we've been running in the low twos for the last year or two. We feel pretty good about where we are in terms of the returns we're seeing. So I think the truth long-term, if the question is where we go long-term, it could be somewhere in between, but we're never going to go back to that three to three and a half percent thought process on marketing.
spk16: Got it. I appreciate that. And then just in terms of going back to the conversation about some of the closures in the marketplace, it does sound like the lending environment is certainly getting more challenging in And I would assume that's going to impact a handful of the independents or smaller regional chains out there. And I know you're still at the emerging part of getting the brand or the company to start growing new stores again. But in that respect, have you started to hear from landlords perhaps better deals than what you were even hearing about a few months ago because the environment's getting more difficult for the competition to open new stores?
spk18: We hope to, John, but it's still, we're looking at quality sites, And it's still a tough negotiation, not with landlords, but with competition to get the best sites. Because that's really important for us because when we look at our site placement, we get good sites in a great trade area, in a great market. The returns are in the sales. They are terrific. So we're not going to go in the C&D players. I'm not saying that's where independents are. We're not going to go to C&D sites. I'm not saying that's where independents are. But in the A and B locations, There's still a fair amount of competition for that but our attention clearly with our new restaurants is to take share Got it.
spk11: Thanks for the time Thank you, the next question is coming from Dennis Geiger of UBS, please go ahead Thank you another one on advertising if I could As I believe it's one of the more impactful drivers of traffic maybe this year you talked about good ROIs but As it relates to how well the marketing is resonating, anything you can share sort of on recent awareness levels, maybe relative to peers, how that's trended? I'm not sure if that's the best metric necessarily, but is there anything to share on the awareness perhaps that's benefiting from some of the marketing?
spk18: Yeah, I think awareness is hanging in there. There's nothing really trends that I can speak to quite yet. But I think as we continue to do this work, our awareness levels will improve. I'm also hoping that in some of our smaller brands like Carrabba's, You know, we can continue to build awareness. But nothing I can really report yet on the awareness front that's really building for our company.
spk15: And I would say one of the reasons why you do go on television as a medium, though, is to build up that awareness. So that's sort of the first part of the funnel that we're trying to build from a marketing perspective. We are back on TV. We know that that helps with awareness. And so you've probably seen us, but you're going to see us more on TV than maybe we have been in the last couple of years.
spk11: Very helpful. And one more semi-related. Just some of the work you've done the last few years enhancing, you know, customer service, different things with menu, et cetera. Are you getting that credit from the customer yet, given how many times the customer comes a year? Or does that, you know, take time to build and you're still maybe not seeing the benefit from some of the work you've done over the last couple years and that's kind of still on the come?
spk18: Yeah. Given casual dining is a relatively – light use occasion overall. We do have people that come frequently. It will take some time to build, but I am thrilled with the progress we're making in their customer measures in all of our brands and where we stand versus competition, the progress we're making, and I've seen this in the industry over the years. We continue to make progress like this. It'll show up on our sales, but because of the relatively light frequency of casual dining, it's not going to show up as quickly as maybe some other parts of the industry. But it's the things we've been talking about, it's the technology investments, and it's our retention levels are really helping us.
spk25: Great. Thank you.
spk22: Thank you. We're showing time for one last question today. The final question will be coming from Andrew Strzelczyk of BMO. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in here. I just had a question, another one on the value proposition over time. And I guess a couple of quick things. Number one, do you think that grocery prices impact business trends for your business? And, you know, do you think about, or how do you think about what gives you the confidence that if grocery prices were to reset lower, you know, that that wouldn't create a challenge for your value proposition? And do you have, I guess, lastly, more opportunity maybe through your digital assets or otherwise? Are there ways in which maybe you're more nimble now than in the past? And I know this is more of an industry question, but I would love to get your perspective for your brands.
spk18: Thanks. Sure. Grocery prices is something that informs us and we watch, but what drives our performance is what we do. On the value side and the customer service side, obviously we've talked today a lot about not getting ahead of our skis on price increases. We've been very careful about that. We're watching what's going on with the grocery space. But, boy, I tell you, if you come into Outback Steakhouse or Carrabba's and get a prepared meal with great service and not have to cook, that's a huge value, huge value for our company. So that is what we're driving to grow our business. On the technology front, absolutely. On the digital side, this is much more of an opportunity than it was years ago, and we tend to be on the forefront of that within casual dining and use that asset and use our customer information and invest behind it to grow our business and our traffic. That is an absolutely top priority for us.
spk30: Great. Thank you very much.
spk22: Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Dino for closing comments.
spk18: Well, thank you, everybody, for attending the call today. We appreciate it. We look forward to updating you on our second quarter results in July. Thanks, everybody.
spk22: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines at this time or log off the webcast and enjoy the rest of your day.
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