Brinker International, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Brinker International Q4 F22 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Micah Ware, VP of Finance and Investor Relations at Brinker. Mom, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating on today's call. With me are Kevin Hockman, our Chief Executive Officer and President, and Joe Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer. Results for the quarter were released earlier this morning and are available on our website at brinker.com. As is our practice, Kevin and Joe will first make prepared comments related to our operating performance and strategic initiatives. Then we will open the call for your questions. Before beginning our comments, I would like to remind everyone of our safe harbor and regarding forward-looking statements. During our call, management may discuss certain items which are not based entirely on historical facts. Any such items should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such statements are subject to risk and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated. Such risk and uncertainties include factors more completely described in this morning's press release and the company's filings with the SEC. And, of course, on the call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that management uses in its review of the business and believes will provide insight into the company's ongoing operations. And with that said, I will now turn the call over to Kevin.

Thanks, Micah, and good morning, everyone. With this being our first call since Wyman's retirement, I wanted to take a moment to recognize him as the leader of our great company for the past nine years and to thank him for our many strategic accomplishments. In addition to being a coach and a friend to so many brinkerheads, Wyman led growth of our brand, significant technology improvements, and developed an industry-leading off-premise business. I know he's listening and cheering us on, so on behalf of our 62,000 team members, thank you, Wyman, for entrusting your legacy to us and preparing us for the future. This organization has a solid foundation, well-known brands that have stood the test of time, an ownership model that allows us to move quickly, a strong leadership team, and the most dedicated operators in the industry. During my first two months on the job, I've spent a lot of time in the field with our restaurant teams and our above restaurant leaders to better understand their challenges and to exchange ideas on how we can accelerate the business together. I'm happy to share they are hungry for growth, and they have great ideas on how we can make running restaurants easier, more profitable, and a better experience for both our team members and for our guests. And while I'm forming our longer-term growth strategy with our senior executive team, In order to deliver better results over time, we must deliver meaningful improvements to the four-wall economics of owning a Chili's and owning a Maggiano's. So we're working quickly to identify the things we can do to grow the business sustainably, improve the guest experience, reduce cost and complexity, and implement more strategic pricing, which will in turn expand restaurant margins and grow profits. Our evolved pricing strategy will include providing focused everyday value for guests who need it, but we'll move away from frequent and deep discounting. We will also right-size the mix of everyday menu items offered on deal, but we'll make sure there's something available for the cash drop customer who needs a superior value to enjoy casual dining. We will also do a better job of recovering expenses for inflated commodities, as well as the added cost for delivering Chili's, Maggiano's, and our virtual brands. I have chartered two teams of senior executives to make quick interventions that will build momentum in our business. One team is dedicated to near-term ideas to drive sustainable and profitable sales layers. They have been charged with identifying customer insight-driven sales opportunities as well as bringing exciting new initiatives to our dining rooms to help accelerate traffic recovery. The other team is charged with simplifying operations so we can improve our guest experience. We will take unnecessary cost and complexity out of the business, which will free up labor to reinvest in the things that will help us win with the guests. The team is looking at all aspects of operations, from focusing the menu to streamlining backup house prep to eliminating time-consuming process that doesn't add value to our guest experience. We shared some of those early ideas with our operators at our annual Chili's General Manager Conference last week, and I have to say the team is very excited to get after it. I have also asked our Chili's executive team to refocus the portfolio of projects we are working on to prioritize the most important, and stop the ones that won't have a meaningful impact on our core business. I'm very pleased with the progress we are making on the prioritization front. As for our longer-term strategy, our biggest opportunity is also to focus on the core Chili's business. We must identify how our brand can uniquely add value for guests in a modern and relevant way, strengthen our positioning within casual dining, leverage technology to remove friction for guests and team members, and continue to reduce unnecessary complexity. all of which should lead to a better guest experience, higher sales, and stronger for-all economics. I'm also very pleased to share that we brought on George Felix as our new Chili's Chief Marketing Officer. George is known for taking well-known brands and reminding customers what makes the brand special in a contemporary, relevant way. He is currently working to define our North Star positioning in the market, which will help us make strategic choices on marketing, as well as help guide us on where to focus operations and improve our guest experience. I'm excited that George is already making an impact with several of our sales driving and simplification initiatives. As for Maggiano's, it's on a good trajectory. The improvements we made to both off-premise business and removing costs from the middle of the P&L during COVID has allowed the brand to emerge much stronger. Maggiano's menu travels off-premise exceptionally well, and now that dining rooms are coming back, we have lots of runway for growth. I couldn't be prouder of the work that Steve Provo and his team have led to get Maggiano's through the pandemic and which I would expect will continue to be a source of growth for our business. We find ourselves in interesting times with the inflationary environment, a dimmer economic outlook, and a worried consumer. I'm confident the interventions we're putting in place today to simplify operations, to win with the guests, to implement more strategic pricing, to launch sales driving initiatives, and to take cost out of the business will help us fight through our near-term challenges. They will also build the momentum we need to put the business in a stronger position for longer-term sustainable growth. Now I'll hand the call over to Joe to walk you through the numbers. Go ahead, Joe.