Wendy's Company (The)

Two-year result of 9.7% represents an acceleration of almost 100 basis points versus the second quarter. Our international business delivered same restaurant sales growth of 7.8% and achieved an incredible 10th consecutive quarter of double-digit same restaurant sales growth on a two-year basis, reaching 18.6%. We continue to see strong results across our key international growth markets, with many achieving double-digit one-year same restaurant sales growth during the quarter. The ongoing success of our international segment is driven by strong execution and momentum across our global growth pillars. Are us business achieve same restaurant sales growth of 2.2% and a two year result of 8.5% which represents an acceleration versus the second quarter. During the quarter we benefited from our strategic pricing actions partially offset by an expected decline in year over year customer accounts and a slight decline in mix. However, beginning in mid-August, we drove year-over-year customer count growth through quarter end. Our digital business accelerated in the third quarter, with global digital sales mix reaching 13% and total digital sales growing 30% year-over-year as our loyalty program continued to gain momentum. These successes supported yet another quarter of profit expansion, resulting in an 80 basis point year-over-year increase in U.S. company-operated restaurant margin to 15.6%. as sales growth drove P&L leverage and commodity inflation eased further. We also continue to make progress against our development goal, opening 72 new restaurants across the globe, totaling 152 openings year-to-date through the third quarter. We continue to expect to reach our 2023 development target as we now have 100% of our current year pipeline open or under construction. The success we've driven over the years supports our best-in-class franchisee satisfaction and alignment, Looking forward, we remain relentlessly focused on delivering meaningful global growth, supported by compelling restaurant economic model improvement and acceleration across our strategic pillars. Our focused approach to driving same restaurant sales momentum delivered an acceleration in two-year same restaurant sales growth and supported our strong performance in the context of the QSR burger category within which we maintained our dollar and traffic share. Category traffic was challenged throughout the quarter, and this impacted our early results. But following the mid-August launch of several successful innovations and promotions, we deviated from the category trend and achieved positive customer counts in the latter half of the quarter. This led to an acceleration in one- and two-year same restaurant sales growth each month of Q3. Now let's turn to some of our specific sales drivers. We continue to make meaningful progress in our pursuit of operational excellence and posted another quarter of year-over-year improvements in customer satisfaction and speed of service. I am very proud that our efforts in this area have been recognized in the latest QSR Magazine Drive-Thru Report, where Wendy's ranked in the top five brands across service time, order accuracy, and satisfaction. We once again leaned into our ownable platforms, new products, and partnerships during the third quarter. The launch of our loaded nacho cheeseburger and fries, Continued innovation on the frosty line with strawberry and pumpkin spice flavors, our BOGO for a dollar promotion, and our ongoing partnership with college football all supported our progress. Looking ahead to the rest of the year, you can expect more craveable innovation alongside value that supports the restaurant economic model as we run our high-low strategy. At the breakfast day part, we continue to execute against our playbook of driving sales through innovation and promotions. We once again expanded our menu with the launch of our new frosty cream cold brew and English muffin sandwiches. We also launched a new value offering our two for three biggie bundles, which drove a meaningful sequential sales increase following its introduction and contributed to an acceleration in breakfast sales and the back half of the quarter. We know that value remains very important to the breakfast consumer. and we plan to more consistently offer compelling value promotions to drive trial and repeat at this highly profitable day part through year end and beyond. Finally, our late night efforts accelerated versus the second quarter and drove a mid-teens year-over-year sales increase for the day part. Our sales performance at late night has far surpassed our pre-pandemic average, and we expect to continue benefiting from outsized growth at this day part through the end of 2023. We continue to expect mid single digit global same restaurant sales growth for full year 2023 and now expect our fourth quarter same restaurant sales will land in the low single digit range. We are confident in our ability to break through with consumers and are committed to driving profitable sales growth. Our digital business accelerated in the third quarter with global sales mix reaching 13% and total sales growing 30% year over year. Internationally, we continue to see strong adoption of digital channels, leading to a sales mix of over 18%. We continue to significantly grow our Canadian digital business, and we now hold the number two position in digital traffic share across the QSR burger segment in that market. We also achieved another quarter of outstanding digital mix in the UK, now reaching over 90%. Our U.S. digital sales mix grew to over 12% with growth versus the prior quarter driven by a meaningful uptick in our loyalty program. Total U.S. loyalty members reached over 35 million and monthly active users grew almost 40% quarter over quarter to over 5 million as we exited the third quarter. This growth was driven by offers that are truly resonating with our customers like our one cent JBC promotion celebrating National Cheeseburger Day and allowing for in-store offer redemptions which has expanded our loyalty reach. We will continue to lean into impactful offers to drive further loyalty program growth moving forward. On a year-over-year basis, our almost 30% U.S. digital sales growth was driven by strength across all digital channels, including delivery. Our strong partnerships with third-party delivery providers continue to benefit us as we activated compelling ads and exclusive offers that tied into our college football messaging and new product launches. I am proud of the ongoing digital growth we have achieved over the last few years. Our successes to date support an increase in our global digital sales expectation to approximately $1.8 billion this year, which represents over 20% growth year over year. Looking ahead, there is still significant digital growth to be captured. The large uptick in monthly active users last quarter and the increase in our digital sales expectation is just a taste of what's in front of us. I am confident that continued execution of our plans alongside our key partners will drive our digital business in the years to come. Our development pace accelerated in the third quarter as we opened 72 new restaurants and we are tracking towards our 2023 global net unit growth target of approximately 2%, with 100% of our current year pipeline open or under construction. Looking towards the future, we made meaningful progress towards further solidifying our long-term development pipeline By securing incremental commitments with new and existing franchisees across every region in which we operate with international markets leading the way. In the UK, we recently added a new franchisee to the market and our three existing traditional franchisees have increased their development agreements highlighting their confidence in the long term trajectory of the brand. Additionally, our existing franchisee in Japan has significantly accelerated their agreement as operations normalize following the pandemic and sales continue to improve. We also added an incremental development agreement in Mexico, a key growth market that continues to gain sales momentum and new franchisee interest. Across the U.S. and Canada, we experienced a significant uptick in agreements across our suite of development programs, with new sign-ups for the Pacesetter and Groundbreaker incentives, and growing commitments through our Build the Soup Fund, which is now 70% committed. Our efforts drove a substantial increase in the share of our long-term development pipeline under an agreement to approximately 70%. This is higher than historical norms and builds an additional layer of certainty into our development outlook. All of this progress is in addition to our previously announced master franchise agreement with Flynn Group, to develop 200 Wendy's restaurants in Australia, which bolsters our development plans past 2025. Finally, we remain very active on the franchise recruiting front and our team is continually adding franchise candidates to the pipeline and new franchisees to the system. We look forward to sharing more news in the coming months as we continue to progress towards our long term global net unit growth targets of two to 3% in 2024 and three to 4% in 2025. Our playbook of driving meaningful global growth behind our three long-term strategic pillars remains the same. Our ongoing success would not be possible without the partnership we have with our franchisees. We recently received the results of the 2023 Franchise Business Review Survey, reflecting another year of Wendy's far exceeding industry benchmarks. I am especially pleased with our rating on overall satisfaction, which paces more than 10 percentage points ahead of the industry in both the U.S. and internationally. We also continue to outpace the industry on financial opportunity and leadership scores, further highlighting our system alignment. We recently held our annual franchise convention, and I could not be more pleased with the excitement we built across the system. We look forward to sharing more details on our plans to drive compelling restaurant economic model improvement on the back of acceleration across our growth pillars and providing our outlook when we release our fourth quarter earnings on February the 15th. Through the partnerships with our franchisees and the dedication of our restaurant crews and support center teams, we will continue our march towards achieving our vision of becoming the world's most striving and beloved restaurant brand. I will now hand it over to GP to share our third quarter financial performance.

Thanks, Todd. Our third quarter results continued to highlight the consistency of our financial formula as progress against our strategic growth initiatives once again drove sales and profit growth. Our global system-wide sales grew 4.8%, achieving 13.7% growth on a two-year basis, supported by global same-restaurant sales growth across both our U.S. and international segments and continued global net unit growth. Our U.S. company restaurant margin reached 15.6%, increasing 80 basis points year-over-year. This expansion was primarily due to the benefit of a higher average check driven by cumulative pricing of 6%, partially offset by customer count declines and labor and commodity inflation of approximately 4% and 2% respectively. G&A decreased approximately 5%, primarily driven by lower professional fees, resulting primarily from the completion of the company's ERP implementation. Adjusted EBITDA increased 3.5% to approximately $139 million, resulting primarily from higher franchise royalty revenue lower G&A expense, a decrease in the company's incremental investment in breakfast advertising, and an increase in U.S. company-operated restaurant margin. These were partially offset by lower other operating income due to lapping a significant gain from insurance recoveries in the prior year, which represents a year-over-year EBITDA headwind of approximately 6% during the third quarter. The over 12% increase in adjusted earnings per share was driven by an increase in adjusted EBITDA and high interest income. These increases were partially offset by higher amortization of cloud computing arrangement costs. Year-to-date free cash flow increased over 35% to approximately $226 million, resulting primarily from higher net income adjusted for non-cash expenses and a decrease in payments for incentive compensation. These were partially offset by higher capital expenditures. Our strong results through the third quarter and the plans we have in place to end the year support our confidence in our 2023 and long-term financial outlook, which we are largely reaffirming today. We are tightening our full-year global system-wide sales growth range to 6% to 7%, driven by our expectation for low single-digit global same-restaurant sales growth in the fourth quarter. we continue to expect mid single-digit global sales growth for full year 2023 and global net unit growth of approximately 2%. Our 2023 adjusted EBITDA outlook of $530 to $540 million remains unchanged. Our tightened global system-wide sales outlook is offset by a lower G&A expectation of approximately $250 million, primarily driven by a lower expected incentive compensation accrual. We continue to expect U.S. company-operated restaurant margin of 15 to 16 percent. We are also reaffirming our 2023 outlook for a trusted EPS of 95 cents to a dollar. Our capital expenditure outlook for the year is tightening to 80 to 85 million dollars, as we have better visibility as we close in on year-end. Finally, we continue to expect 2023 free cash flow of $265 to $275 million as our tight-end capital expenditure outlook is offset by higher interest income. Turning to our long-term outlook, we continue to expect mid-single-digit annual system-wide sales growth and high single-digit to low double-digit annual free cash flow growth in 2024 and 2025. To close, I'd like to highlight our capital allocation policy, which remains unchanged. Our cash balance remained elevated at more than $600 million at the end of the third quarter, giving us flexibility to invest in the business to deliver meaningful global growth and return cash to shareholders. Our first priority continues to be investing in our business for growth, which we will continue to do while holding true to our asset light model. Secondly, we announced today the declaration of our fourth quarter dividend of 25 cents per share, delivering a full year dividend of a dollar per share in 2023. This represents an over a hundred percent dividend payout ratio and aligns with our commitment to sustain an attractive dividend. Lastly, Our capital allocation policy gives us the flexibility to utilize excess cash to repurchase shares and reduce debt. Year-to-date through October 26, we have repurchased approximately 8 million shares and have approximately $332 million remaining on our $500 million share repurchase authorization expiring in February of 2027. We expect to continue to lean in on share repurchases this year in light of our current share price and cash balance. Additionally, we repurchased approximately $70 million of debt for approximately $65 million, including both debentures and securitized debt, year-to-date through October 26. Our board of directors recently increased our debt repurchase authorization by $10 million, leaving approximately $20 million remaining on the authorization expiring in February of 2024. We are fully committed to continue delivering our simple yet powerful formula. We are a predictable, efficient growth company that is investing in our growth pillars and driving strong system-wide sales growth on the backdrop of positive same-world turn sales and expanding our global footprint. This is translating into significant free cash flows which supports meaningful return of cash to shareholders through an attractive dividend and share repurchases. With that, I will hand things over to Kelsey to share our upcoming IR calendar.

Thanks, GP. To start things off, we have an NDR in New York with Barclays on November 15th, after which we'll attend the Stevens Conference in Nashville on November 16th. On November 27th, we have an investor call with KeyBank. And finally, we have a virtual NDR with TD Cowan on December 11th. If you are interested in joining us at any of these events, please contact the respective sell side analyst or equity sales contact at the host firm. Lastly, we plan to report our fourth quarter and full year earnings and host a conference call that same day on February 15th. As we transition to our Q&A section, I wanted to remind everyone that due to the high number of covering analysts, we will be limiting everyone to one question only. With that, we're ready to take your questions.