Krispy Kreme, Inc.

Thanks for standing by. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Krispy Kreme fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. I would now like to turn the call over to Dre Eldridge, Krispy Kreme Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Krispy Kreme's fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. We will be referencing our earnings press release and presentation during the call. These are available on our investor relations website at investors.prisbycream.com. Joining me on the call this morning are President and Chief Executive Officer Josh Charlesworth and Chief Financial Officer Jeremiah Ashoukian. After prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including statements of expectations, future events, or future financial performance. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, assumptions, and uncertainties, and we caution investors that many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's Form 10-K filed with the SEC and in the other filings we make from time to time with the SEC. Forward-looking statements made today are only as of today. The company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements except that may be required by law. Additionally, we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release and presentation on our website for additional information regarding those non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation to the closest comparable GAAP measures. Jeremiah will take us through our financial performance in a moment. But first, here's Josh.

Thanks, Dre. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We delivered our 18th consecutive quarter of organic sales growth despite the cybersecurity incident we disclosed in December. I want to take a moment to thank our hardworking Krispy Kremers for their resilience through the disruption and acknowledge their unwavering dedication to our customers. As I reflect on 2024, I'm pleased that we delivered 21% revenue growth in our expanding US delivered fresh daily network and surpassed $250 million in sales for the first time through this channel. We're now operating in 40 countries around the world with an established pipeline of franchise market growth. We also reached several strategic milestones in our transformation to becoming a bigger and better Krispy Kreme. We simplified the business by divesting a majority stake in Insomnia Cookies. We added national distribution partners in the U.S. and we restructured our management teams to fully focus on our largest growth opportunities, profitable U.S. delivered fresh daily expansion and the wider adoption of our Capital Light international franchise model. Our transformation continues in 2025 with clear business priorities that are rooted in our strategy. We are spotlighting our core offerings. Our focus is on growing with national distribution partners. We expect to soon award contracts to outsource U.S. logistics. We have begun a process to evaluate re-franchising certain international markets, and we are strengthening our performance-based culture. Now I will walk you through these priorities. Our iconic brand is a distinctive and undeniable asset. delivering more than 100 billion media impressions last year, far more than businesses of a comparable size. In the fourth quarter, our team boosted consumer engagement with creative marketing, particularly through a viral Grinch video series promoting our Grinch Christmas specialty doughnut collection. And earlier this month, our Valentine's Day collection led to the biggest US retail sales day ever. This buzz not only creates awareness among Krispy Kreme fans, but it converts to sales. To maximize this conversion in 2025, our most beloved and affordable original glazed donuts will get the spotlight as we evolve our marketing efforts, simplify pricing, and focus on value-conscious consumers who we know are under pressure. For example, we plan to bring everyday value by offering additional savings for purchases of two or more dozen. Although we will offer fewer days overall on discount, We will use meaningful discounts to drive demand on days like National Donut Day that we can turn into buzzworthy events. We continue to expand availability in 2024 as we grew global points of access by 24%. In the U.S., we added more than 2,800 new doors with national partners such as McDonald's, Kroger, Publix, and Target who are eager to expand with us nationally. Internationally, company-owned points of access also increased 14%, driven by Australia and Canada. This very morning, we launched daily deliveries to approximately 500 McDonald's restaurants in the greater New York City area and remain on track to reach about 6,000 restaurants by year-end. In 2025, we expect to continue our U.S. expansion with national partners, both existing and new, for example, Costco. An added benefit of this expansion with national partners is the opportunity to identify and close existing underperforming doors, which we expect to do in 2025. While much of this growth is enabled by existing capacity, growing into new and underserved geographies will be supported by adding hubs with spokes, of which we now have 158. We expect to build five to seven of these in 2025 in areas like Minneapolis, keeping our expansion on track. Through this growth, we will increase doughnut volumes at existing production hubs, which is expected to improve productivity and profitability. As we become bigger, we must also become better. We're addressing the increased complexities that accompany growth by simplifying the businesses, focusing on what we do best, making doughnuts. Now, recent pilots confirmed that third-party logistics achieved excellent service levels and provided predictable logistics costs. We expect to soon award contracts to several national and regional carriers to outsource U.S. logistics. We are aiming to outsource more than half of our DFD deliveries by year end. Our most profitable, capital-like international franchise business grew points of access by 8% in 2024, as we expanded in markets such as France and South Korea. For example, our franchise partner in France has rapidly grown to 19 donut shops across Paris and plans to add another 50 points of access as they enter the DFD channel in 2025. This franchise model is the most capital efficient way for us to grow internationally. And so we've begun the process to evaluate re-franchising certain international markets. We also expect to open in two to four new countries with franchise partners, including Brazil and Spain in 2025. Between all international and US markets, we anticipate reaching more than 23,000 points of access by year end. An important initiative this year is strengthening our performance-based culture. We have launched new incentive-based compensation in the field focused on results-oriented metrics, such as consumer satisfaction and materials efficiency. We're also investing in operations leadership and simplifying shop employee and manager roles to support our Krispy Kremers. I believe that delivering on these priorities in 2025 will result in a bigger and better Krispy Kreme. With that, I'll pass it over to Jeremiah.

Thanks, Josh. I'll cover our fourth quarter results, which as Josh has mentioned, were impacted by the cybersecurity incident. Excluding the estimated impacts from the cyber incident, results were largely in line with our expectations. The incident affected business operations, including online ordering, materials replenishment, and labor planning. We estimate the incident impacted revenue for the quarter by $11 million with an estimated adjusted EBITDA impact of $10 million driven by the margin from lost sales and operational inefficiencies resulting in higher ingredient waste and elevated labor hours. Insurance is expected to offset a portion of these costs and losses, and we continue to believe this will not have a material impact on the long-term trajectory of the business. Today, systems are operational, following great work from our teams, both internal and external, who worked tirelessly to ensure that our shops were running and that our systems came back online safely and efficiently. Net revenue was $404 million for the fourth quarter, driven by delivered fresh daily growth. We marked our first quarter with over $100 million in global delivered fresh daily revenue, underscoring the value of our omni-channel strategy. Organic revenue grew 1.8%, despite an estimated 280 basis point headwind from the cybersecurity incident. Organic revenue was driven by global points of access growth of 24%. Adjusted EBITDA declined to $45.9 million, primarily linked to an estimated $10 million impact from the cyber incident, as well as the sale of a majority stake in insomniac cookies. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.4%, with an estimated 210 basis point impact from the incident. Turning to our U.S. segment results, organic revenue declined 1.2%, primarily linked to an estimated 460 basis point impact from the cybersecurity incident. Adjusted EBITDA was $23.6 million, lowered by an estimated $10 million of the headwinds from the cyber incident and from the sale of the majority stake in insomnia cookies. Our DFT expansion strategy continues as points of access growth accelerated to 34% year-over-year, progressing with several major national accounts. Average revenue per door per week, or APD, was $631, down slightly from the prior year as expected, given the changing customer mix. For example, large-scale Walmart doors, which have an APD that is higher than the segment average, represent approximately 15% of our USDFD doors, down from 19% in the year-ago period, despite net growth with Walmart in that timeframe. Looking into 2025, we anticipate revenue growth as we expand our DFD network, partly dampened by consumer pressures. From a profitability perspective, we expect margin compression in the front half due to lingering impacts of the cybersecurity incident on laborers and material management, Q1 specifically, and long-term business investments with revenue growth and hub-and-spoke efficiencies expected to deliver operating leverage in the second half. Within our equity-owned international markets, organic revenue grew 7.8% year-over-year, led by Canada and Japan. Points of access grew 14%, fueled by DFP revenue growth of 21%, as we continue to execute against our hub-and-spoke strategy. Adjusted EBITDA was $25.7 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins down to 18.6%, largely due to continued pressure in the UK. As mentioned on the third quarter call, We have a new management team in the UK who have just completed their first quarter with the business. The team remains laser-focused, implementing plans to return this key market to profitable growth. The team are continuing to right-size the production network, work on core range, including strengthening original glazed, which is underrepresented in that market, in addition to piloting different price points and different channels to ensure value for the consumer. Elsewhere, markets such as Canada and Japan continue to deliver strong results driven by the OG donut, with both markets improving margins year-over-year driven by strong consumer-centric execution. In our most profitable segment, market development, organic revenue declined 0.7% due to timing of equipment sales. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved again to 57.8%, linked to favorable sales mix and SG&A improvements. Adjusted earnings per share for the year was 11 cents, driven lower by depreciation and amortization as well as interest expense. We also estimate the 2024 cyber incident had a 4 cent impact to adjusted EPS. In 2024, we delivered positive operating cash flow. We also maintained a similar level of gross debt while reducing supply chain financing by $44 million. Leverage at year end was also impacted by the cybersecurity incident. As we transform the business ahead of accelerating profitable growth in both the U.S. and a wider adoption of our capital expansion internationally, we expect to deliver the following results in 2025. Net revenue of $1.55 billion to $1.65 billion. Organic revenue growth of 5% to 7%. Adjusted EBITDA of $180 to $200 million. And adjusted earnings per share between 4 cents and 8 cents. Providing some further insights into our financials in 2025, we anticipate that margins compressed in the first half due to lingering impacts of the cybersecurity incident on laborers and material management, a key one specifically, and long-term business investments with revenue growth and hub and spoke efficiencies expected to deliver operating leverage in the second half. SG&A expenses remain flat as a percent of revenue as the restructuring announced last year is offset by inflation and bonus accruals. capital expenditures to track between 6 and 7% of net revenue, and interest expenses expected to be between $65 and $75 million due to higher interest rates with $500 million of our long-term debt hedged. This all reflects a $3 to $5 million headwind to adjusted EBITDA from foreign exchange rates. With regards to the first quarter of 2025, we've seen consumer softness. We're also seeing an impact from weather in the southeast and fires in California. Taking these into account alongside the departure of insomnia cookies, startup costs from our U.S. expansion, and the lingering cybersecurity impact in Q1, we expect the first quarter net revenue will be between $370 million and $390 million, with $25 to $30 million in adjusted EBITDA. I remain confident we are taking the right actions in 2025 to set the business up for long-term profitable growth and improved returns on capital.

Thanks, Jeremiah. In summary. our largest growth opportunities, our profitable U.S. deliver fresh daily expansion, and the wider adoption of our capital-like international franchise model. In 2025, our transformation to a bigger and better Krispy Kreme continues with the clear business priorities we've shared today, namely spotlighting our core offerings, focusing on growing with national distribution partners, our expectation that we will soon award contracts to outsource U.S. logistics, the evaluation of re-franchising certain international markets, and strengthening our performance-based culture. I look forward to our profitable growth in the years ahead. Operator, let's now open it up to Q&A, please.

We will now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please ask one question with one follow-up. We'll take our first question from the line of Daniel Guglielmo with Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. On the OPEX line specifically, those expenses are in line with prior year without insomnia cookies and understand that there's $3 million from the cybersecurity incident. But thinking for 2025, where are you expecting kind of OPEX expenses to go? Should we be modeling kind of flat to what we've kind of seen this quarter, taking into account seasonality, or just curious how you're thinking about that.

Yeah, thanks, Dan. I can take that question. Obviously, we're investing, let me just come back to, from a guide perspective with respect to OPEX and in general, we are expecting to invest And things like operations leadership as we're building kind of performance culture and getting ready for a national rollout and footprint in the U.S. While also setting up the business for long-term growth by streaming our operations and focusing on making donuts by outsourcing logistics. Both of these things, we do expect to pressure OPEX in the front half of the year and then start to leverage that in the back half of the year.

Great. Thank you. That's helpful. And then just as a follow-up to that, with kind of the DFD expansion into McDonald's, Target, Walmart, the larger names, what's kind of the process for thinking about existing maybe DFD locations that are less economical? How do you guys think about maybe kind of shutting down some of those if it's not kind of hitting the margin levels that you're expecting. Just want some color there, and even if you guys are doing that.

Hi, Don. Thanks for the question. yeah it's important to start by saying that the you know the strategy to make our fresh donuts available in more places with the national partners you reference such as walmart target and kroger you know is working um and so uh you know our expansion today is focused around those national partners um you know we're also bringing on indeed new ones uh such as costco which mentioned uh earlier in the call With that in mind, we're making sure we're continuously optimizing the network. And that means, you know, any low performing doors we can optimize as we go, make sure that the system is strong for the long term. We talked a lot about a bigger and better Krispy Kreme. That means sustainable, efficient growth in the long term, profitable growth. And hence, we will take the opportunity for any smaller locations to optimize those as we go.

We'll take our next question from the line of Brian Harper at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. For the top line guide, you know, you're talking about 5% to 7% organic growth. You're probably aware that you're kind of guiding, I think, below where the street is now for top line. So could you kind of just explain that? You know, I don't know what the difference, you know, international versus U.S. is. Are you expecting there to be more door rationalization as you're sort of adding some of the McDonald's doors? What exactly kind of drives that top line guide?

Hi, Brian. I think I'll start by talking about the start of the year. It has been a choppy start of the year in our traditional retail locations in the US. There's those freezing temperatures and wildfires, but we also see the value-conscious consumer under pressure. I mean, that being said, the consumer remains highly engaged with the Krispy Kreme brand. We're an indulgent purchase for special occasions. I mentioned earlier that Valentine's was our biggest sales day ever. But we are finding that we need to put the spotlight on our beloved and affordable original Glaze brand. So that is one of the key drivers, particularly as we start the year out.

Okay, understood. And just on, I guess, on the CapEx and free cash side, I think that the CapEx number you're saying was actually a little bit lower than you might have previously indicated and correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess the broader question is sort of the, you know, the last couple of years you've burned about 75 million of cash last year, sort of insomnia proceeds, you know, helped kind of with that capital budget is, do you think this year will look similar? Do you think that some of the refranchising proceeds that you're, you know, considering would sort of go to that capital budget for this year?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Brian. I think, you know, I'd start with 2024. We're actually pretty pleased with the fact that we deliver positive operating cash flow, despite lowering the use of supply chain financing, which was a strategic decision that we've made to reduce our reliance on that. In addition, that kind of cyber-pressuring EBITDA as we kind of exit the year. As you mentioned, you know, we're committed to driving free cash flow when we look to transform the business to ensure we have the right capabilities long-term. In 2025, We're focused on driving improved conversion of EBITDA to pre-cash flow, being even more discerning with our CapEx, as you mentioned, and reducing kind of the spend in that area, and all whilst working toward making improvements in working capital. I would expect your kind of question, the inorganic ways to drive operating cash flow through re-franchising, to be incremental to this, but our objective is to drive positive pre-cash flow in 2025.

It's worth adding as well from an operational point of view that as we prepare for this nationwide footprint in the U.S. and we expand with the national partners, We're finding more and more ways to leverage our existing capacity, whether it's because we've increased productivity at our existing hubs or we're learning how to get the donuts out to the points of access better and better. So there is an opportunity, we think, going forward to invest a little less than we originally expected in the hubs, which means that we'll probably – only build about five to seven new hubs this year in the U.S., which is a little less than we had previously expected, reflecting the ability to leverage that existing capacity better.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Wolfe with CL King. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I wanted to ask you about your vision

business with McDonald's, just how 24 came out, you know, versus internal expectations, top and bottom line. And, you know, what is kind of reflected, however specifically you can speak to it, in 2025 with any updates based on, you know, results.

Andrew, yeah, we started the phased rollout of McDonald's just in October and We're already in actually 2,500 restaurants today. We're launching in New York just today. We expect to be in about 6,000 by the end of the year and 12,000 by the end of 2026. So that rollout's on track. It's important to understand as well that the phased nationwide rollout of McDonald's is part of a broader strategy to make our fresh donuts more accessible, as mentioned earlier, with Walmart, Target, Kroger, Costco, and others. So all that being said, the feedback from McDonald's is very positive. They tell us it's working well, and we're working hard with them to maximize the opportunity, make sure that the launch goes well. And we've seen during the launch phase that with local marketing, the team at McDonald's is able to raise awareness, make sure that people know It's on the menu, driving very strong demand and no visible cannibalization of our other sales channels. Now, what we're doing now, it's early on in the rollout. We're making sure that we're working with them to maximize the opportunity during the whole rollout phase, even when that local marketing comes off, when that awareness drops, when it's not as visible on the menu, when naturally demand softens. We're making sure that we work with them to get all the way to the national rollout phase at the end of

2026 when you know we'd expect um they would start putting on national marketing okay so that's sort of like the j curve where you know initial demands above sort of the steady state which i think is typical right um and has that been in line with expectations

Well, the initial demand, when there's prominence on the menu board, it's actually come in in those first few weeks above. Then when that prominence comes off the menu board, there's no graphics, there's no other marketing. The donuts aren't actually visible to the customer. It's not like they're on the counter or anything. they'll be fine back there. So the demand has dipped actually a little lower than we expected. So right now we're focusing with them on how to make sure awareness is maintained during this local rollout phase whilst we wait to be nationally distributed. As I said, the feedback from them is very positive. And so the partnership continues to progress very well. And it continues to unlock for us expansion opportunities across the country. I mentioned Costco. It's a really big opportunity for us. Wouldn't have been possible without starting the McDonald's rollout target, which we just started in 2024, following the announcement of McDonald's. continues to be a big expansion driver in 2025. So it's part of an overall program to get our awesome fresh donuts out to more people.

Our next question comes from the line of Raul Crossapale with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. On the DFD door, weekly sales being down 5% lower. You're on your unit site. Customer makes change as expected. I'm just curious to get more color on what drove this. Is the McDonald's doors realization a little lower than you expected or anything else you can share there? And I have a follow-up.

No, thanks, Rahul. And as you kind of mentioned, APD in the U.S., we're primarily driven by customer mix. You know, as we continue to add customers in the U.S., some of our bigger footprint customers like Walmart, which make up a lower percentage of our total DFT footprint now compared to the same quarter last year, will pull down APD naturally just given their higher kind of APDs. That's the primary driver.

And did you guys quantify the impact the cybersecurity incident had on the 25 EBITDA guidance?

We did not quantify the impact of cyber on the 2025 guidance. What I can tell you is operationally, things like labor management and materials management were still an issue as we started the year. And so we do expect that and have called that out in our Q1 guide that we provided this morning.

It is important to understand that as of today, thanks to the tremendous hard work of the team, our business operations are fully operationalized.

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Just maybe a clarification from an earlier question. If I look at your revenue for 2024, it was at $1.7 billion or sorry, If I take your revenue from last year and I do plus 5% to 7%, it gets me to $1.7 billion. And you're guiding $1.5 to $1.6 billion. So can you just break out how much of that offset is from insomnia and how much of it is from, I assume, currency?

Yeah. Thanks, Bill. It's a great question. And is that absolutely right? Can I pick up? The U.S. segment net revenue in particular was impacted, obviously, by the sale of Insomnia Cookies, which is roughly about $70 million in revenue a quarter on that front. Ford Exchange is having roughly a $40 million impact on total net revenue for the year as well from an international business perspective.

Got it. So those two, just get me back to your 5% to 7% organic growth.

Got it, yeah. Okay, thanks.

And then any way to do that on the bottom line in terms of just, again, you're doing, you did 193 and EBITDA, you're going to 180 to 200 this year. How much of that is, how much is it insomnia and how much of it would be FX?

Yeah, on insomnia, we generate roughly $8 million or we used to generate roughly $8 million a quarter in EBITDA. on insomnia that will obviously come out in the front half. And we have called out a $3 to $5 million impact as a result of foreign exchange on the EBITDA line as well.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Mullen with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Just a question on the third-party logistics. You know, in the prepared marks, I believe you said you could have half the U.S. system by year end. Just related to that, can you just give an example of the puts and takes from a P&L perspective? What expenses would go away? What new expenses would you have? And can you talk about whether or not there would be a net benefit to EBITDA as you see it once it's all in place?

Yeah, thanks, Brian. And we've begun to scale, obviously, to support the EFT expansion in the U.S., including McDonald's, with our existing in-house model to start. In February, we're moved to the contract phase and remain engaged with multiple carriers to finalize contracts. While we go through this phase and into the rollout, we do expect some transitioning costs and moving to an outsourced model, so a bit of EBITDA pressure, but we are targeting EBIT neutral. However, we're still in the negotiation phase, but expected costs are contemplated in our guide.

And the goal of getting to more than half the system It's a big initiative, exciting for the teams in terms of giving us predictability in costs. We think that we'll get excellent service levels, just generally be a more streamlined set of operations. But all that's taken into account in the guide today. So, you know, the puts and takes have been thought through.

Okay, thanks. And then follow up the question on international, the process to... re-franchise certain markets? You know, there's not that many company owned markets right now. So could you just give a sense if you're, are you amenable to looking at re-franchising all of them? Are there some of them you'd like to continue owning for whatever your reasons are? Just any color on that and how long you think the process might take would be great.

Sure. You know, we've learned that the best way to grow overseas is with local scaled master franchised And we have strong and growing businesses in several international markets that we both own and are franchised. But what we think is the best way going forward, the fastest way of taking advantage of the opportunity in the most capital efficient way, is to evaluate re-franchising the international markets that we own. There's the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Canada. That's the group that we own. We're evaluating all of those as an opportunity to do that. The most important thing is to find a really good partner with quality proven operators, uphold our brand standards, deploy the operating model that we talked through, the hub and spoke model, and then, of course, have a strong financial position. So we're still in the evaluation phase. right now, Brian, but we'll provide updates as we have them regarding any particular market. But we're intent on doing this to make sure that we can focus most of our time on expanding with national U.S. partners in the U.S., strengthening that U.S. footprint and preparation for the nationwide rollout of those partners and overall transforming Krispy Kreme into a bigger and better Krispy Kreme.

Our next question comes from the line of Jafar Mitsari with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. The first question is on what you said about Q1. I just wanted to triple check I've heard correctly. I think you've indicated a BDA of between 25 and 30 million in Q1. Q1, you've also given some indication on insomnia, quarterly BDA. So last year, Q1 BDA with insomnia was 58 million. So am I correct if I assume you're effectively bearing the blunt of the impact in that Q1 and your full year guidance then implies there will be adjusted BDA growth year on year in Q2, Q3, Q4?

Hey, Jafar, I can take that question. Yeah, I think, you know, as I think about Q1 in particular and the quarter itself, there are really kind of four things driving year-over-year change. The first being the sale of majority-stake insomnia cookies. Second being the lingering impacts of the cybersecurity incident on laborers and material management, which I had referenced. Third, you know, we are incurring startup costs as we, you know, invest in the U.S. expansion. and the fourth being some of the consumer pressures due to the adverse weather across the country. So we think that Q1 is going to be the most pressured on it. What I would say is we do expect sequential improvement as we go through the year, driven by the excess capacity we're tapping into with our points of access, growth, driving hub-and-spoke efficiency, but it will be most pressured in Q1.

Super, thank you. And then on international re-franchising issues, early days, as you said, but what's your very early view on the type of potential partners you could find? Do you expect to be discussing sales on a local country level, or do you think there could be regional players interested on taking on multiple countries? Specifically, a lot of US restaurant brands have listed franchisees? Do you think you could be considering conducting local IPOs for the opcos, for example, and retaining the brand and the franchise? Or do you think these businesses are too small for public markets?

The way we have built, we have more than 30 franchise partners around the world that work very, very well is when they have the master franchise for that market, for that country. and can build out the full omni-channel model within the borders of that country. We've seen that in existing markets across South America, Middle East, and Asia, and indeed new markets like France, which we opened up recently, partnering with Columbus Cafe there, a national operator of great standing. Similarly, in Korea, we partnered with Lotte, obviously a fantastic company, operator well-known within the country and very strong and well financed so we'll be looking at profiles like that people who either have been involved or have an understanding of bringing in expertise whilst of course having you know good financial backing to support what is a fast-growing brand You know, we wouldn't rule anything out at the point of an evaluation, but we're not expecting to be going out there IPOing the businesses. There's no immediate plans for that. It's more around finding the right partner to build sustainably because this is a growth model and we have people approaching us across the world all the time to partner with us since we were able to communicate the clarity of our growth trajectory and demonstrate profitable capital efficient growth to them.

Our next question comes from the line of John Tower with Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Just real quick on clarification. I'm assuming this is the case, but just wanted to make sure. There's no re-franchising contemplated in your guidance today, correct? That is correct, John. Okay, great. Maybe if you could speak to It sounds like in 2025, both in the U.S. and internationally, there's a pivot in terms of marketing the actual product more towards the OG and away from, maybe not even away from, but it sounds like you're putting more of a spotlight in the OG donut. I'm just curious to know why. What exactly are you seeing that suggests that's the proper tack to take?

You know, the original glazed donut, it's our most differentiated product. There's nothing quite like the experience of having a fresh original glazed donut, and even more so if you have one hot off the line. Indeed, we see no matter what channel people are purchasing our donuts in, if they've had a hot original glazed donut, their memory structure is such that they They think of the time they had that. And so it really differentiates us against the competition. It's also our, you know, not only is it beloved, but it's our most affordable product. And we are conscious of the value conscious consumer. We see particularly for large families and gatherings looking to buy more than a dozen that we want to bring value. And the original guys can do that. And then finally, I mean, very practically, it's our easiest donut that we make. It's the core of what we do, more than half of our sales, so it's the highest margin as well. So not only is it iconic for the consumer, differentiating versus the competition, but the best way for us to sustainably, profitably go the business in all our channels.

Got it. And maybe just one last follow-up on that. You had mentioned that you're seeing some softness from a consumer demand standpoint. Can you maybe break that down across the channels? Are you seeing any one channel stand out in terms of where that weakness is coming from?

Well, we've consistently seen over the last couple of years as we've deployed the strategy of bringing the donuts to more people, the way we're bringing the donuts to them, making it much more convenient for them in their lives, we've seen strong sustained growth. And, of course, we've been adding more and more points of access. around the world. And so I mentioned on the call today that we grow more than 20% in the delivered fresh daily channel as the off-premise sales that I'm referencing in 2024 and achieved a milestone of $250 million of revenue in the year. So, you know, that's thanks to that expansion of delivered fresh daily. We've also seen the digital channel has been growing consistently. Obviously, there was some disruption in December from the cyber incident but apart from that that has been uh growing actually in a similar level uh over the last few quarters more than more than 20 percent what i was referencing today was where we're asking people to come to our traditional donut shops come into the lobby have the experience of the donut case. It's an amazing experience. And it's often triggered by that hot light original glaze, your earlier question, hence the importance of focusing on that in our strategy.

Again, to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad, and we'll take our next question from the line of David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask you about that cyber impact. You estimated $10 million as a headwind to the fourth quarter. I would imagine estimating that would be even pretty difficult. Can you make us understand how you calculated that? What does that represent? Where did this shortfall come from? And then what was that drag? Now that it's sort of behind you as you stand today, what do you think the drag has been for 1Q?

Thanks, David. I'll take that question. And the way I would think about it, you know, we talked a little bit about the impact to online sales and ordering, which would roughly make up half of the impact that we saw in the fourth quarter. With respect to how you kind of quantify that, we actually didn't sell anything. online for a number of weeks and therefore, you know, that's a fairly easy one to kind of quantify. On the kind of labor and materials efficiency piece, we look historically at where kind of our adherence to schedule and labor hours are to estimate where and how inefficient we were during that timeframe as well. which gives us pretty high confidence and comfort that those were the impacts that we saw for the fourth quarter. We're not disclosing the impact on the first quarter specifically, but what I can tell you is we were back up and running from an e-comm perspective, so less of an impact from lost sales, but continued to see the impact on efficiency until we had the back of shop systems up and running for the first few weeks in January.

And just to follow up on outsourcing with the logistics, what is going to be the – when is that fully going to be rolled out, and what's the impact to EBITDA and cash flow? I would assume that there would be some CapEx implications as well, maybe on an annualized basis as you roll that out. Thanks.

Yeah, so I think, as Josh has mentioned, we expect to transition roughly half the fleet by the end of the year. With respect to the cost associated with that, as I mentioned, we will incur some startup costs as we go through the transition, but do expect and are working toward a goal of EBIT neutral for the year. As you can imagine, there may be some actually cash benefit as a result of outsourcing as we kind of negotiate payment terms with vendors and those types of things versus paying our folks on a regular basis. So we're still working through all that as we go through the contract phase where we're We are targeting effectively even neutrals, what we're saying.

And that will conclude our question and answer session. I'll turn the call back over to Josh Charlesworth for any closing comments.

Yeah, I'll just say thank you for your interest in Krispy Kreme today. Thank you to our Krispy Kremers for all the hard work you do every day. Our path forward is clear as we transform into a bigger and better Krispy Kreme, one that delivers profitable, capital-efficient growth in the long term. Thank you.

This concludes our call today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.