Starbucks Corporation

Good afternoon. My name is Diego, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Starbucks' fourth quarter and fiscal year-end 2022 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, Press star, then the number two. I would now turn the call over to Tiffany Willis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Willis, you may now begin your conference.

Thank you, Diego, and good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us today to discuss Starbucks' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 results. Today's discussion will be led by Howard Schultz, Interim Chief Executive Officer at Frank Britt, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, Sarah Trilling, Executive Vice President and President of Starbucks North America, and Rachel Ruggieri, Executive Vice President and CFO. And for Q&A, we will be joined by Lakshman Narasimhan, Incoming Chief Executive Officer, Michael Conway, Group President of International and Channel Development, and Belinda Wong, Chairwoman of Starbucks China. This conference call will include forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements and our earnings release and risk factors discussed in our filings with the SEC, including our latest annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Starbucks assumes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. GAAP results in fourth quarter fiscal year 2022 include several items related to strategic actions, including restructuring and impairment charges, transaction and integration costs, and other items. These items are excluded from our non-GAAP results. All numbers referenced on today's call are on a non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted, or there is no non-GAAP adjustment related to the metric. Further, year-on-year comparative metrics on today's call are based on a 13-week or 52-week basis to exclude the impact of an extra fiscal week in fiscal 2021. For non-GAAP financial measures and year-on-year metrics mentioned in today's call, please refer to the earnings release and our website at investor.starbucks.com to find reconciliations of those non-GAAP measures to their corresponding GAAP measures. and 53-week and 52-week metrics. This conference call is being webcast and an archive of the webcast will be available on our website through Friday, December 2nd, 2022. And for your calendar planning purposes, please note that our first quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call has been tentatively scheduled for Thursday, February 2nd, 2023. And with that, allow me to turn the call Over to Howard.

Thank you, Tiffany. Well, hello from Milan. Today has been a very special day for me and a powerful emotional reminder of the intersection of my life and years with Starbucks. It was 40 years ago, walking the beautiful streets of Milan, that the inspiration for the possibilities of what Starbucks could one day be and mean around the world first struck me. And here I am back in Milan, celebrating the early days of our beautiful, thriving business in Italy, a country in which no one expected Starbucks to succeed, on the very day of our global launch of holiday, an event that has become a phenomenon all over the world. So much of Starbucks' inspiration has come from Italy. And in Italy, our partner's dedication to the art of coffee, to the elegance and passion of coffee craft, and to the delivery of a premium coffee experience to our customers is being executed at the highest level. Italians have embraced Starbucks. Our top selling beverage is actually a solo espresso, validating the quality of our coffee and the relevance of Starbucks customer experience that has defined us since Starbucks founding in 1971. We recently opened our 20th store in Verona to record crowds, with Rome and Naples fast following in 2023. Milan and Italy are reflections of the premium coffee experience Starbucks is delivering to customers in cities and countries everywhere, as demonstrated by the very strong Q4 and fiscal 2022 financial and operating performance Starbucks reported this afternoon. In Q4, Starbucks grew global revenues 11% over prior years. to a quarterly record of $8.4 billion driven by 7% comp growth globally and 11% comp growth in North America. For the fiscal year, we grew global revenues 13% over prior year to a record $32.3 billion driven by 8% comp growth globally and 12% comp growth in North America. We also grew our global store base 6% in fiscal 22 and ended the year with roughly 36,000 stores in 83 countries. Today, Starbucks serves over 100 million customer occasions from our retail stores around the world, and across all channels delivers over 400 million customer coffee occasions globally every week. We continue to manage the business through today's challenging operating environment, more mindful than ever of the unprecedented global economic uncertainties and challenges confronting our customers. Our strong performance in the quarter and year is particularly gratifying in that it underscores the relevance of the Starbucks brand and the strength of our relationships with our customers around the world in the face of these unprecedented challenges. We saw a strong demand for Starbucks coffee in Q4 and throughout the year in every market and channel in which we operate. we are encouraged by the early signs of recovery we saw in China in Q4, where innovation, increased customer physical and digital engagement with the Starbucks brand and the relaxing of COVID restrictions drove solid positive sales momentum and sequential quarterly improvement. The speed with which our business in China accelerated in Q4 and the strong positive correlation between Starbucks revenue growth and the relaxing of COVID mobility restrictions reinforces our confidence in Starbucks' long-term growth opportunity in China. However, as you know, over the past few weeks, there has been a significant resurgence of COVID in China. With the resurgence has come renewed lockdowns and mobility restrictions pursuant to China's strict zero COVID policy, including in many cities in which we operate, meaningfully reducing traffic in our stores. We anticipate the current COVID-related uncertainty to continue and repeat the view we shared on our Q3 call and our investor day that while our long-term aspirations for China remain undiminished, we expect the recovery of our business in the country to be nonlinear. I'll spend more time on China in a few minutes. In fiscal 2022, we drove meaningful growth in our global customer base. In the U.S. alone, We grew our unique customers 9% year over year, and our U.S. customers are engaging more deeply with the Starbucks brand as evidenced by a 16% increase in U.S. Starbucks rewards membership year over year, to nearly 29 million members, up 5% over Q3. Today, Starbucks is connecting to more customers more deeply, both in the U.S. and around the world, than ever before, ideally positioning us to drive further acceleration in revenues and comps in the quarters and years ahead. Our performance supports our confidence in the ambitious growth agenda we announced in September, in which we will be adding roughly eight new stores per day, delivering best-in-class returns around the world every day for the next three years, bringing us to nearly 45,000 stores globally by the end of fiscal 2025. Our Q4 results also demonstrate evidence of early but highly encouraging benefits from reinvention plan investments we detailed at Investor Day in September. And as you will hear from Frank Britt, our Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, we have clear line of sight to a full array of benefits reinvention will deliver in the quarters and years ahead. Following Frank, Sarah Trilling, a 20-year Starbucks partner, who recently took over leadership of our North American business after having successfully led Asia Pacific for the last four years. She will provide insights into our business in North America today and what to expect in the quarters ahead. Then Rachel will highlight our financial and operating performance in Q4 and for the year and provide guidance for the year ahead. And finally, we will end the call with Q&A. When fully rolled out, Starbucks Reinvention, co-created in partnership with our partners across the country, will touch and elevate every aspect of our Starbucks partner, customer, and store experiences. Last week, 2,000 Starbucks leaders from across US and Canada converged in Seattle to coalesce around Reinvention and take it back to their local markets. I don't think I've ever seen greater engagement in over 40 years of a more positive response to any Starbucks gathering in our history. Reinvention investments will make it easier for our partners to do their jobs, better enable partners to satisfy growing demand in our stores, and provide greater opportunity for our partners to engage with our customers. Reinvention investments are already having a measurable positive impact on our business and operations, most notably in terms of improved partner retention, increased speed of service, and an elevated customer experience. And I'm particularly pleased that reinvention investments are bringing coffee excellence, coffee craft and joy, and a little bit of love back into being a Starbucks barista. Key to Starbucks success and the foundation of our long-term growth strategy is Starbucks continued global leadership around all things coffee and espresso, hot and cold, Starbucks core. In Q4, we continued to grow from our core, innovate, introduce new levels of customization and premiumization, and extend our global coffee leadership in both the hot and cold beverage categories with an emphasis on cold coffee, a category we single-handedly created and are growing around the world. Customer demand for customized, handcrafted Starbucks cold beverages is so strong that today cold coffee beverages account for 76% of total beverage sales in our U.S. company-operated stores. And customers are increasingly further customizing their cold coffee beverages by adding high-margin beverage flavor modifiers to create unique beverages tailored to their own particular taste preferences. We also continue to introduce innovative new core hot coffee and espresso beverages and innovate around iconic platforms like Pumpkin Spice, up 17% over last year, driven by increased customization, including cold foams. As part of reinvention, we are rolling out a new, completely proprietary, handheld cold foamer that enhances beverage quality and increases speed of service while reducing complexity for our partners. The response from our partners has been overwhelming. Our growing base of new U.S. customers and Starbucks Rewards members combined with very strong customer response to our innovative hot and cold beverage lineup to deliver the highest net sales week in our history in September. Let me just repeat that. In our history, we had the biggest sales week in September. The strength of our business as we exited September, coupled with the fantastic holiday lineup kicking off today with our stores turning red, holiday favorites on the menu, and the return of our iconic red cups, gives us tremendous confidence heading into holiday in 2023. In North America overall, the combination of customer shifts towards premium hot and cold beverages, increased customization, strategic decisions around beverage, food, and modifier pricing, and an 18% increase in food sales drove net revenues of 15% year over year to a record $6.1 billion. Once again, Our convenience channels, drive-through, mobile order and pay, and delivery drove 72% of our total sales volume. Starbucks Rewards members drove a record 55% of tender in our U.S. company-operated stores in Q4. Starbucks Rewards continues to deliver value to our customers, enable customer connection, and drive our business. And despite its global scale and growth, we have significant untapped opportunities to grow our rewards program in a very unique way. We recently launched our Reward Together program, enabling a select group of leading brands to partner with us by linking their loyalty program to Starbucks Rewards. Through Reward Together, we will engage and reward members of both brands with new benefits and experiences that will make our rewards program even more valuable, drive membership, and increase customer lifetime value. Our first US partnership with Delta Airlines lost launch last month to an extraordinary customer response. Both Delta and Starbucks were overwhelmed with what took place. And in September, we announced Starbucks Odyssey, our next generation loyalty model that integrates NFTs with rewards. Starbucks Odyssey will enable us to connect even more deeply with customers and give our customers the opportunity to earn and purchase digital collective assets that will unlock access to new benefits, a digital community, and immersive coffee experiences that they cannot get in any other place. Customer response to Starbucks Odyssey has been overwhelming. You will hear more about the Starbucks Odyssey in a few weeks when our first wave of customers have an opportunity to explore this new exciting way to experience and connect with Starbucks. The numbers that we will release in terms of the response will surprise many of you. Our fast-growing 6,600 North American licensed store business posted very strong results in Q4, with revenues up 25% in Q4 and 29% for the year. We are proceeding with the rollout of Starbucks Connect across the U.S. licensed store portfolio. Starbucks Connect enables licensed stores for the first time to offer the full array of Starbucks mobile order and pay and rewards benefits. And as you will hear from Sarah, the 1,600 licensed stores that have adopted Starbucks Connect are seeing a significant lift in business since adoption. Starbucks Connect enables us to capture demand across our broader portfolio and will be highly accretive to our business. The momentum we saw in our international segment coming out of Q3 continued in Q4, with revenues for the quarter up 12% to $1.8 billion on a constant currency basis. For the year, revenues grew 9% year over year to $6.9 billion, also on a constant currency basis. We added 518 stores during the year and now operate nearly 18,500 stores around the world, We are sensitive to the challenges that the rapid increase in the value of our dollar is posing to our international licensees and remain in close contact as we work together to navigate the dynamic environment that we are all operating in. Turning to our channels business, Starbucks is the number one share in US at-home coffee. Starbucks is the number one share in global ready-to-drink coffee and continued growth in our global coffee alliance with Nestle combined to deliver strong performance in Q4, with revenues increasing 18% on a constant currency basis to $484 million. For the year, revenues also increased 18% to $1.8 billion on a constant currency basis. Now let me begin the discussion around China by saying that Starbucks has been in China for 20 years and that our aspirations for our business in China has never been greater. We have over 6,000 stores in China today, and as Belinda shared at Investor Day, we have close to 9,000 stores. We will have close to 9,000 stores by 2025. We'll be opening our Starbucks China Coffee Innovation Park, including our largest coffee roasting and packaging plant outside the U.S. in summer 2023. Starbucks employs over 60,000 passionate, dedicated partners in China. Our partners are deeply engaged with their customers and demonstrated by today's record high customer connection scores. We continue to be an employer of choice and lead the way in partner investments, recently introducing a 14th month bonus for all full-time partners. And we continue to invest in China to create career, and opportunity pass for our partners and to support the communities we serve. We also continue to expand our customer base in China and deepen our digital connection to customers. Active Starbucks rewards membership grew 29% sequentially in Q4 over Q3 to over 17 million members just below historic levels coinciding with the lifting of restrictions and reflecting the relevance and underlying strength of the Starbucks brand in China. Mobile ordering sales mix, nonexistent prior to 2019, drove 44% of mix in Q4. Delivery, up 35% year over year, now representing over 24% of sales. We expect mobile, digital, loyalty, and delivery to continue to grow and drive our business. However, we are ultra sensitive to the evolving macro challenges that have surfaced regarding China, particularly in connection with the impact of the zero COVID policy. But our strong belief in China is based on our success in the country and our commitment to playing the long game. We are confident that when COVID disruptions affecting the country abate, Starbucks will emerge not only as the undisputed leader in our category, but likely the number one Western consumer brand in the country for having continued to meaningfully invest in our partners and in our business throughout the pandemic and despite the disruptions. Laxman's immersion is going spectacularly well. He's visited and worked in stores in the U.S. and U.K., quickly connecting and winning the hearts of Starbucks partners wherever he goes, just this week earning his barista certification in record time and store green apron. Lachman's commitment to becoming intimate with store operations and our partner and customer experiences reflects our mutual understanding of what is most important in these early days of his joining Starbucks. He and I engage daily as he absorbs more and more about the company and our business and And the board, leadership team, and I are all deeply invested in his success. I cannot be more confident that Laxman is the right CEO at the right time for Starbucks. Today, Laxman has a front row seat as we launch our all-important holiday season. Soon, along with our leadership team, he will be leading the company, bringing reinvention to life and guiding Starbucks to the next chapters of our storied history. In closing... Starbucks has never been financially stronger, better positioned, or more confident in our future as we enter Q1 and holiday and embark on the exciting new era of growth ahead. With that, I'll turn the call over to Frank. Frank?