Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Arcos Dorados fourth quarter and full year 2019 earnings call. A slide presentation will accompany today's webcast, which will also be available in the investor section of the company's website, www.arcosdorados.com. And as a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today's presentation. Today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Dan Scheilinger, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. With me on today's call are Marcelo Raba, our Cresorado's Chief Executive Officer, and Mariana Tannenbaum, our Chief Financial Officer. Please turn to slide two. Before we proceed, I would like to make the following safe harbor statement. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the forward-looking statement section of our earnings release and recent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. In addition to reporting financial results in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, we report certain non-GAAP financial results. Investors are encouraged to review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial results as compared with GAAP results, which can be found on the press release and audited financial statements filed today with the SEC on Form 6-K. Our discussion today excludes the results of the Venezuelan operation, both at the consolidated level as well as for the Caribbean division, due to the country's ongoing macroeconomic volatility. For your reference, we include a full income statement excluding Venezuela with our earnings release. I would now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Marcelo Rabach.

Thank you, Dan, and good day, everyone. As you know, we are holding today's call in the middle of a global health crisis that has generated significant uncertainty in the marketplace. So we will follow the agenda on slide three. Mariano and I will highlight some of the strong results from operations that we generated during the last quarter and full year of 2019. We will also provide you with some color on our performance during the first two months of 2020, before the coronavirus began to disrupt our markets. We believe it is important to review our recent performance because it shows that we can effectively meet disruptions from an undeniably strong position from both an operating and financial perspective, and without a doubt, as the strongest player in our industry. While we do not have certainty in terms of how long the coronavirus crisis will disrupt our markets, we do have certainty that we will overcome this situation as we have overcome other crises in the past. With that in mind, we will also review the ambitious openings and reinvestment plan that we agreed with our partner, McDonald's Corporation. Against this backdrop, we will provide you with the best possible update on how the coronavirus is impacting our business. Let me start with pointing out a few key highlights of our fourth quarter and full year results on slide four. The focused and disciplined execution of our three pillar strategy, which includes running great restaurants, featuring the most attractive menus, and enhancing the customer experience through exceptional interactions with our team, once again drove growth in guest traffic and average check. Maintaining our strong momentum we generated consolidated comparable sales growth of 10.4% in the fourth quarter and 11.8% for the full year, which was solidly above the company's blended inflation for both periods. Our performance in Brazil last year is particularly gratifying, considering the level of competition and the relatively soft economic environment. EOTF, delivery and digital, along with our affordability and premium platforms, as well as engaging marketing initiatives, also drove the strong 9.5% increase in the quarter and 9.7% increase for the full year in comparable sales. These figures exceeded inflation and were about double the average reported by the entire Brazilian food service industry which includes our results. At the end of 2019, we had 683 EOTF restaurants, exceeding our target of 650 by ERM. We introduced EOTF restaurants to seven more markets in 2019 and increased the EOTF network in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. the new format resonated strongly with our guests, providing a substantially better sales lift versus our initial expectations, which is why we accelerated the implementation. Turning to the future, I am pleased to announce that we have concluded our discussions with McDonald's Corporation regarding our next three-year expansion plan, which Mariano will explain in more detail. Again, As a sign of its confidence in our business prospects, McDonald's is providing us with growth support for the 2020 to 2022 period, which will reduce the impact of royalty fees. I turn the call over to Mariano now for a further review of our operating and financial results. Mariano, please go ahead.