Bloomin' Brands, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Bloomin' Brands, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow management's prepared remarks. Please note, this event is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tara Kurian, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, FP&A, and International. Thank you. Ms. Kurian, you may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me on today's call are Mike Spanos, our Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Christel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have access to our fiscal fourth quarter 2025 earnings release and our investor presentation slides, both of which can be found on our website at www.bloomandbrands.com in the Investors section. Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting results on an adjusted basis. An explanation of our use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our earnings release and investor presentation 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 www.sec.gov. During today's call, we'll provide a brief recap of our financial performance for the fiscal fourth quarter 2025, current thoughts on fiscal 2026 guidance, and an update on our turnaround strategy. Once we've completed these remarks, we'll open up the call for questions. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mike Spanos.

Thanks, Tara, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, I will discuss our fourth quarter results and provide an update on our turnaround strategy focused on Outback. Eric will then review the financials and 2026 guidance. Starting with our fourth quarter results, 2025 was centered on aligning the organization around operational priorities to build the foundation for our turnaround strategy. The focus on consistency of execution in food, service, experience, and value to deliver a great guest experience. We are seeing continued improvements in guest metric scores and traffic gains, reinforcing that our focus is driving momentum. We were pleased with our fourth quarter results and the steady gains we are seeing on traffic growth. Our Q4 comp sales were flat with U.S. traffic up 50 basis points. Although we trailed the industry as defined by black box by 40 basis points on comp sales, we narrowed the gap versus the industry by 280 basis points quarter over quarter. On traffic, we outperformed black box by 190 basis points in the quarter for the first quarter in 2025 that we beat the industry. Our beat reflected a quarter over quarter improvement of 400 basis points from the third quarter. All of our casual dining brands executed affordable entry price points to meet the guests where they were economically. Between consistency of execution and providing affordable price points, we will continue to improve the what you get for what you pay for value equation. In Q4, Outback's comp sales were down 60 basis points with traffic up 90 basis points. This was the first quarter of positive traffic growth for Outback since quarter four of 2021. Outback continues to drive traffic from the Office C3 course offering, both from increased frequency of use from our loyal Dine Rewards members and from recruitment of new users into the brand. With three value tiers starting with an entry price point of $14.99, we continue to see about 60% of the guests trading up to the higher tiers of $17.99 and $20.99. Carrabba's comp sales were up 160 basis points with traffic of negative 90 basis points. In-restaurant experiential wine dinners, lunch, catering, and off-premises all continue to provide positive results and guest satisfaction. Bonefish's comp sales were down 10 basis points with traffic of positive 230 basis points. Bonefish has steadily improved traffic growth in 2025, and this was the first quarter of positive traffic comp growth for the brand since Q1 of 2022. Improvements in traffic are the result of the team remaining focused on compelling day-of-the-week offers like the Martini Mondays and Bang Wednesdays and value offers such as the Ocean Mix Grill and Prefix Lunch. Fleming's comp sales were up 10 basis points with traffic down 240 basis points. Fleming's has maintained its sales momentum driven by experiential dinners, elevated service, and events and catering. I will now review the key elements of our turnaround strategy that we discussed during our last earnings call, primarily focused on Outback. We feel confident in our results and the strong foundation we established to launch our turnaround strategy in November of 2025. 2026 will be an investment year to generate sustained traffic and profit growth. Our strategy is based on four strategic platforms, which are to, one, deliver a remarkable dine-in experience. Two, drive brand relevancy. Three, reignite a culture of ownership and fun. Four, invest in our restaurants. These platforms will be supported by non-guest facing productivity savings, balanced capital allocation, and a strong management team. We have a phased approach with the turnaround initiatives and investments, starting with delivering a remarkable dine-in experience. We have also kicked off work on the last strategic platform to invest in our restaurants, as well as on generating non-guest facing productivity savings. As we move throughout the year, we will communicate transparently our progress across each of the platforms. I will now provide an update on our platform starting with deliver a remarkable dine-in experience. We know delivering a remarkable dine-in experience at Outback starts with a commitment to steak excellence. In November last year, we launched our new steak lineup and the results are encouraging. We have strong and improving guest satisfaction and reorder intent scores driven by our standout sirloin new bone-in rib eye, and new half-pound burger. The sirloin, bone-in rib eye, and burger all demonstrated immediate improvements in both guest satisfaction and reorder intent scores, while all new steak items are in the top box of menu satisfaction scores. Our sirloins are tracking to where our fillets are on reorder intent, and we consider our fillets to be best in class in casual dining. Additionally, we've introduced a 15-ounce Delmonico rib eye a cut that we are very proud of and is demonstrating very encouraging satisfaction scores. Outback Steakhouse is the only casual diner with this steak offering. Steak excellence also means a commitment to coaching and training to ensure our restaurant field leaders are subject matter experts on steaks. We completed an in-depth steak excellence certification training for our multi-unit leaders at Outback. Each leader is required to pass steak certification tests before they coach train, and certify their restaurant leadership. Combined with guest feedback by restaurant, gathered by using our ZEOS tabletops, we are measuring and ranking each location, enabling our multi-unit leaders and managing partners to quickly coach and recognize executional opportunities. Within the Outback principles and beliefs, we commit that close is never good enough for Outbackers. We're getting back to our roots on stake leadership and will ensure stake certification training is part of our culture. Our training and certification reinforces another element of delivering a remarkable dining experience, which is consistency of execution. Our trained and certified leaders are in the restaurants during peak hours to focus on operational excellence and accountability to standards. coaching and KPI center on stake accuracy, quality, guest intent to return, and satisfaction. We believe our focus on consistency of execution has translated into improved brand scores. In Q4, we saw a year-over-year increase in Outback's brand trust by seven points, guest scores across food increased five points, service by five points, value by three points, and atmosphere by three points. The strong guest and team member response we are seeing in stake leadership and brand scores gives us the conviction to launch our next turnaround element of a remarkable dining experience, which is craveable service. We remain on schedule to introduce a revised service model in Q2 of this year. Last year, we identified that our one server to six table station ratio during peak hours didn't provide the right level of guest interaction and outbacker satisfaction. We believe a reduced ratio of four tables per server during peak hours, which is more in line with casual dining best practices and gets us back to our Outback roots, will allow our Outbackers to provide a more consistent and enhanced experience for our guests. As we improve our new steak lineup and service model, we also need to drive brand relevancy at Outback and differentiate the brand. We will embrace the core of our Aussie brand roots by inviting customers to come as our guests, leave as our mate. Sharpened brand positioning starts with our leadership as a steakhouse. Steak-centric brand communication will serve as the foundational element of our turnaround, helping to recruit new guests, re-engage lapsed users, and drive increased frequency amongst our loyals. We are shifting our marketing approach to more digital than linear TV. In 2026, our media mix will be approximately 60% digital and 40% linear TV, compared to approximately 33% digital and 67% linear TV in 2025. We are encouraged with our improved media ROIs. With discipline in communicating the right message in the right channels and at the right times, we are driving efficiency and effectiveness. We plan to increase marketing spend year over year, concentrated in the second half of the year as we are confident in the consistency of execution in the stake lineup and service model enhancements. Eric will provide more details on the phasing of investments. Reignite, a culture of ownership and fun, is our third platform. Our people are the key to our turnaround and we remain focused on our managing partners. They are our owners and leaders. To retain and recruit the best partners, they need to be compensated competitively and incentivized to drive the operational priorities. We are committed to our people and we know that when we take care of them, Our Outbackers serve each other and the guests with pride and ownership. An update on the fourth platform, which is to invest in our restaurants. As I've said on prior calls, we need to invest back in our restaurants. Our goal is to touch nearly all of the Outback restaurants by the end of 2028 with targeted initiatives to refresh the interior and exterior, spending between $350,000 and $400,000 per location. With this asset refresh approach, we will focus on guest-facing areas, areas that make a positive impact on restaurant ambiance. Additionally, we will begin expanding char-grilled capacity in our Outback locations to support the new steak lineup we expect to be done by the end of this year. Lastly, we will maintain a test and learn culture at Outback. We have integrated the 42 test cell locations with steak quality, menu innovation, enhanced service models, and value components. We will continue to use these restaurants to test innovation, value offerings, menu design, and new ideas. We are confident that we have the right plan in place and are pleased with our progress to date. Let me turn it over to Eric to review our financial performance for the quarter and how we are thinking about guidance for 2026. Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone.