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Operator
Thank you for standing by. My name is Dina and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the JAG Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Chris Brandon, Vice President, Investors Relations. Please go ahead.
Dina
Thanks, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining today's conference call, highlighting results from our third quarter 2023. With me today are Chief Executive Officer Darren Harris and Interim Chief Financial Officer Don Hooper. Following their prepared remarks, we will be happy to take questions from our covering sell-side analysts. Note that during both our discussion and Q&A, we may refer to non-GAAP items. Please refer to the non-GAAP reconciliations provided in the earnings release, which is available on our investor relations website at jackinthebox.com. We will also be making forward-looking statements based on current information and judgments that reflect management's outlook for the future. However, actual results may differ materially from these expectations because of business risks. We therefore consider the safe harbor statement in the earnings release and the cautionary statements in our most recent 10-K to be part of our discussion. Material risk factors as well as information relating to company operations are detailed in our most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and other public documents filed with the SEC and are available on our Investor Relations website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Darren Harris.
Darren Harris
Thank you, Chris.
Chris
I want to begin by thanking our restaurant-level team members, our franchisees, and the Jack and Del Taco corporate staff who continue to make us proud of their dedication to serve our guests and the results being achieved from the execution of our strategy. We are very pleased with the performance of our business in Q3, and we continue to see the execution of our strategy deliver results. In the quarter and year to date, we have demonstrated continued top line and margin momentum that has resulted in impressive adjusted EBITDA and operating EPS growth. I believe our performance reflects three items, strong operations execution, the right promotions at the right time, and effective communication and engagement with our core users. This quarter was also an exciting milestone for entering new markets and our future growth, with a very successful start to our entry into Salt Lake City and strong sales results right from the start. We are also pleased to reiterate our guidance from last quarter, while increasing our share repurchase outlook as a result of the accelerated re-franchising of Del Taco restaurants. As you saw this morning, we are very excited to announce that Brian Scott has accepted the role of Chief Financial Officer at Jack in the Box. Brian brings tremendous experience to the Jack family, including a decade-long tenure as CFO of AMN Healthcare. helping take the company public and grow it into a $3.5 billion leader within its industry. We look forward to introducing you to him. And lastly, I'd like to give a special thanks to Dawn Hooper, who has done an outstanding job the past eight months as our interim chief financial officer. Part of this morning's announcement included the addition of Dawn to our executive leadership team. I, along with our management team, am excited to be continuing to work closely with her and she will make a great addition to our team going forward. Now let's briefly dive into each of our strategic pillars. We begin with building brand loyalty, and our efforts to grow sales and accelerate transactions with our craved marketing strategy. Jack's same store sales grew 7.9%, led by continued staffing and operating hours improvement, especially in our late night day part, enabling us to flex promotionally, and we did just that. To mark the 10-year anniversary of the original Munchie Mill, we teamed up with Snoop Dogg to introduce the limited edition Snoop's Munchie Mill in addition to the Build Your Own Munchie Mill platform. Snoop's version featured a few new items like our spicy, sauced, and loaded chicken sandwich, a baked brownie, and a Snoop air freshener for those that were lucky enough to get one prior to selling out. Our Jack in the Box restaurant in Englewood, California also got Snoopified with a dog in the box takeover from June 29th to July 2nd in celebration of this partnership. We dropped it like it was hot, creating a guest experience unlike ever before at Jack, and our guests and fans loved it. But all kidding aside, the promotion had some important signals related to our business and investor story. First, that our restaurants are in much better shape related to staffing and hours, and to the point where a national late night activation such as this was even possible. Second, it helped those within our system that had yet to reopen late night to do so in a more rapid fashion. And lastly, it enhanced our belief that Jack can truly own late night. And while this collaboration was certainly a key sales and transactions driver, it can also be seen as our first big opportunity since COVID to replant our flag into this all-important day part. Our hook and build strategy continues to drive add-on purchases and ticket. helped by the return of fan favorites French toast sticks and mozzarella sticks. And early in the quarter, our pineapple express shake and pineapple express Red Bull infusion drove incremental sales and provided customers with a new occasion. Onto the premium side of our barbell menu, we continued with new product innovation, introducing two ribeye steakhouse burgers. It was an active quarter for digital, And our investments in Martech continue to position Jack to be a more formidable digital competitor. Digital sales are now approaching 12%, up from 10.6% a year ago. And, encouragingly, we saw a big jump in usage of our Jack e-commerce channels in Q3, notably the newly designed app and recently launched web ordering site, both of which are beginning to gain more traction since their launch a couple of quarters ago. These channels provide customers with ease of ordering, while enabling us to capture important data that can be used to communicate with our guests more effectively and grow our JackPack Rewards database. We continue to focus on our JackPack loyalty program, with membership up 34% since Q2. And third-party delivery continues to perform well, with a nearly 12% increase in sales contribution year over year, certainly helped by late night. This all led to higher average check and improving transactions from our digital guests and a 54% increase in web and app sales compared to Q3 last year. Lastly on this pillar, I'd like to briefly update you on re-imaging. We completed two franchise re-images during the quarter and are encouraged to see solid interest from our franchisees with 81 restaurants in the design and permitting stage. We still expect about five industrial imagery models to be completed by the end of Q4 for both franchise and company owned. And we look forward to updating you on the performance and sales lift of these stores as we gear up for 2024 to be a strong year for the Jack Ramage program. Now turning to our second pillar, driving operational excellence. Our laser focus on building the capability of our people, elevating the execution of standards, and simplifying our operating system continues to result in a better and faster guest experience. Over 95% of our system has now been trained and certified, which contributed to a 12-second improvement in speed of service, representing the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year speed improvement. We return to unannounced food safety evaluations in Q3 and continue to see year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter improvements in food safety and third-party assessed standards. All in all, we are operating at very high levels, and I credit both the operations team and franchisees for their dedication to improve the guest experience and implement our new approach. Both hours of operation and reopened dining rooms remain tailwinds to transactions. Franchisees have made greater strides over the past couple of quarters, doing so again in Q3. To their credit, we are nearing pre-COVID levels. Lastly, we are very close to selecting our new POS provider, and implementation is still on track to begin in the first quarter of fiscal 2024. With completion by the end of fiscal 2025, this modernized restaurant tech stack will create future cost-saving opportunities through more enhanced back office systems, plus automation and AI, which should also have a positive impact on the guest experience. Success across our operational focus areas should lead to growing restaurant profits, our third strategic pillar. We have enhanced our restaurant-level margin the past two quarters and are taking advantage of the improving operating environment by doing all we can to maximize franchise profitability in 2023. Whether it is with new technology, equipment, processes or supply chain synergies, we identified initiatives that could result in potential annualized savings of $55,000 per restaurant or approximately 200 basis points of RLM. Our progress to realizing the savings continues. We have now rolled out 50% of these programs and are beginning to see them take hold as evidenced in our improving margins. With inflation easing and value becoming even more important, We will continue to be surgical with our pricing actions using more sophisticated data and analytics tools to identify restaurant level pricing opportunities. Improved restaurant economics for franchisees and positive relationships within our system is now being reflected in our growth pipeline. We are now seeing development agreements turn into sites in process and sites now having shovels in the ground. which of course brings us to our fourth and all-important final pillar, expanding our reach. Since launching our Jack development program in mid-2021, we have signed a total of 77 new agreements for 340 restaurants. Included in this was our first new Jack franchisee in over a decade, and now there are five total, along with new market development agreements for Florida, Arkansas, Montana, and Wyoming. Our upcoming entry to Montana and Wyoming comes from incremental development agreements via Del Taco re-franchising, which included commitments from a Del Taco franchisee to build both Jack and Del Taco restaurants. Regarding our development within the Mexico border cities, we're making swift progress and will open the first Jack restaurant during the first half of fiscal 2024. We look forward to bringing a brand that is familiar, along with an operator that is proven to this market for the first time in over 30 years. In Q3, we opened six Jack in the Box restaurants, the highest quarter of openings thus far in 2023, with two in Texas, two in California, one in Arizona, and our first in Salt Lake City. This particular Craved Image restaurant, a conversion of one of our competitors, debuted with record-setting sales. In fact, in Salt Lake City, the first month's sales were 66% higher than the previous new market record at JAT. We developed and were able to implement our new market opening playbook created by our marketing and operations teams, which focuses on recruitment and training our team members while maximizing the key marketing phases of operating success, such as creating brand awareness in the market, a restaurant launch, and then sustaining our guest base. It was not only our inaugural restaurant in this market, It was also our first restaurant to execute against this playbook, and it is working even better than we anticipated. Not only did we set the single-store monthly sales record, but Topline continues to grow week over week since opening in mid-June. Note also that the restaurant is not fully open for late night, nor have we activated digital, both of which support our commitment to serving our guests well and opening with simple operations upon entering a new market. We plan to open three additional Salt Lake City locations by end of fiscal year, including our second drive-through only concept prototype in the U.S. and at least six in 2024, which will be a combination of company and franchise restaurants. And in Q4, we anticipate opening our first two company-owned restaurants in Louisville. We have an active fourth quarter ahead with 82 restaurants currently in the permitting design or construction phases and While we still see a handful of closures occurring this year, we will reach positive net unit growth in 2023 for the first time in nearly five years and are on track to be at the lower end of the guidance range on our gross openings for 2023. Net new restaurant growth is critical to increasing value, and we are focused on this trend continuing in the future. Let's now turn to Del Taco, which continues to be a value-driving addition to our company. and I'm very excited about the growth potential of the brand. Del Taco is well positioned to meet varied customer needs with its strong value proposition and barbell menu strategy. Same store sales grew 1.7% during Q3, with results tightly aligned between company and franchise restaurants. Increased hours of operation remained a key growth driver, increasing 1.7 hours per store compared to 2022. as the brand is getting closer to pre-COVID levels. The 20 under 2 menu platform, which was introduced in 2022, is still holding steady at approximately 16% during non-promotional periods. However, during Q3, we featured $5 Dells deals, which added another value layer to our barbell menu. This lineup consists of a variety of Dell Taco fan favorites, along with crinkle cut fries and a small drink and it's at a great value. We also brought back our very popular carnitas menu for a limited time. We saw continued growth across all sales channels and digital now represents total sales of 11.3% up from 11.1% in Q2. Last month, Del Taco revamped its Del Yal rewards by adding new branded member engagement features. Rewards members can now earn free food faster with decreased point level tiers and features like surveys and polls, shareable vanity badges, and punch cards. There are currently 1.5 million members, up from 1.3 million last quarter. And as we continue to grow membership, we will be able to drive incremental visits, frequency, and average spend. Turning to operations, there is a continued focus on recruiting and the expansion of labor hours to help drive same-store sales, aided by increases in labor availability and offering higher wages. We have also been applying the same operational focus at Del Taco that we have had at Jack and are seeing traction to reduce turnover and alerts per store, which are both the lowest in more than a year. Since the Dell development program launched in 2021 and as of the end of Q3, Del Taco has now signed 20 agreements for a total of 153 restaurants. We opened two franchise restaurants in Q3. Through these first three quarters, we have re-franchised 66 Del Tacos, including 50 in the quarter alone, and now expect to re-franchise between 90 and 120 restaurants this fiscal year. This is led by tremendous demand from our proven operators and developers within Jack and Del Taco. The combination of healthy valuations and incremental development agreements, plus using proceeds for share repurchases, make these transactions accretive as we move to a more asset-light model. To wrap up, as we proceed with the execution of our strategic pillars, we are creating real value for all stakeholders, our team members, franchisees, guests, and, of course, investors. We are proud of what we are accomplishing, and we will remain focused on the areas important to continue the trend. Thank you for your time and interest in the strategy we are executing and the growth story we are building.
Darren Harris
I will now turn the call over to Dawn.
spk14
Thanks, Darren, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to start by reviewing each of our two brands individually, followed by details on our consolidated performance and capital allocation. Beginning with Jack in the Box, our third quarter system same-store sales growth was 7.9%, consisting of company-owned comps of 6.9%, and franchise comps of 8%. On a three-year basis, same-store sales growth was 17.5%. Jack's quarterly system-wide same-store sales growth of 7.9% includes an 8.7% increase in pricing, a 0.2% increase in mix, and a 1% decrease in transactions. As a result, our overall average check increased since the prior year, and we have also seen positive year-over-year mix shift for the second consecutive quarter. And although down, our transactions were supported by the effective execution of our hook and build strategy and the successful marketing of our barbell menu with culturally relevant messaging. Additionally, we have had improvements in operations execution including increasing the average operating and dining room hours, which remain tailwinds for the jack-in-the-box system. And while company operations are leading the way, franchise operations are nearly caught up. On product categories, notable contributions came from burgers, chicken, and breakfast. All day parts generated positive sales year over year, but once again, the late-night day part stood out the most, with Late Night now posting positive transactions year-over-year for the third straight quarter. Turning to restaurant count, there were six Jack franchise openings along with two franchise closures. This resulted in a quarter-end restaurant count of 2,191 restaurants. As a reminder, Jack will be delivering positive net restaurant growth in fiscal year 2023 for the first time since fiscal 2019. Moving on to our Jack restaurant-level margin, we expanded performance year over year by 600 basis points to 21.8%. Notably, this is inclusive of our two remaining evolving markets, Oklahoma and Kansas City. Food and packaging costs as a percentage of company-owned sales declined 160 basis points to 31.4%, driven primarily by sales performance, led by menu price increases and a positive shift in sales mix, partially offset by an increase in ingredient costs. Commodity inflation was 5.2% for the quarter, with the greatest increases seen in potatoes, sauces, produce and beverages. partially offset by lower costs for pork, cheese, and poultry. Labor, as a percentage of company-owned sales, fell 310 basis points to 30.3% due to sales leverage inclusive of price increases and the benefit of re-franchising Oregon and Nashville within the last year. However, this was partially offset by wage inflation of 4.2% in the quarter compared to the prior year. Occupancy and other operating costs decreased 130 basis points to 16.5% of company restaurant sales due to leverage from higher sales and the benefit of re-franchising, partially offset by higher other operating costs, including utilities, delivery fees, and security as compared with the prior year. Franchise level margin was 75.3 million, or 41.1% of franchise revenues, compared to 70.8 million, or 41.4% a year ago. The $4.5 million increase was mainly driven by the flow-through of higher sales in the current year. Turning now to Del Taco, system same-store sales rose 1.7%, consisting of company-owned comps of 1.7% and franchise comps of 1.8%. Del Taco's quarterly system-wide same-store sales growth of 1.7% included an increase in pricing of 8.1%, partially offset by a decline in mix of 3.8%, as well as a decline in transactions of 2.4%. Average check is up year-over-year, although average items per check were slightly down. The day parts that contributed the most to sales this quarter were led by snack and dinner. Staffing improvements resulted in operating hours running above 2022 levels with continued upside opportunity. In Q3, there were three restaurant closures and two Del Taco franchise openings. The Del Taco restaurant count at the end of quarter was 594 restaurants. Del Taco restaurant level margin was 17.4% compared to 17.6% in the prior year. Food and packaging as a percentage of sales decreased 70 basis points to 27.7%, which was primarily due to many price increases partially offset by commodity inflation. Labor, as a percentage of sales, increased 110 basis points to 34%, primarily due to wage inflation, which was approximately 4.8% in Q3. Occupancy and other operating expenses decreased 20 basis points to 20.9%, driven primarily by lower common area maintenance costs. Franchise level margin was $5.5 million or 36.7% of franchise revenues compared to $5.1 million or 42.7% last year. The decrease in the percentage was driven by higher franchise costs and the impact of re-franchising transactions with pass-through rent. partially offset by franchise same-store sales growth. Shifting now to our consolidated results, consolidated SG&A for Q3 was $39.6 million, or 10% of revenues, as compared to $40 million, or 10.1%, a year ago. Excluding net COLE gains, SG&A was 2.4% of total system-wide sales and within our long-term expectations. Included in other operating expense net for the quarter is impairment of $5.4 million, which is primarily related to Del Taco locations in our Oklahoma and Atlanta markets. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $79.4 million, up from $73.2 million in the prior year. due primarily to higher Jack franchise and restaurant-level margins. Consolidated GAP diluted EPS was $1.41 compared to $1.08 in the prior year. Operating EPS per share, which includes certain adjustments, was $1.45 for the quarter versus $1.38 in the prior year. Note that the effective tax rate for the quarter, was 32.6% compared to 28.8% for the same quarter a year ago. The operating EPS tax rate for the third quarter of 2023 was 26.8%. Moving to capital allocation, during Q3, we repurchased approximately 0.3 million shares for 26.9 million, including the applicable excise tax as part of our ongoing share repurchase program. Year to date, we have repurchased $60.4 million. We now plan to execute at least $80 million in share repurchases this fiscal year and currently have $152 million remaining under our board authorized buyback program. As of quarter end, we had available borrowing capacity of $172 million, net of letters of credit which is comprised of $109.8 million under our variable funding notes, as well as $62.2 million under our Del Taco credit facility. Beyond share repurchases, we will also continue investing in our brands while returning cash to shareholders through dividends. To that end, on August 4th, 2023, the Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of 44 cents per share to be paid on September 18, 2023 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on September 6, 2023. Of course, future dividends will be subject to Board approval. For guidance, we would like to reiterate our expectations from our prior earnings call in May with the exception of two items. We now plan to re-franchise 90 to 120 Del Taco restaurants in fiscal 2023, up from our previous guidance of 65 to 85 restaurants. This will not impact our operating EPS guidance of $5.90 to $6.10 for fiscal 2023, which remains the same as previously stated. We now plan to execute at least 80 million in share repurchases in fiscal 2023. While we do not typically provide quarterly commentary, we do want to provide some additional color on the fourth quarter, given the operating environment over the last year. In the fourth quarter, we are beginning to lap some of the stronger price increases taken last year, which is likely the case with others in our industry. as well as improvements in hours of operations. Additionally, we would also like to remind you that we will be rolling over two items from the prior year. First, you will recall we experienced higher than normal early termination fees in the prior year due to some accelerated closures, the level of which will not recur this year. And second, we received a chicken-related legal settlement Both of these items benefited operating EPS by 30 cents in Q4 last year. That said, we are leaning into value, beginning with our jack-pack combos in Q4, and our long-term top-line fundamentals remain strong. In summary, we are very pleased to have delivered another quarter of robust performance and are on track for the remainder of the year. Thank you to both the Jack and Del Taco teams for what they are doing on behalf of our brands. And with that, we'd be happy to take some questions. Operator, please feel free to open the line for Q&A.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster.
Ryan
Your first question comes from Brian Bittner, Oppenheimer.
Operator
Brian, please go ahead.
Brian
Thank you. Congratulations on the strong quarter. You did have a very strong third quarter with your EPS. It was well above consensus expectations despite the fact that you had a 19 cent impairment charge that none of us were modeling. And I think that shows that the underlying business was tracking well above consensus forecast. But the full year guidance has an implication for the fourth quarter. It has an EPS range for the fourth quarter that's well below the street. And I know you have a lot of re-franchising. You talked about the lapse from last year. But we kind of all have those in our models. So all things considered, the only way to get to the fourth quarter implied EPS range is to have a pretty measurable deterioration in the underlying business. So I guess the question is, is there some costs coming in the fourth quarter that maybe we're not aware of? Or is your guidance for the fourth quarter perhaps tilting maybe a little bit conservative? Any color you can provide on all that would be helpful.
spk14
Yeah, thank you for the question. Yeah, I think there are several factors that you need to consider, one of which I mentioned in my prepared remarks, and that's the non-recurring benefit that we received in Q4 last year that won't be recurring, and that relates to some outsized early termination fees related to accelerated closures and then a chicken settlement. As you noted, you know, we did record 19 cents of impairment. The other item to take into consideration is the increased re-franchising that we've accelerated due to the strong interest in multiples we've received in addition to the acceleration in our development pipeline as related to the development agreements we've been able to sign with those re-franchising transactions. And lastly, I think like others in our industry, we're going to be lapping some of our peak pricing that we took a year ago. In fact, Q4 for both brands was the strongest performing quarter of last year. And just from a pricing standpoint, we're going to be rolling over or rolling off about 400 basis points of price in Q4. And then lastly, we really saw an increase or an uptick in our hours of operations recovery last year, and we're rolling over that. So when you take all that into consideration, you know, we're reaffirming the operating EPS guidance for the year.
Chris
So Brian, I think Don did a good job of capturing our sentiment. We feel that generally the business is performing extremely well. You're seeing it quarter after quarter. We anticipate that continuing into the fourth quarter, all year we've been guiding conservatively for this fourth quarter because of these one-time events. And as most of us in the industry, trying to figure out what the fourth quarter will look like overcoming such price.
Brian
That makes sense. And just, Darren, if I could follow up with you, you made an interesting comment in your prepared remarks as it relates to value becoming much more important for driving the business. Can you just unpack that comment a little bit? Is that a comment on the macro? Are you seeing something in the macro that's causing you to believe that value is becoming incrementally vital or anything else you can add to your comments around value?
Chris
And I think for us, what we're noticing within our business and within the industry is that, you know, balancing between premium and value is critical to driving transactions. And so we're just paying closer attention, not that anything has shifted, yet we're anticipating that small shift. And so we're balancing more of our promotional items through the back half of the year with some focused value opportunities.
Darren Harris
Great. Thank you.
Ryan
Your next question comes from Gregory Frankfurt, Guggenheim Securities.
Operator
Gregory, please go ahead.
spk17
Hey, thanks. Maybe, Darren, I think maybe eight, nine months ago we were speaking and you were talking about low-hanging fruit around right-sizing pricing by market. And I'm wondering if you could maybe first address what you think are the biggest pieces of low-hanging fruit from here going forward. And two, as you think about pricing, Do you think you should outprice the industry, underprice the industry going forward, just given that that may still be a continued opportunity? Thanks.
Chris
Yeah, I think for us, we continue to feel really good about late night and that business growing. And I also think we have opportunity to continue to perform at the breakfast day part. Those are the two areas I think that we have, you know, from a day part standpoint. And then digital. Digital continues to grow for us. It continues to be a substantial growth part of our business. We saw an 18% increase. a little over 18% increase in digital alone, leading to 2% of the comp. So we're seeing our overall business perform across both day part and different delivery modes. The other thing on pricing, what we're seeing is we've implemented internal discipline with analytics tools that enable us to go in and pick specific regions, stores, and find unique opportunities across our whole menu. And so we're focused more on a surgical approach than a blanket approach, and we look at those opportunities market by market and store by store.
Darren Harris
Thank you.
Ryan
Your next question comes from Brian Mullen, Piper Sandler.
Operator
Brian, please go ahead.
Brian
Thank you. Just a question on the Del Taco re-franchising process. It's great to see it progressing so quickly now. You know, we now have visibility into what the system should look like at the end of this fiscal year. Can you just give us your current thinking on how you expect this to evolve throughout fiscal 24? I understand it's probably hard to be precise, but just any kind of guardrails or ranges around how you expect it to look would be great.
Chris
Yeah, not at this time. We'll continue to focus on the guidance of 90 to 120 for this year. We'll revise our guidance as we head into 24. But overall, you're seeing us make substantial progress getting incremental development agreements for Jack and Dell. We're putting restaurants in the hands of our best operators at Jack. That was part of our thesis going into this transaction. We knew there was pent-up demand. And our Dell Taco operators. So, Overall, what you can definitely see is that we're continuing to up our share repurchases. These transactions are accretive based upon the multiple valuations that we're getting, and so we'll continue to execute on that strategy as aggressively as we have in 23.
Darren Harris
Okay, thank you.
Ryan
Next question from Andrew Charles, TD Cohen.
Operator
Andrew, please go ahead.
Andrew
Great, thanks. Darren, I have a two-part question on the value prioritization. So first, is hook and build going to be the preferred route that you guys offer value through? I know the $6 jack pack is something you have. Are you planning to lean into value more that way? Or just given the digital traction, is that going to be more of a preferred route as you look to do more targeted and personalized value offerings? So curious on the format of how we should think about value going forward. And secondly, on the value, I mean, does this alter the timeframe of the plan launch, the hero menu item that you guys previously talked about as launching at some point early in fiscal 2024?
Chris
So related to value, I think value is, you know, what you get for what you pay. And so we look at channel. So on digital, we're more aggressive with our value offers and our discounting. As we think about menu items, it's items that will drive traffic similar to the $6 jack pack. Or we also have Jack's deals now that are in test, and we feel good about that offering. Very similar to what you would see at Del Taco with our 20 under 2. We were able to learn from what they've done there, and we're replicating something for that that we would roll out later into 2024. So we have multiple levers to play in value now that maybe Jack didn't have previously. And so we focus those on the right channels at the right time. And then as far as the hero menu item, we're testing that item or a few different items related to that. And we anticipate rolling that out in 2024.
Darren Harris
Thank you.
Ryan
Next question comes from David Tarantino from Baird. Please, David, go ahead. David, I think you might be on mute. If you can unmute your line.
David Tarantino
Oh, yes. Sorry about that. Good morning, everyone. My question, Darren, is about the performance you're seeing in Salt Lake City, which seems pretty encouraging. I was wondering if you could share More details on, I know you mentioned that the volumes are a lot higher than what you normally expect in a new market, but I don't think you've ever shared what you expect in a new market. So I was wondering if you could share more details on what the volumes are tracking towards and what that would mean for a return profile, because it sounds like a pretty good early data point, and I might have a follow-up.
Chris
Yeah, we're not going to quote exact sales, but I can tell you this is an all-time record for the brand and 66% higher than any of our previous store openings for monthly sales. And what's encouraging about that, we're not open at late night yet. We're just starting to open the digital channel. We're implementing our playbook for new markets. And this store is on track to be if not the highest volume restaurant in our system, but one of them. So we feel good about the franchise operator there, how he's executed. We feel good about the playbook we implemented. And we're just now getting to the point of starting to deliver media in the market. What's even more exciting about that is we have three more openings in Salt Lake City in fiscal year 23 and another six planned for fiscal year 24. And so, you know, we're encouraged by what we're seeing with this new unit opening. And beyond that, what we didn't comment is on the other openings within the system, you know, we're definitely seeing them outperform, you know, system average. And so, we think we're on to something, especially with the new craved image.
David Tarantino
Great. And on the playbook, can you just elaborate on on what you did to create so much excitement around this new restaurant in Salt Lake City versus maybe what you've done before in newer markets, just to give us some context on, you know, how you're going to market?
Chris
Yeah, overall, from, you know, we want to make sure operations are executed at the highest level. So we staff at a very high level. We've trained our team for multiple months being ready to launch in the market. And so, you know, with that, then we kicked into marketing and we're at the early stage of our marketing. So after simplifying operations, making sure they were in order, then we started communicating locally within the market about Jack in the Box entering. And a lot of that was through social and digital channels. And we're just now getting to the point where we're ready to launch our overall awareness building campaign.
David Tarantino
Great. Thank you very much.
Operator
Next question from Dennis Geiger, UBS. Dennis, please go ahead.
Dennis Geiger
Great. Thank you. As you continue to make progress against restaurant development growth, can you talk a little bit more about franchisee sentiment right now on development, particularly as it relates to the environment across any macro pressures or industry timing issues that we're hearing from some of your peers? All sounds, you know, good and positive, but just curious if any updates there, Darren, And maybe if there's any early thoughts kind of into next year's development considerations to high-level touch on today.
Chris
Yeah, we're excited. We just left a franchise conference where franchisees are really feeling good about where the brand is, especially from a top-line standpoint. Their margins are coming back. You see what's happened with our margins on the corporate side, improving 600 basis points year over year. Our initiatives to drive margin with the 200 basis point focus were 50% rolled out. of those initiatives, and they're not even taking hold yet, though in the back half of the year we anticipate those starting to take hold. So, you know, sentiment from the franchisee standpoint is very positive. And to come back to where you were talking about on development, I think that our pipeline continues to grow. We now have 82 restaurants and permitting designer construction. That's the most in well over a decade. That's grown since last quarter. We continue to sign new franchisees. That's just on the Jack side. On the Dell side, we're having the same thing. We have a substantial number of agreements signed as a result of re-franchising. And that was part of our strategy. And that's also with Jack in the Box franchisees and Del Taco franchisees. So the sentiment is positive. The development pipeline is starting to take hold. And now it's about putting shovels in the ground, as we said in our comments. And that's beginning to happen.
Dennis Geiger
That's great. If I could have a quick follow-up just on Brian's question earlier, and I think you spoke to it to a large extent, Darren. But if there's anything to add on what you're seeing from customers, I know you mentioned kind of the number of items per ticket down. That may just be a continuation of what you and maybe the industry have seen. But any other behavior changes to call out, income demographic behaviors, anything like that? Thank you very much.
Chris
You know, on the jack side of the business, when we look across all of our income deciles, we're seeing the best performance coming from the higher income. Some of that is our strategy and what we've been promoting from a premium standpoint. Some of it is just the response we're getting since we did segmentation research and identified a customer base that we targeted since myself and Ryan joined the company. And then the last thing is just we're seeing balanced sales improvement across all deciles. On the Del Taco business, what we're seeing is We're seeing strength again across all income levels. We see some opportunity as we've tried to change our value offerings to continue to drive value with some of our lower income guests. But overall, especially because Dell, we've taken so much price, so we have some opportunity to drive our business with our lower income guests there. But overall, pretty balanced look at demographics within both businesses.
Ryan
Great. Thank you. Next question from Alex Schlegel from Jefferies.
Operator
Alex, please go ahead.
spk16
ALEX SCHLEGEL, Thank you. I wanted to see if you could clarify just the incremental re-franchising actions. Are those neutral to EPS this year or dilutive? Just wanted to get an idea on that and if you have any thoughts on, you know, potential for it to be accretive to EPS or EBITDA going forward.
Chris
Yeah, I think if you look back to our ICR presentation, that'll help support that these transactions are accretive to earnings based upon our share repurchases. And so when we, obviously we're losing EBITDA, we're taking in royalties, but we're also driving them at decent valuations. And so through upping our share repurchases, that'll help these be accretive.
spk16
Okay. And then could you provide some additional color on the Del Taco performance in Atlanta, Oklahoma, and just what the challenges are in those markets and sort of plans to readjust or remedy those issues?
Chris
Yeah. You know, I think it's with, you know, many of us in the industry have a few markets at times. If we have leadership changes, we may have some, you know, challenges within operations. So we went in with a plan to help turn those markets around and improve them. We have a couple of those markets at Jack in Oklahoma and Kansas City that we implemented a playbook in Kansas City and Oklahoma. We're seeing double-digit comps in Oklahoma, close to 20% comps, and over 12% comps in Kansas City. So we're implementing the playbook, and it starts with staffing and training, and then eventually starting to market the business and eventually focus on the margin improvements. I would say for Del Taco, the same holds true in Atlanta and in Oklahoma.
Ryan
Got it. Thank you. Next, Brian Harper, Morgan Stanley. Brian, please go ahead.
Brian Harper
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Just on SG&A, so we have some sense of the fourth quarter, do you think you'll be kind of in the mid range of your annual guide, low end, just any comments on that? And then my second question was just following up on, you know, the franchisee sentiment question. These are not new issues, but any newer comments on real estate availability, interest rates, just permitting, has anything changed with those topics?
Chris
You know, I think what you've heard with our, you know, peers within the industry is I think we've all faced a little bit of challenges with permitting and the time it takes to get permitting to occur on a development standpoint. So we've seen some of our pipeline lengthen. I think also from a standpoint of just labor, like we face in our industry, but development, the same thing. Construction labor is a little bit more challenging. And so those are just lengthening the pipeline. It's not stopping. The building of our pipeline, which is where I made the comment earlier, is we now have 82 restaurants in the pipeline. That's more than we've had in over a decade. And so now we have a pipeline to work with, and we'll continue to fill that up with sites and eventually get them under construction.
spk14
And on the operating EPS, I think we're just going to say we're reiterating our guidance, and it's between $5.90 and $6.10.
Ryan
Next question comes from John Tower from Citi. Please go ahead. Thank you.
John Tower
So just, I want to zero in on the celebrity meal deals or tie-ins with the partnerships that you guys have been having at the core Jack in the Box brand. They've been what appear to be a home run for the brand. So far, driving sales is a great way to get your checklist and driving some brand awareness. But I'm just curious how you're thinking about weaving more of these into future plans for the company and or how you plan on lapping, say, the Mint Mobile promotion from this year or the Snoop Dogg promo that really looked like it helped the comp quite a bit.
Chris
As part of our marketing strategy, we'll continue to focus on partnerships where they make sense. You know, overall, the key here is elevating Jack in the Box, the character Jack Box, and his presence as his own celebrity. And I think a lot of his friends you're seeing him partner with to do these, you know, promotions. And we'll continue to do that when and where it makes sense.
Darren Harris
Are these different? I'm sorry. Go ahead, John.
John Tower
I was just going to ask you, are they structured differently than, say, just signing up a normal celebrity and paying them a fixed fee or whatever it is annually?
Chris
Yeah, definitely. We do different types of partnerships. With the Mint Mobile promotion, I think that was interesting because both of us benefited from that relationship. Mint Mobile got some benefit of our advertising. We got the benefit of Ryan Reynolds' celebrity endorsement of our brand. We both won in that situation. I think the same holds true for our partnership with Snoop. Snoop has been a longtime fan of the brand, and so he wanted to participate with us in this promotion, especially when we relaunched Late Night and our Munchie Mills, which we have a lot of fans for our Late Night business.
Ryan
Thank you. Next question comes from Chris Corral, RBC Capital Markets.
Operator
Chris, go ahead.
Chris
Hi. Thank you. So maybe just following up on the commentary around the 4Q comparisons, maybe to help us as we're thinking about the 4Q and just considering the wide range implied by the same-store sales guide, can you maybe expand a bit more on the jacked trends that you saw over the course of the 3Q? And then in particular, what you saw as you exited the quarter, I mean, if I'm looking at the multi-year trend versus 2019, they, again, accelerated for the third, you know, for the full third quarter. But curious if you could expand on what you saw, you know, throughout the quarter.
Chris
Yeah, throughout Q3, we saw sales continue to improve from, you know, period 8 through period 10. And I think a lot of it was what we did with our promotional windows. And, you know, and so we'll continue to do that. I think, you know, coming into the fourth quarter, you look at our four-year geometric stack and, you know, it accelerated in Q3 50 basis points. And then we now are going to be lapping some heavy, you know, price. So overall, we feel good about the momentum in our business and sales. It's just now how do we, you know, forecast you know, overcoming that price and also hours of operation. But overall, the business is sustaining.
Ryan
Great. Thank you. Next question comes from Jeffrey Bernstein from Barclays.
Operator
Please go ahead.
spk11
Great. Thank you. I had two questions. One, I was just hoping you could talk a little bit about the traffic at Jack in the Box. I think it eased a little bit in the third quarter from the second quarter. And I know you made some cautious comments, like you just said, about the compares going into the fourth quarter. So I'm just wondering if you can offer some thoughts on when you think you can turn that traffic to the positive side and what the key drivers would be on that front. And I had one follow-up.
Chris
Yeah, I think, you know, for the most part, we held steady on traffic throughout the quarter. And I think, you know, late night accelerated, it was up, transactions were up 3.1%. And so, obviously, year over year. And so, you know, that continues to improve. I think opportunity for us is continuing to find, you know, success within our breakfast day part and our lunch day part and driving, you know, value transactions in that area.
spk11
Gotcha. And do you break out... You know, the sales mix of the breakfast, late night, and however you define value, it seems like those are important areas, just trying to get a sense for a benchmark of where you are now, maybe where you were before or what you're anticipating.
Chris
No, we don't. And the reason why I speak a little bit about breakfast is we've probably had the most acceleration of price through our franchisees at the breakfast day part, so we know there's some opportunity for us to recapture some value at the breakfast day part. And so that's why I speak of value. during the breakfast component.
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