Kura Sushi USA, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kurosushi USA Inc. Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the lines will be open for your questions following the presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star and then zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this call is being recorded. On the call today, we have Hajime Jimmy-Uva, the President and Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Yutes, the Chief Financial Officer, and Benjamin Porton, SVP Investor Relations and System Development. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Porton. Thank you, and you may proceed, sir.

Thank you, Operator.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining. By now, everyone should have access to our fiscal fourth quarter 2023 earnings release, It can be found at www.courtesy.com in the Investor Relations section. A copy of the earnings release has also been included in the 8K we submitted to the SEC. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today will include forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We refer all of you to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. Also during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation, nor is a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP, and the reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release. With that out of the way, I would like to turn the call over to Jimmy.

Thanks, Ben, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. I'm very pleased to announce that we've closed another record-breaking year with a great fiscal fourth quarter. Before we dive into discussing our most recent quarter, I would like to have a quick recap of what we have achieved over the full fiscal year. At the beginning of the year, We mentioned three major goals for fiscal 2023. Maintaining excellent operations, continuing to rapidly grow our restaurant base, and leveraging our G&A against our increasingly large restaurant base. I'm proud to report our success on all of these fronts as demonstrated by our full-year restaurant-level operating profit margins, improving 70 basis points year-over-year to 21.9%. a record 10 new unit openings, and full-year G&A leveraging of 80 basis points over the prior year. Our AOVs have grown from $3.8 million in fiscal 2022 to $4.3 million in fiscal 2023, reflecting the incredible run of new unit openings we've had in recent years. These successes have directly translated to improvement in profitability. Our adjusted EBITDA grew from $9.2 million in fiscal 2022 to $14.3 million in fiscal 2023, representing a growth rate of over 56% in a single year. Total sales for the fiscal fourth quarter were $54.9 million, representing comparable sales growth of 6.5%. with traffic growth being responsible for 5.6% of our total comp. In spite of ongoing concerns over decelating macro environment, more guests are coming to Kurasushi than ever before. Our traffic is actually outperforming pre-pandemic levels. We continue to be pleased with our sales performance as we enter the new fiscal year, with blended comps for September and October of 2.7%. total revenue of approximately $34.3 million and quality traffic in both months. Community costs have continued to improve. Our cost of goods sold as a percentage of sales of 29.5% is a 120 basis point improvement over the prior year quarter and a 50 basis point sequential improvement over the prior quarter. Labor costs as a percentage of sales have held steady at 28.8%, confirming the expectations we had shared during the previous earnings call. Restaurant-level operating profit margins reached an all-time high of 24.4%, representing a 50 basis point improvement over the prior year quarter. During our fiscal fourth quarter, we opened four new restaurants, Long Island New York, San Jose, California, and Framingham and Dorchester in Massachusetts for a total of 10 unit openings in fiscal 2023. Our momentum on the development front is better than ever. Since entering the new fiscal year, we've already opened four units in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Flushing, New York, Tampa, Florida, and Naperville, Illinois. with another seven units currently under construction. It's been wonderful to see Kula continue to resonate in new markets as we expand across the country. Turning to new initiatives, I'm very happy to announce that we launched our new rewards program up in mid-October, and the guests responsible to the new app have been uniformly positive. While our previous rewards app had been very effective in growing traffic by encouraging repeat visits, the visual presentation of the app and its usability was lacking. In comparison, our new app is very highly rated on the App Store and Google Play Store, with many users commenting on the significant improvement the new app has delivered. The response from existing users has been nothing short of great, But what's truly exciting is that since launching our new apps, the number of weekly new user registrations has more than doubled. To be clear, these are not existing users that were migrating their accounts, but completely new guests that were joining our rewards program due to the improvements that we had made. I would encourage everyone on this call to download our new app, as you'll be able to immediately see the leap in quality. On top of the improvements to the guest experience, our new reward platform has unlocked completely new opportunities for our marketing team, such as customer segmentation, targeted marketing, and new ways of rewarding and engaging with our guests. I'm extremely excited for its potential and expect this to be a meaningful sales driver for us as we learn to unlock its potential. Development of the robotic dishwasher will continue to progress with the first industrial implementation in Japan expected in spring of 2024. Following this pilot, we'll be able to begin the certification process for implementing the robotic dishwasher in the U.S. While we do expect the dishwasher robots to have a meaningful impact on our labor model in future years, as we have stated in past learning scores, we do not expect implementation during this fiscal year, and we expect its impact to slowly ramp as these dishwasher robots will be limited to newly opened restaurants. Our current Jujutsu Kaisen IP collaboration has had a great guest response and our upcoming pipeline of brand collaborations is our strongest one yet. I'm so excited to see what we can achieve in fiscal 2024 and I'm deeply grateful for the continuous hard work by our team members at our restaurants and at our corporate support center for setting us up for another amazing year. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff to discuss our financial results and liquidity. Jeff?

Thank you, Jimmy.

For the fourth quarter, total sales were $54.9 million as compared to $42 million in the prior year period. Comparable restaurant sales performance as compared to the prior year period was positive 6.5% with regional comps of 12.1% in California and 3.3% in Texas. Turning now to costs. Food and beverage costs as percentage of sales were 29.5% as compared to 30.7% in the prior year quarter, largely due to pricing and the stabilization of commodity inflation. Labor and related costs as a percentage of sales decreased to 28.8% from 28.9% in the prior year quarter. This decrease is due to incremental efficiencies created by the implementation of technological initiatives and sales leveraging from increased traffic and pricing, which was largely offset by wage increases. Occupancy and related expenses as a percentage of sales were 6.6% compared to the prior year quarters, 6.5%. Other costs as a percentage of sales increased to 13.8% compared to 12.4% in the prior year quarter, due to costs associated with a greater number of store openings, as well as an increase in marketing costs and general cost inflation. General and administrative expenses as a percentage of sales decreased to 13.2%, as compared to 13.3% in the prior year quarter. On a full year comparison, G&A expenses as a percentage of sales decreased to 15%, as compared to the prior years, 15.8%. This represents an increase of G&A dollars of 25.8% for fiscal year 2023, as compared to sales growth of 32.8% over the same period. With the leveraging of G&A being one of our key goals for fiscal 2023, we are very pleased with these results and expect to achieve further leverage in the coming fiscal years. Operating income was $2.2 million, as compared to operating income of $1.9 million in the prior year quarter. Income tax expense was $167,000 compared to $61,000 in the prior year quarter. Net income was $2.9 million or 25 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $1.9 million or 19 cents per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Restaurant-level operating profit as a percentage of sales was 24.4% compared to 23.9% in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.3 million compared to $4.8 million in the prior year quarter. Turning now to our cash and liquidity, at the end of the fiscal fourth quarter, we had $69.7 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debt. And lastly, I'd like to provide the following guidance for fiscal year 2024. We expect total sales to be between $238 and $243 million. We expect to open between 11 and 13 units with average net capital expenditures per unit of approximately $2.5 million. And we expect general and administrative expenses as a percentage of sales to be approximately 14.5%. In addition, as we have communicated over the last year, beginning with our next earnings call, we will no longer quantify quarter-to-date performance. And with that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Jimmy.

Thanks, Jeff. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now happy to answer any questions you have. Operator, please open the line for questions. As a reminder, during the Q&A session, I may answer in Japanese before my response is translated into English. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you.

At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and then 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. Please limit your questions to two questions, and if you have any further questions, you are welcome to rejoin the queue to ask further questions. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary for you to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. The first question comes from Joshua Long from Stevens. Please proceed with your question, Joshua. Joshua, you may proceed with your question. If your line is muted, please unmute your line so that you can pose your questions.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. Curious if we could talk through the trends that you saw through your fiscal fourth quarter. I know we had previously talked about June and kind of the almost 15% range, but curious how that trended in July and August. And then as you think about kind of the early trends here in 1Q24, can you remind us kind of what we're lapping over and or how you think about some of the brand awareness initiatives that you've been working on in terms of a traffic driving tool? Thanks so much.

Sure. Thank you, Josh, for your question. Please allow me to answer in Japanese. Thank you. Hi Josh, this is Ben.

Regarding the June comps, we were very pleased. As we mentioned in the prior earnings call, July and August were among the most difficult comparisons, if not the most difficult comparison that we've been up against since going public. We had the Demon Slayer campaign. We had the benefit of the full rollout of the three initiatives for the first time in Q4. And we also had different operating conditions in 2022, which made a comparison, or I'm sorry, 2021, making the comparison for 2022 a little easier. And so the comps, you know, for Q4 of 2022 were 28%. For us to have hit, you know, 6.5% and in fact to have comped 5.6% in positive traffic over that 14% or so positive traffic from last year, we think is a, you know, quite an achievement. And so we're very pleased with these results. Josh, did you have, did we answer your whole question or was there any Anything that I didn't address.

I appreciate that. And just thinking forward, I mean, you've done a great job in terms of broadening the awareness of the brand with some of your brand partner collaborations. Curious how those are performing and kind of any sort of early read or additional context you could offer for 2024. Sure.

I think we need to increase traffic by 5% compared to 28% last year. One of them is this IT collaboration campaign. Q4 is a WeWearBear campaign, which also used 5% of traffic. Q1, Q2, and Q3 will be strong brand collaborations. I think all of these will contribute to positive traffic.

And so, as you mentioned before, for us to have lapped that 28% comps with positive traffic, we're very pleased. And certainly, the IT collaborations that we've been working with has been a big part of it. In the last earnings call, we mentioned just how strong Weave Air Bears was, and that was certainly a lift for traffic perspective. Right now, our current collaboration is with Jujutsu Kaisen, which is a very popular anime that's going very well. And while I can't disclose the full pipeline for the remainder of the year, we do have, I would say, the most exciting brands ever to have collaborated with Cura coming up, and so I'm extremely excited to give you updates on that as we get further into the fiscal year.

Thank you. Thanks, Josh. Thank you, Gus.

Thank you. The next question comes from Jeffrey Bernstein from Barclays. Please proceed with your question, Jeffrey.

Great. Thank you very much. Two questions. First, just wanted to follow up on the comp trend. Totally appreciate lapping a 28% comp is extremely difficult. But in order to flush out the comparisons that I think you said got more difficult as the quarter went along, perhaps you can share on a two- or three-year basis, however you look at it, because it does seem like the comp, if you're running close to 15 in the first five weeks and you did a six and change for the full quarter, that it was pretty flattish in the back nine weeks. I'm just trying to gauge. whether you think it was a sequential slowdown at all or whether on a multi-year basis it was actually fairly stable? Just trying to get a sense for the trend throughout the quarter, flushing out the comparisons.

Yeah, on a multi-year basis, I would say that it was really exceptional. July and August in particular had the Demon Slayer collaboration, which really brought unprecedented traffic for us.

Do you share them? Just to be able to figure out kind of how that was, in terms of two- and three-year, can you share the monthly numbers last year so we can kind of gauge?

I don't have them in front of me, but I believe if you go to our past earnings calls, you'll be able to see them in the archives.

Okay. And then my second question was looking forward from a restaurant margin perspective. I appreciate that you give top-line guidance in terms of revenues and units and whatnot, but as we think about the margins and the flow through the earnings, Any thoughts you can give in terms of fiscal 24? I mean, the commodity and labor basket, inflation, I presume, just wondering what you're thinking for each of those and whether you have an ability or a desire to hold the margins flat, maybe how much pricing you're anticipating in fiscal 24, any color on the key line items on the pricing to offset ultimately leading to restaurant margin would be great.

First of all, I'd like to start with Tomodeki and Jif. I'd like to start with Ray-Ban. I'd like to start with Ray-Ban. Regarding Ray-Ban, this year, there was a double-digit inflation, but I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. Regarding this, I think it's going to be as low as a single-digit inflation. So we'll let Jeff handle commodities, but just to discuss labor, in past earnings call, we've been mentioning that we've been seeing about double-digit year-over-year labor inflation.

We're very pleased to be able to say that that's moderated down to mid-single digits, which really is sort of a reflected in our pricing decision that we made in July. As you know, we lapped 7%. We only took 2% to offset that. And the relatively modest price increase really reflects the bullishness that we have on the overall labor environment. As we've mentioned in past earnings calls, anything above 20% is an exceptional restaurant-level operating profit market. We're very pleased to have actually grown that substantially this year with 80 basis points year over year. But anything over 20% is something that we're very pleased with. Yeah, Jeff, this is Jeff. I'll just add to what Jimmy and Ben said as well. When you think about restaurant-level operating profit, the 20% number is great. We've never historically taken price to chase margin. What we've done is we've taken price in response to minimum wage increases and other outside forces that are increasing the cost of us doing business. And that's what we're going to continue to do going forward. in terms of what we've seen on the COGS line, it has been really very encouraging. And the last two or three calls I've said, we've seen the really high increases slow down and even out. And I'm really happy to report that in this past quarter, we saw not only sequential quarter to quarter, but also year over year, very slight depletion in our basket. Not, not a huge number, but it's not, it's a, it's a red number now, not a, Not a number going up, so we're happy. And I'm confident that that trend is going to continue. We've made some promotions in our supply chain department, some really good people, and the negotiating has gone really well, and we're going to continue pushing forward on that. So I'm very bullish on what we're going to see on our COGS line as we move forward through the fiscal year.

Got it. And just lastly, if I could just clarify from a unit opening perspective, I know you're talking about 11 to 13 units. I'm just wondering if you can share maybe the openings. Well, you did four already in the first quarter, but your openings by quarter and how you think about those in new versus existing markets.

First of all, I haven't released any opening statements so far. I don't know at all. Q1 is a little more than that. It's currently 7 stores, but half of them have just started. So in terms of the opening cadence, this isn't something that we typically discuss in the Q4 earnings calls. But just given that we've already opened four, we sort of need to comment on it. We don't expect further openings in Q1.

The 70 units that we have under construction, the majority are in the early stages of construction, so I think you can sort of back out the cadence from that relative to our guidance. In terms of the new versus existing, about 20%, 25% of our units from fiscal 24th pipeline are slotted for new markets, and the remainder will be in existing markets. This represents a shift from the historical 50-50 split. Just given that we're in 15 states now, there are fewer new markets for us to enter. And one further thing about opening more stores up in existing markets is it's really going to help us even further on the G&A line and our regional G&A, make it much more efficient for our area managers not having to travel so far and have restaurants that are in geographical areas where they're not on the road as much and not spending as much money doing that. So we're excited to be able to see some potential leverage on the regional G&A side of things versus the corporate G&A side as

Also, I'd like to add one more thing to the unit growth guidance. From 11 to 13, we're now at 4.5. It might be a little more aggressive than you think, but at the end of this year, there will be an unexpected delay or an uncontrollable delay. This year, this will continue. If everything goes well,

Just to close out the unit growth discussion, you might have been surprised by our guidance being 11 to 13 units when we've already opened four and we've got seven under construction. People on the call might be wondering why are we being more aggressive with our growth. And really, this is just a reflection of the operating environment that we've been in the last 12 years. The construction itself, the construction period is very stable, but We've seen, you know, unexpected hurdles pop up in the last, you know, the final stages, which have delayed openings from anywhere from, you know, weeks to months. And so the 11 to 13 reflects, you know, just uncertainty in terms of, you know, especially permitting. But we do believe that should things be smoother, there's ample opportunity for upside, and we're very excited to, you know, hopefully provide updates and upgrades in subsequent earnings calls.

Thank you. Thank you, Jeff.

Thank you. The next question comes from John Tower from Citigroup. Please proceed with your questions, John.

Great, thanks. First a clarification and then a question. Just curious, I think, Jimmy, you'd mentioned September, October running comps in a plus 2.7% range. Maybe I misheard that, but wanted to clarify. And if so, you know, I'm curious to gain your perspectives on the the slowdown on a one-year basis um that you're experiencing and and you know i think on a multi-year basis that would also be a bit of a slowdown as well yeah uh john good to talk to you um this is jeff in terms of the comps that we've seen what we're really most excited about what we want to focus on is the traffic and what what we believe is that getting people in the door and getting traffic to increase is a huge part of the battle when it comes to comps. And we feel we're winning that battle. And you and all of us have all listened to the conference calls from other companies that have been going on over the last several weeks. And we're proud of the fact that we're one of the few concepts that is showing a positive traffic number. We can't control certain things like somebody maybe not ordering a soda or ordering a tea or having a side item, which you might expect in an economy like we're having. But what we do expect is that the people will continue to keep coming back, and they do. And people, when they go out, are choosing current. And we believe that's going to continue. And we're going to continue to push so that people come in that door. And if they do make some changes to their dining habits, hopefully, and we believe that will be offset by having more people come through the door. So that's what we're going to continue to push is that traffic number. Got it. So you are seeing a little bit of check management from consumers that are coming back. albeit more frequently than before, but the check management is occurring in the business right now. A little bit. And it's like small add-on things. Our sushi plates for guests is not changing dramatically. So, like I said, somebody may have a water instead of a Coke or not have a tea, or maybe they won't have a small dessert at the end of their meal or something like that, which, like I said, is to be expected in an economy like we're in. But people are still coming through the door, and we're happy with that. Got it. Cool. And then just talking about the development side again, I know that there's been some discussion, not with you yet, but others in the industry about having some problems on the development side. I know you hit on kind of slower permitting timelines than what you'd historically seen, but are you actually seeing any problems with developers not actually opening units, especially in first-generation locations? And if so, can you give us maybe an idea of how much of your portfolio is exposed or potentially exposed to those developers that are at risk of potentially cutting new locations short and therefore potentially putting some of your new stores at risk?

Yeah, so just to be clear, the uncertainty that we were referring to is really more on permitting as opposed to anything on the developer side. We're fortunate to be able to say that this really is a problem that's entirely foreign to us. We've seen maybe one or two LOIs go sideways.

because of interest rates and developers calling out. It's certainly nothing, you know, in our fiscal 24 pipeline, certainly nothing under construction. And so, yeah, it really, this hasn't been an issue for us.

So, yeah, it really, this hasn't been an issue for us. Yeah, one odd kind of wrinkle that we've been seeing is, and this is a new issue for us, is that

very late in construction. We've had, you know, the permitting officials come by after they've approved, you know, the blueprints months in advance saying, you know, after we've built the restaurant, actually, I've got a problem with the blueprint and we need to make these major changes, which obviously, you know, adds many, you know, weeks to the openings. And so that's been frustrating. You think maybe it's part of, you know, unfortunate just sort of turnover and the personnel that are managing this as a result of the pandemic, there were probably layoffs and new employees and Maybe they're still getting their sea legs, but it's, yeah, so that's the uncertainty that we've been seeing, not anything from the developer side. And oftentimes our approved plans, which are always to code, when they come in and want us to do additional things, things that are way above and beyond what code is and things that we've never really seen before. So those are the, we're not sure why they're doing this, but we're running into that from time to time.

Over the counter is this.

and the human element is sort of gone where before these things could be talked through whereas now we really have no recourse just online portals are you know really the only way to you know get in contact with people and an online portal is not open to discussion and so yeah that's been a change but Like we said earlier, we do expect, you know, a very strong development year. Even the midpoint of the 11 to 13 is 24% unit growth. And, you know, we do very much hope to be able to give you updates and upgrades. Our pipeline is really strong, John. And, you know, Jimmy talked about the 700 construction. And beyond that, we're not talking any further about that other than the guidance that we've given, the 11 to 13. But the pipeline is very strong. And we have no concerns about being able to meet our guidance. And like Ben said, potentially, hopefully, raise it in a future call if we can. Got it. Thank you for all that. I appreciate it. And then just mechanically, thinking through the rewards revamp, are you anticipating, and I'm uncertain as to how this is going to impact, but in terms of redemption and Are you anticipating any bit of a comp headwind from the rewards revamp that you've added in mid-October? No, it should not be a comp headwind. If anything, it will be a comp tailwind. I mean, that's why we've been focused on it. Cool. And then just the last piece, another robotic dishwasher. That's encouraging. Glad to hear that it's going to be making its way here at some point in 20 form into future windows. Can you maybe give us an idea of like what sort of incremental cost that might be, at least from a CapEx standpoint? And then perhaps if you could frame any sort of labor savings you're expecting from this over time?

Of course, we're still in the early stages. We're still in the early stages. We're still in the early stages. So we're still... It's still the pilot model, and so there are probably going to be material changes and changes in the materials for the robots between the pilot model versus the mass production model.

But the ROI, I mean, it... They're an extremely low bar for us to clear. It's really going to be a slam dunk. We're really excited about it. Two important things to remember, though, on the robotic dishwashers is that we don't expect any labor impact this year because it won't be, it'll be, FISMA 25 will be on. And then the second thing to take note is it's going to be started in the new units only because our existing units, for the most part, are very efficient in terms of space in the kitchen. So these dishwashers most likely not be able to be retrofitted into our existing kitchen. So we'll start doing new construction to start. And to provide additional color on the labor impact, right now, most of our restaurants, we have two full-time employees working as dishwashers. This would reduce our labor needs to one full-time employee, and the burden for that employee would be lessened as well, which is help with retention. And so all around, it's very exciting. We mentioned in past earnings calls that We think the overall impact is going to be greater than those three initiatives that we rolled out with System 22 combined, and we still believe that.

Great. Thanks. I'll pass it along. Thanks, John. Thank you, John.

Thank you. The next question comes from Jeremy Hamblin from Craig Hallam. Please proceed with your questions, Jeremy.

Thank you, and congrats on a strong year. I want to come back to the sales guidance for the year and just make sure I understood what In terms of that range that you provided, what's the implied same-store sales embedded within that? Is it kind of like in the 3% to 5% range?

So we don't provide comp guidance, and so we can't really get into it right now. But the revenue guidance that we provide, you know, contemplates the 11 to 13 units as well as what our internal comp expectations are. And as we mentioned before, there's ample opportunity for the number of stores that we're opening to go beyond that 11 to 13 that we're saying, which would have a concurrent impact on our revenue guidance as well. And so we've got a lot of things to look forward to for this year.

But if I need to say something, 9.5% is full-year comp, right? Just as a closing note, though, the 9.5% full-year comps that we had for fiscal 23, we aren't expecting the same thing for fiscal 24.

Got it. And then I wanted to ask a question here on margins. So you had pre-opening costs for over $700,000 in the August quarter. And in terms of

you know, one, I want to understand what kind of the average pre-opening cost per new location was. And then number two, do all of those pre-opening costs fall in the other operating cost line item or are they sprinkled, you know, in between, let's say your, your labor occupancy and other operating costs?

Yeah, they are sprinkled between them. So for instance, We opened one store on August 31st, the very last day of our fiscal year. And so we've had employees training for that restaurant for a month or so, maybe longer. And that's a lot of, you know, that falls directly on the labor line. Otherwise, the majority of the cost would be non-cash rent that we start booking upon receipt of the premises. And so, you know, that's typically 150 days before opening. And so, yeah, the elevated pre-opening costs, that makes total sense. We opened four restaurants in Q4. We opened four restaurants in Q1. And so the pre-opening costs for Q1 are falling on Q4, et cetera. We do expect to leverage those pre-opening costs, too, as we continue to open restaurants in areas where there's already other restaurants. Then our new employees can drive over to the restaurant that's right there to be trained rather than having to travel further to be trained. And the managers as well for their training won't have to fly all over the country to have their training.

They can do it locally.

Okay, got it.

And then just I want to come back here to restaurant-level margins. In terms of what your expectations, it sounds like you feel pretty good about where your food costs are for the year. It sounds like you feel like labor is, you know, hourly wage rates are more under control, although your menu pricing is down, you know, pretty significantly from where it was, you know, in June. Is it something where you're expecting your restaurant level margins? Or let me ask the question a different way. What would your What do you think that your comp needs to be for restaurant level margins to be flat or up slightly in FY24?

Comp needs to be flat or up slightly in FY24. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So in terms of the COPs, as we mentioned earlier, we can't really provide numerical guidance as to what our expectations are.

But, you know, we've maintained this 20% international level operating profit margins for years, and we're very, very happy to be able to grow that. In terms of maintaining or growing that further, pricing could be an element. Certainly, it's a sensitive decision for us, given the ongoing macro environment. For us to potentially sacrifice the traffic advantage that we've had is maybe something that we'd have to very seriously think about. For us to have such a significant traffic lead, I think, really sets us up for the next several years and not just on a quarter-to-quarter basis. In terms of serious impacts to restaurant-level operating profit margins, we do the dishwasher really does have the opportunity to move the needle. But as we mentioned before, that's going to be, you know, not in fiscal 24 and it's going to be on a limited to the new stores basis. And so it's going to be a slow ramp, but that's something that is very concrete that we're excited for. And, and also, as you know, you know, the prime costs are the biggest piece of restaurant level margin and the initiatives that we're putting in place, like the dishwashers that will have impacts, but at the same time, also, We can't compromise food quality, and we can't compromise service quality, and there becomes a point where we really think the leverage that we're going to get on the margin will come from increasing sales, and we'll get the leverage on some of the fixed costs that we have in the operating cost line. But we really need to be careful, like I said, when you get to a point under 30% on food costs, that you really don't want to play too much with the quality there.

Yeah. Yeah, so...

Jeff makes a really good point. I mean, we could be very aggressive and try to achieve 25% restaurant-level operating profit margins, but certainly that would have an impact on traffic. Our strategic preference is to grow traffic and use that to leverage our fixed costs and grow our restaurant-level operating profit margin more organically.

Got it. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. Best wishes this year.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Thank you, Danny.

Thank you. The next question comes from Sharon Saxia from William Blair. Please proceed with your question, Sharon.

Hey, good afternoon. I'm just going to beat the dead horse of the quarter-to-date comp. I do have in my notes that last year comps were, I think, up like 11.5 in September and 6.3 in October. And we've heard a lot of companies talk about kind of more normal seasonality, and I'm not sure you saw that in 2022. So, I guess, you know, my question is, have you seen what others have seen, which was kind of slower traffic trends in September followed by more of a rebound in October as we're comparing a little bit of an apple and an orange maybe year over year?

As Jeff mentioned earlier, as everybody's seen in the restaurant industry, September and October has been deeply influenced by macro factors and

you know, considering that, we're extremely pleased to have been able to grow traffic the way that we did. Yeah.

So there are a couple of factors to rock over. One would just be that, you know, we were weekend days, you know, the year prior.

October versus 2023, but, you know, considering those, yeah, October was a little favorable relative to September.

I'm sorry.

October was, yeah, so we didn't really see the same thing that the others did. Our performance was not that different between September and October.

Well, that's what I'm thinking about.

Yeah, and then the timing of Halloween certainly didn't work in our favor, didn't work in anybody's favor. But if you control for everything, yeah, it's pretty much flag or October is a little bit favorable, but not a big difference between the two months.

Okay, thank you for that. And then It was good to hear about labor inflation moderating, but I'm highly aware of your concentration to some extent in California that remains. And I know you're not directly impacted by the FAST Act, but we've had some other full service operators say that they still expect that to be an impact for wage rates in California, just more broadly outside of limited service. So curious what your perspective is on what you may or may not need to do next spring in California and how, you know, if you need to raise wages, how you would approach pricing in that environment.

Sure. First of all, I think it's a very important question.

So, thank you for asking this. We were hoping to have an opportunity to address this, but we really, we believe the impact from the FAST Act is going to be minimal or, in fact, a tailwind for us, and so we'd love to go through the reasons why we're, you know, we think this is actually going to be a benefit.

This is the second point. The second point is that we have a pipeline of initiatives that can reduce the number of people in the robot. We will definitely raise the price this time, but we are thinking about it now, and we are very careful about pricing, so we are working with them on pricing. So the first two factors would be, as you know, the FAST Act doesn't directly apply to us.

And considering the comments that our peers have made about knock-on effects, even at a $20 minimum wage for California employees, we're making competitive wages relevant to that. So it's not like we're going to have to raise wages to $20. So that's It's really not a consideration for us. Another thing is that we are very unique in that we're so tech-driven that we have these initiatives to reduce headcount, which is specific to Cura and not really something that anybody else could emulate. And so I think this is a competitive advantage for us. And lastly, as QSRs need to catch up from the $16 or so they're currently paying down at $20, minimum wage, they'll have to aggressively raise prices. And so as the price between a QSR meal and a Cura meal shrinks, the appeal and value of Cura only grows. And so we think this could ultimately be a traffic kill, of course, as well.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Jared.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then 1. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then 1. The next question comes from Mark Smith from Lake Street. Please proceed with your questions, Mark.

Hi, guys. This is Alex Sternix on the line for Mark today. Just firstly, and you might have touched on it already, but Could you walk us through the menu price increases that are built into the comp and any new increases or increases that you anniversary this quarter?

Yeah, so effective price was about 10.7% for Q4. As of July, 7% fell off, and we offset that by 2%. And so June was 14%, and then July, August were about 9%. And there's been no change since. So Q1 will be all 9%. Yeah. And we'll lap 7% on the first week of December. Exactly. Yeah. So starting at the beginning of December, we'll only have 2% pricing in our top.

Right.

And we touched on this earlier, but the fact that we only took 2% to offset that 7% coming off is really just a reflection of our bullishness on the labor environment, as well as the, you know, the actual inflation that we're seeing on the commodity front.

Yeah, perfect. That's good there. And then just my last question, you know, you guys have the collabs, the updated app, your tech initiatives with the automated dishwashers, but, you know, are you guys looking at any other areas of the customer experience you guys could improve, anything to leverage there?

Well, to put it simply, it's a mobile app.

Yeah, there are a billion things, but a couple of low-hanging fruit that come to mind. The first is that we haven't really communicated the impact, the upgrade to the wait list to our guests yet. And so they're benefiting from it, but they're not changing their behavior based off of that. And so that's a low-hanging fruit. The other is that we have this technology. I don't know if you've been to one of our restaurants, but if there are four people at your table, it can be hard to reach the conveyor belt if you're on the outside of the table and We have this technology that allows you to directly place orders from your cell phone so you don't have to reach over your friend to hit the order panel. And that's ready to go. It's just a matter of rollout. And so those would be two things that I can talk about right now, and I'm sure that I will have many more things that I'll be able to share with you as we progress throughout the year.

Thanks for answering my questions. Appreciate it. Thanks, Alex.

Thank you. The next question comes from JP Wallum from Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed with your questions, JP.

Great. Thanks, everyone, for taking my questions. First, if we could just start maybe, you know, a lot of new openings, call it the last six months or so. Can you maybe just talk about, in terms of openings, are there any differences you've seen with kind of the latest cohort of openings? I know we've really... talked a lot about the development, but, um, maybe just kind of on, on customer reception and, and, um, anything new you're seeing or any new trends you're seeing when these units open.

Um, So over the last six months, we've been fortunate, very fortunate to be able to say that pretty much all the openings have been really great.

I'd say rather than noticing anything new, what it's really been is just a confirmation that our strategy was correct. In past earnings calls, we've discussed how we've taken a non-contiguous growth approach across the United States. Fort Lee was our first New Jersey location, our first East Coast location. And on the strength of that, we've really filled out that market, what we're talking about, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, D.C. The entire Northeast has been great to us. And so that's been – it's just really great to be vindicated and see that strategy pan out. And obviously, with our other markets, such as Bellevue, having – not been filled in yet. That makes us that much more excited about the Pacific Northwest once we start to fill out those markets. In past calls, we've mentioned Aventura being slow to recover from the pandemic and not really performing to the expectations we had prior to its opening. But subsequently, we've opened two more units, one in Vineland, which is in Orlando, and one in Tampa, and both of them are doing spectacular. So it's really, you know, it's great to see that the issues not with Ford as a market, but really just that one specific site. We think Florida is a huge river for us.

Great. Yeah, that's very helpful. And then maybe one follow-up, if I could turn to Jeff. I just kind of want to ask, you know, with the guidance of the 14.5% GNA as a percent of revenue, could you maybe just help give us a sense of, you know, kind of from where you started when you first joined Cura, and kind of where that guidance is, you know, how are you feeling about your ability to either kind of optimize some of the costs or take some costs out of the business? And, you know, how do you feel as we go forward, whether there's even more opportunity or whether you've really, you know, kind of pushed as far as you could on that regard? Thank you. There is more opportunity.

Absolutely.

So it was 80 bps from fiscal 22 to fiscal 23 for our full year G&A leverage. And I'm very proud of that. That exceeded my expectations and my goals for the company when I came in. And leveraging G&A was in the top three things that Jimmy asked me to work on. And I'm very happy with what we've done. This year, we're projecting more, as you can see, based on our guidances. It was a lot in the first year. I'm really proud of our team. I'm proud of all the department heads really stepped up and did what they could to either push back hires and reduce expenses or do what they could to become more efficient. And that's what I've asked everybody to do, and they've answered the bell. And we're going to continue to see that this year. One slight headwind on G&A that we have this year is this will be our first year of 404B compliance. So you're making sure we're fully ready for that. is increasing our public company costs a little bit. But even with that, we're going to have future leverage this year, as you can see by our guidance. And then in fiscal 25 and beyond, we're going to continue to see leverage. And at some point, I don't know if it's still with the company, we get it down into the single digits at some point. And I know we will. I have no timeline on that, but we're working on it.

Got it. That makes sense. Thank you. And best of luck moving forward.

You're welcome. Thank you. Thanks, JP.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. This does conclude today's conference. Thank you very much for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.