Valvoline Inc.

I will now hand over to your host, Elizabeth Russell, Senior Director in Relations to Begin. Elizabeth, please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Babbling's first quarter fiscal 2024 conference call and webcast. This morning, Babbling released results for the first quarter ended December 31st, 2023. This presentation should be viewed in conjunction with that earnings release, a copy of which is available on our investor relations website. at investors.valvoline.com. Please note that these results are preliminary until we file our Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On this morning's call is Lori Fleece, our CEO and President, and Mary Maxelsberger, our CFO. As shown on slide two, any of our remarks today that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions as of the date of this and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Babelene assumes no obligation to update any forward looking statements unless required by law. In this presentation and in our remarks, we will be discussing our results on an adjusted, non-GAAP basis, unless otherwise noted. Non-GAAP results are adjusted for key items, which are unusual, non-operational, or restructuring in nature. We believe this approach enhances the understanding of our ongoing business. A reconciliation of our adjusted non-GAAP results to amounts reported under GAAP and a discussion of management's use of non-GAAP and key business measures is included in the presentation appendix. The information provided is used by our management and may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. As a reminder, the retail services business represents the company's continuing operations and the former global product segment is classified as discontinued operations for the purposes of GAAP reporting. Today, Lori will begin with a look at the key highlights from our first quarter, and Mary will then cover our financial results. With that, I will turn it over to Lori.

Thanks, Elizabeth, and thank you all for joining us today. For the first quarter of 2024, we saw growth at the top line across the network, with system-wide store sales growing 12.3%, to $723 million. Profitability was in line with our expectations with adjusted EBITDA improving 23% to $90 million and adjusted EPS improving 81% to 29 cents per share. We remain on track with our full year guidance. We started the year strong with new store additions, adding 38 for the quarter, half of which were from franchise. This brings our network total to 1890 stores. From a capital spend standpoint, we continue to focus the majority of our capital toward growth, which we expect will continue to drive a high return on invested capital. We also made additional progress on our commitment to return a substantial portion of the net proceeds from the sale of global products to shareholders through share repurchases. with over 170 million returned this quarter. Before Mary covers the details of our first quarter results, I'd like to share the progress we've made on the three pillars of our growth strategy. First, we continue to drive the full potential of our existing business. This quarter, we delivered 7.1% system-wide same-store sales growth, coming from both transaction and ticket growth. We also improved our margins through better labor management. Team retention rates are an important contributor to labor management. And in December, we had our lowest attrition rate since pre-COVID. Higher retention allows us to minimize recruiting and training costs, while also ensuring that our stores are well staffed with team members who have more tenure delivering our best-in-class customer experience and added services. In November, Valvoline Instant Oil Change was named number 11 on the Forbes 2024 Best Customer Service list. I'm proud that our Valvoline and franchise-operated stores have been recognized for the best-in-class customer service they provide to our guests every day, alongside companies like Chick-fil-A, who are also known for their great service. On accelerating network growth, as I mentioned, 2024 is off to a great start with 38 store additions. We continue to see a healthy mix of ground-up builds and acquisitions contributing to our growth across the system with 21 ground-up builds and 17 acquisitions this quarter. We have a robust pipeline and continue to work towards our goal of growing the network to more than 3,500 stores. and a focus on accelerating franchise growth within that. And just this week, we celebrated our 1,000th franchise store as Quality Automotive Services, or QAS, a 20-year franchise partner with us, opened a store in Raleigh, North Carolina. We also were recognized recently as the top franchisor in our category and number 27th overall and Entrepreneurs Franchise 500. We have the best franchise partners in our category and are thrilled to share this recognition with them. On our third strategic priority, we continue to see favorable contribution in same-store sales from both non-old-change revenue service penetration and our fleet business. As part of our separation from the global products business, our fleet team has implemented a new CRM system, which will enable continued growth of new fleet customers, as well as growth within our existing fleet customers portfolios. Both the NOCR service penetration and fleet continue to have long runways of opportunity for ongoing improvement. Our team is focused on delivering fiscal year 2024, while also building the capabilities that ensure continued delivery of our long-term growth algorithm. Now I'll turn it over to Mary to walk us through our Q1 financial results.

Thanks, Lori. On slide five, we'll take a closer look at our top line growth for the quarter. Net sales grew 12.3% to $373 million. System-wide, we saw same-star sales grow 7.1% compared to 11.9% growth for the first quarter of the prior year. You'll recall that in the first quarter of 2023, we benefited from the inflationary price increases that occurred later in fiscal year 2022. That accounts for the majority of the year-over-year deceleration in same-store sales. This quarter, both company and franchise same-store sales grew within our guidance range with 6.1% and 8% growth respectively. The franchise side saw modestly better growth largely driven by improvements in non-oil change revenue service penetration as franchisees continue to implement many of the best practices that have been proven out in company and franchise stores over the past year. Transaction growth contributed about 25% to the comp, driven by an increase in the customer base as well as modest contributions from miles driven. As we shared in our last earnings call, we did see some customer softness at the beginning of the quarter. Ticket contributed about 75% of the comp for the quarter. Just over half of the ticket growth came from premiumization and increased non-oil change revenue service penetration with a balance from pricing. As we mentioned in our last call, we increased pricing in early November in about one-third of our stores, and we have made further adjustments already in Q2. Next, let's consider some of the other drivers of the financial results. Starting with gross margin rate, we saw improvement from 35.7% to 36.1%, or 40 basis points year over year. You may recall that in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, our gross margin was pressured by increased additive and delivery costs. As Laurie mentioned, during the first quarter of this year, we saw labor leverage benefiting gross profit margin as we continue to focus on this as our largest cost of sales driver. We continue to see improvement in SG&A as a percentage of net sales with a 60 basis point decrease over prior year. This was driven by a decrease in costs from right-sizing the standalone organization structure and partially offset by an increase in travel. Sequentially, we saw an increase in SG&A rate of approximately 140 basis points, which was expected for the first quarter due to the seasonality of our business including the timing of our annual meetings that occur in the first quarter each year. As a reminder, our adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year typically is in the low 40s as a percentage of the full year. Depreciation and amortization increased by $6 million from the prior year quarter due to new stores and store-related IT assets placed in service, causing about 100 basis points of deleverage in gross margin and 100 basis points in leverage in adjusted EBITDA. Overall, adjusted EBITDA margin improved 220 basis points over the prior year. On slide seven, we'll take an additional look at our profitability metrics. As Laurie mentioned, bottom line results were consistent with our expectations with adjusted net income increasing 36% to $38.5 million. driven by an increase in operating income of just under 20%. Net interest expense also declined due to the interest income earned on the investment of the remaining proceeds from the global product sale and was effectively offset by a modest increase in the effective tax rate in the current year. Adjusted EPS saw growth of over 80% from 16 cents to 29 cents per share. The increase in operating income contributed about 40% of the EPS growth with the balance coming from the reduction in net interest expense and the change in share count due to the substantial share repurchases over the course of the prior year. Turning to slide eight, we'll look at the balance sheet and cash position. During the first quarter, we returned just over $170 million to shareholders via share repurchases. That leaves $40 million remaining on the current $1.6 billion authorization. We anticipate the completion of the current authorization in the near term. As we have provided before, we anticipate share repurchases being an important part of our capital allocation strategy. We will continue to evaluate after the completion of the current authorization as we target a 2.5 to 3.5 times rating agency adjusted leverage ratio. In the upcoming quarter, we expect to make an offer to repurchase the 2030 notes as required by the asset sale covenant triggered by the sale of the global products business. For Q1, cash flow from operating activities was $21.9 million and capital expenditures were $42.3 million, resulting in negative free cash flow of $20.4 million consistent with our expectations. CapEx was up modestly over the prior year and working capital investment increased due to the timing of payments. We continue to have a strong cash position and earned interest income of $8 million during the quarter. I'll now turn it back over to Lori to wrap up.

Thanks, Mary. We continue to deliver results consistent with our transition to a high-growth retailer, driven by growth in both our same-store sales and the addition of new stores, and we are making progress across all three of our strategic pillars. As we wrap, I want to thank our team and our franchise partners for their continued hard work to start fiscal year 2024. Now I'll turn it back over to Elizabeth to begin the Q&A.

Thanks, Lori. Before we start the Q&A, I want to remind everyone to limit your question to one and a follow-up so that we can get to everyone on the line. With that, please open the line.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to retract your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We ask you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our first question today goes to Stephen at Zircon of City. Stephen, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Good morning. Thanks very much for taking my question. Our first question was on the ticket versus transaction performance in the quarter. Could you just elaborate a little bit more how your outlook for the year has changed versus when you spoke to us in November? I think it was more 50-50. So just curious there. And then along those same lines, you had a comment about adjusting pricing in the second quarter. Could you just elaborate on that also?

Sure, Steve. I'll start with, you know, tickets. We did see in the quarter about 25% of the comp come from transactions, and we do expect longer term to see a more balanced contribution from transactions versus ticket. The first quarter was impacted by a day mix change that caused just under 100 basis points. of impact on the transaction side. So if you exclude that day mix impact, we would have been more like one third coming from transactions and two thirds coming from ticket. Long term, we still expect to see a more balanced approach. from transactions and ticket, but we're continuing to benefit from some pricing changes. You know, just under half of the ticket portion of our comp store sales growth came from pricing with just over half coming from premiumization and non-oil change revenue service penetration improvements. So I would tell you that I think longer term. I'm still expecting to see a more of a balance You know short term in the quarter. We did see a little bit of a heavier tilt toward ticket for the quarter As it relates to the second part of your question.

Yeah, I'll just comment first I think when we talked about this year we said there would long term or earlier last quarter, we said long-term we would be getting a balance between the transaction, but in fiscal 24, we see an overweight on the ticket side, given a number of initiatives that we've been working. Just recall, you know, focus on optimizing discounting, which improves the net price, and also just continued work on NOCR and then the tailwind for premium mix. As it relates to pricing, Steven, we continue to benchmark our pricing, and we have multiple pricing tests. And I think our actions are very consistent with what we've been talking about in the last few quarters, which is we look at our pricing by store, by region, based on the competitive dynamics, as well as just based on the acquisitions that we may have done in stores. And we continually adjust our pricing to get to our target rates. When I say target rates, we have a target pricing list that we're trying to optimize all stores to for all three tiers of our oil change services. And we continue to make changes there. Recently, we've been benchmarking our added services And there are a couple of services where we did not take inflationary increases last year because they weren't coming through through the supply. And we have recently benchmarked relative to others and made some adjustments across all our stores. So those are things that we continue to do. We will continue to do it. And, you know, we have a our long term and current year guidance is between six and nine percent same store sales. And we see both this year, ticket being a very good part of that. In future years, we expect ticket to contribute roughly half and pricing to be a big component of that.

Okay, that's all helpful detail. Thanks for that. Just a brief follow-up then if we stick with theme store sales. Is there anything to be mindful of from a... you know performance in the second quarter relative to the overall year i know the one year compare it's a little bit tougher and then we've heard about some you know choppy trends across retail in terms of weather but anything you can say on you know second quarter performance relative to the full year would be helpful uh yes stephen we've certainly um seen some choppiness in january and the start of the second quarter

primarily weather-related. I think you're aware that we saw some pretty significant Arctic cold across the country in January that really lasted for a couple weeks. Typically, our business is non-discretionary, and so when we see those kind of weather impacts to our business, we typically see pent-up demand. that occurs after that weather pattern clears. And in fact, that's what we're experiencing now with some of the weather-related weakness we saw earlier in the month of January. We've seen that bounce back nicely. So I would tell you that, you know, there are hasn't really been any surprises for us in terms of where sales are trending, and we're feeling good about the guidance that we've provided for the full year.

Okay, great. Thanks so much for the detail.

Thank you. The next question goes to Simeon Gutman of Morgan Stanley. Simeon, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Hey, guys. This is Michael Kessler on for Simeon. Thanks for taking our questions. Um, maybe first on, on unit growth, it was, uh, it was pretty solid in Q1 on both, both sides, company and franchise. So just, just curious, you know, visibility for the rest of the year and the pipeline and then any updates that we've talked, I think in the past about some of the actions you've taken to, you know, further improve visibility and the pipeline on the franchisee side, both with existing franchises and also sourcing new ones. So, so we'll have an update on, uh, on how that's going.

Sure. Thanks, Michael. We did, as I mentioned, have a really strong start to 2024 with 38 total new additions and a split between franchise and company. The Q4 typically tends, at least on the acquisition side, tends to be a strong quarter. I wouldn't say every calendar or quarter one, but calendar Q4 is typically strong as acquisitions tend to try to close out, particularly on the franchise side, where their calendar and fiscal align to the end of the year. So we did expect these, these were in the pipeline, we had full visibility of them. And it was a really strong start. You should expect, we're very much feel great about the guidance we've given of 140 to 170 for the year. of which 55 to 70 will come from our franchise partners. That should, unlike last year, be more balanced throughout the year, although Q2, January through March, given the weather, you can have a seasonally lower number of new builds or new ads in the quarter. But we expect that to be pretty balanced, and we feel really good about the guidance rates that we've provided. Now, you mentioned just broadly, you know, we have been very clear in our acceleration of the network to get over 3,500 units. We're going to really increase the number of new units coming on the franchise side. We've been very clear that we're working to get to 150 new units per year by 2027, and we continue to make progress against that. That comes from both the existing franchise partners we have and our conversations with them have been very positive. And we continue to look for ways that we can support them with more detailed retail analytics, some real estate support, business development, pipeline generation from an M&A perspective, et cetera. And so we feel really good about the ramp that we will get from our existing partners. And then the second part is about recruiting, again, just a handful of more scale franchise partners to develop some white space regions or to help transition existing franchise players who are at points in their career where they want to cash out on the significant wealth that's been created through the franchise that they've built with us and bring in new partners who want to develop the areas that those businesses sit in. Now we did expect that was going to take time. One is you've got to line up the transition timing as well as the white space timing with those conversations. But the conversations continue and progress and again we feel very good about the progress that we're making.

Thank you. Maybe just a follow up on capital allocation and shareholder returns. I know Q2 will be a big one there with the repurchase of the notes plus the buyback. I'm sure you're probably thinking through what may happen after that, but given I think what leverage is today, which is I think pretty healthily in the range or maybe at the lower end of the range that you've outlined, is like I guess I'm curious kind of the range of options that are on the table, including maybe even re-levering up to accelerate returns once you exhaust the buyback? Or is this more conservative, just kind of see how it plays out, just kind of what are the decision factors as you approach that post Q2?

Yeah, Michael, I'd start just in terms of our target leverage ratio, which is an adjusted leverage ratio based on how rating agencies or S&P in particular measures our leverage. And just for... everyone's information. If you forgot, the rating agency adjusts for both operating leases as well as employee benefit plan obligations. So when you make those adjustments, the sum of the outstanding liabilities related to those operating leases and pensions is about $400 million, which is about a full term of leverage. We actually are just slightly above the high end of our targeted leverage range. So our first capital allocation priority will be to get us within that range that we've targeted and then we'll look at using the balance sheet as well as our operating cash flows to provide further returns to shareholders. My expectation is it'll take us a little bit of time short term here in the next couple quarters to get that range that target leverage range back into below the high end of our expectations and then of what we're targeting. And from there on, I would expect that we would, again, be focused on capital allocation to return cash to shareholders via share repurchases once we're back within that targeted leverage ratio. All right.

Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question goes to Daniel Imbrow of Stevens Inc. Daniel, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking our questions. Good morning, Mary. Maybe we want to start on gross margins. Good morning. We saw a little bit of a larger step down, maybe 4Q to 1Q on the gross margin side than we have seasonally in the past, especially with the easy comparison last year. Can you just talk through maybe the drivers of gross margin, like labor and how you're thinking about that line item for the rest of the year as comps maybe improve with using Clairsense?

Yeah, absolutely, Daniel. I will tell you, you know, we saw year-over-year gross margin leverage of about 40 basis points, and if you take out the depreciation impact, we actually saw 140 basis points of leverage before the impact of higher levels of depreciation. And that's certainly one of the things that impacted margins sequentially from Q4 to Q1 as well is the depreciation impact. We were pleased with the labor leverage we saw in the quarter. You know, we saw some very meaningful labor leverage that was offset modestly from by some operating expense deleverage that's really timing related in the quarter. You know, it is a seasonally low quarter from a sales perspective. And we also, you know, have done a better balancing, if you would, of managing our maintenance expenses throughout the year. We also, with new stores opening, you know, saw some deleverage from those new stores as well. So there was no surprises for us in terms of how we managed I would say for the balance of the year, we will likely continue to see leverage at the margin line, although I wouldn't expect to see as much labor leverage as we saw in the first quarter necessarily.

Yeah, Danny, I'll just add, you know, Q1, we have to manage our labor and there's always a step down as folks transition from the summer jobs back into college. And then as our volume starts to drop, we have to manage that labor pretty extensively. So when you see the difference Q4 to Q1, some of that is literally just the leverage of the cars coming through the stores and how we balance labor. But the year over year compare from a margin perspective was really strong and our teams have made a lot of progress since last year. We would have talked about the fact that we were focused on labor management and optimization and better scheduling, as you'll recall from previous earnings calls. And really, a lot of the improvement year over year is a testament to that, although some of those low-hanging fruit improvements happened in Q2. So the year over year compare from a labor management won't be quite as strong because you'll have started to see some of the labor impact hitting in Q2. So this is the last cycle. Though we still have opportunity and we continue to manage the labor line, which is our largest cost of sales item. And the biggest thing we're proud of is that our attrition rates are so low. As I mentioned, we've got the lowest attrition rate ending the quarter that we've had since pre-COVID. which is really a testament to the work our team's been doing across the recruiting side and setting expectations and how we attract talent. Two, also how we onboard and train the talent to ensure that we can keep the technicians that we're training in the stores for longer. And those things are the things that we're really proud about. And then our central ops team that we put in place has really been driving with operations some of the tools that have enabled them to manage that so effectively.

Understood. I appreciate all the color. And then maybe a follow-up on the comp growth outlook. So you said there was 100 basis points of a negative impact from the calendar in the fiscal first quarter. That'll improve. I guess, can you remind us how winter weather historically should impact non-oil change revenue? Would you see a higher service and battery attachment here in the second quarter where that becomes more of a positive tailwind for the ticket growth? Just trying to think about what are the impacts as you see that pent-up demand come back into the stores? Thanks.

Yep. Great question, Daniel. Battery sales typically tip up when you get cold, when the cold weather really sets in. Normally, we see that in December. In December, it was fairly muted because it was a milder December this year for the majority of our regions. But in January, we definitely have, you know, I think all of retail was impacted by pretty broad-based Arctic cold coming in and making people not wanting to go out and schools being closed, etc. That's actually created, we can see, some of that pent-up battery demand. Pushing into January and February as they get back in their cars and and realize that their battery needs to be replaced. So we are, we are, we do see those seasonal things battery is a small piece of our overall ticket as an average, but we do see those things and and as we would have expected with the colder weather.

Understood. Thanks for the color and best of luck.

Thank you. And the next question goes to Kate McShane of Goldman Sachs. Kate, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking our question. We wanted to ask about your initiative on reducing costs of the new builds and where you are, I guess, in that process and how we should think about unit economics going forward as a result of this initiative.

Thanks, Kate. As we mentioned in our last earnings, we've been both working internally on the design of our stores and taking out elements of the design that add cost but don't add value. Some of those things will take time to cycle through. We're in the process now of reviewing some of the opportunities with our franchise partners and doing some compares around build costs and site costs that they've had. So what I would say is we still believe there's opportunity, things that we can implement. We are implementing things to reduce the cost of converting an acquisition store to a Valvoline store, as an example. Some of those things will start to show in our capital costs for new builds, sorry, the capital costs for conversions for new units. But the new builds will take us time to implement, and we'll share more when we have locked that down and can definitively share the difference or the delta that should be expected. But there's opportunity, and the teams are working to work with the contractors as well as the permitting companies and the landlords to line everything up so we can capture it.

And in terms of unit economics, Kate, with the current construction costs, we continue to see mid-teens returns substantially higher than our weighted average cost of capital and still feel really good about the relative unit economics of the ground-up or new builds that we're doing. From a company perspective as well, we're continuing to see growth in new builds from our franchise partners as well. So any benefit we receive from lower overall capital costs will simply help us to increase that return even further.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question goes to Brett Jordan of Jefferies. Brett, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Could you give us any updates on the non-oil change offerings, you know, what's been particularly successful or what you see sort of adding to that product list?

Sure. On the non-oil change revenue, really the performance year over year is about having a more tenured team in the store that knows how to sell the product. and just getting more consistent on how that service is presented and performed. So we continue to see gains as we focus on training, making sure the equipment to do the service is updated in the store and is available to be used. Supply chain, we have had supply chain issues, as you know, over the past several years post-COVID, and just getting our supply chain back in line So we have the right air filters for all the vehicles that we serve, the right cabin air filters, et cetera. And then process execution. So making sure that the team is trained and understands why the service is necessary. And when we quartile our stores, we know we have opportunity. The top quartile stores perform 50% better from a non-old change revenue ticket you know, contribution roughly double or roughly 50% better. And so part of it is how do you do the training and the tools and rise up the back end of our store base to perform like the top quartile. Now, the car park is aging, which is a tailwind given many of our OEM recommended services become more relevant with the mileage of the vehicle going up. So, you know, really what we see is Visuals, so things like wiper blades, cabin air filters, air filters, those are the things where visually we can show the customer that they need to be replaced. That's just basic process execution and supply chain, and that's where we see a lot of improvement. When it comes to OEM services, it's about the tenure of the team, and it's about the equipment in the store, and those are the things that we've than making sure that our maintenance team, for example, is ahead of. We look for breakdown, we break down the barriers, if you will, to what is preventing us from servicing a vehicle. And when we find those opportunities, we either focus on the training or the things necessary to overcome those barriers. For example, Every time a customer comes in, part of our 18-point check is a battery test. And this requires us to use a battery tester, which we put on the vehicle to read the health of the battery. Now, we have not been as consistent in testing. And what we've learned is that a customer typically doesn't buy the battery on the spot. they actually take the advice and then return to us, either because they may have had issues with their battery started and we were the one to tell them that they had a battery issue, or they may go out and determine whether or not our pricing is competitive, which it's very competitive. And then they come back to us for just the battery service at another time. We also found that our battery testers need to be placed in a specific part on the battery and the newer vehicles have a plastic casing where that can get in a way with a good test. And so when we find those issues, we update training and we make sure we have an online training module that goes out that all of our company operated and franchise operated store team members need to go through so that they actually know how to attach those battery testers in some of the newer vehicles. When I say newer, I mean five years or younger, five or six years or younger. So those are the things that we're doing on non-old change revenue, and I would just say we still, while some of the improvements we've made, I would call them hanging fruit, we still have a lot of opportunity, and it's just the basic disciplines.

Okay, great. And then on regional performance, was there any dispersion to note? And I guess maybe a spread between softer regions versus stronger regions in the comp?

Yeah, no, there's something that we do look at. Obviously, weather can, in this time of year, can slide volume, car volume around based on regional weather patterns. But in general, we don't see any significant differences across the U.S. and Canada. in terms of performance. We also, you know, we look for demographic, you know, demographics around a store. We look for customer patterns and we see things really staying fairly consistent with the exception of when weather may push or slide out customers from coming in from, you know, one week to the next. But other than that, no significant or material differences.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And our next question goes to David Lance of Wells Fargo. David, please, your headline is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So I was just curious if you could walk through the building blocks to the 6% to 9% system-wide comp outlook and size some of the expected benefits from non-oil change revenues and premiumization?

Yeah, in the building blocks from a same-store sales perspective, we saw from a ticket perspective, we saw the benefits from premiumization and non-oil change revenue, as I had mentioned. We also saw benefit from price. And then on the transaction side, We certainly benefited from expansion of our customer base, as well as a nice benefit from miles driven, although a lesser benefit than what we saw in the expansion of the customer base. And then we saw that just under 100 basis point impact of unfavorable impact from the day mix on the transaction side. So again, on ticket, it was premiumization, non-oil change, revenue penetration improvements, and then pricing, which includes some improvements in discounting that we saw for the quarter, in addition to price increases that we took as well. And, of course, all of those are across the system from a system-wide same-store sales benefit.

And then I think I would just add, David. Oops, sorry, David. Sorry. I was just going to add for you. As you think about the guidance that we've provided in the 6% to 9% for the year, we've said that that's going to be more skewed towards ticket, but more balanced than what we saw in the last year. And as you think about that, we have premiumization, which has been consistently driving between 100 and 150 basis points. We have NOCR, which has been driving 100 to 150 basis points. And then you've got pricing adding to the ticket, inclusive of any optimization of discounting. And then you've got the transaction increase. So when you look at all those variables, you can see why ticket will be a slightly higher contributor in this year, but overall, really feel strong about the 6% to 9% system-wide same-store sales growth.

Got it. Okay, that's helpful. And then you mentioned that the fleet business contributed to comps in the quarter. I was just curious if you could give a few more specifics around there in terms of top-line performance versus the chain average and any account wins that you had in the quarter.

Sure, we haven't been reporting fleet out specifically on a quarter-to-quarter basis. I can say that we continue to see great opportunity, and our fleet business is growing both on the ticket side as well as on the vehicle served per day side faster than our overall business. So it's definitely contributing to both the non-old change revenue growth the premium mix, as well as the transaction growth from a same-store sales perspective.

Got it. That's helpful.

Thank you. The next question goes to Jim Chartier of 1S Crespi & Hart. Jim, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First question. The day mix pressure in first quarter, is that going to be positive to second quarter, or is that more spread out across the year?

No, it'll reverse to positive in the second quarter. We'll see a benefit from day mix in Q2.

Okay, great. And then you mentioned the implementation of the new CRM system. Can you help us understand what the incremental capabilities of this system are? and then where you see the biggest opportunities in terms of driving transactions and margins.

Thanks. I think your question on CRM is specific to fleet, but your margin and transaction, was that also specific to fleet or more broad?

I guess it was on the new CRM system, so it was on the fleet.

Okay. From a CRM system, As we separated from Global Products, we used to share a CRM system with them and we use it for many, many different aspects of our business. One, all of our business development work, you know, in contact with potential new franchisees as well as independents. You know, we use that system and so they also converted. But on the fleet side, we have an inside sales team that is constantly outreaching. We have marketing that goes out when customers can come directly or we can approach customers that we get, and it allows them to be very efficient. So from an inside sales standpoint, that system, and I think there's some new capabilities relative to the old system we had because it's been more built for our use. And so I think it will create more efficiency in our inside sales team, which allows us to sign up and follow up with existing, sign up new fleet accounts and follow up with existing fleet accounts more efficiently and keep track of all of those. And as our fleet customer base grows, you can imagine how important a CRM system is as we do account management. as well as following up on all leads for new fleet accounts. So it's really, it will make our team more efficient and allow them to do more sales and more account management, you know, more efficiently.

Okay. And then, you know, with transactions becoming a bigger part of the comp going forward, it kind of implies an acceleration and growth in transactions. What do you see as the biggest drivers to accelerate the transaction growth?

So I think on an overall perspective, obviously, as we grow the network, that's going to drive transaction growth. But on a same-store sales perspective, really the things that we're doing around marketing optimization and really leaning into best practice from a high-growth retail perspective, not just looking at what's done in our category, but what's being done in high growth retail more broadly and using some of those tactics will drive customers. Two is fleet. We expect fleet to continue to be a contributor to transaction growth.

And the other piece, Laurie, is really just continued benefit from miles driven. We'll continue to see you know, lesser but continuing benefit as we see miles driven continue to increase.

Yep. And the last one I think to add is around the speed of service. So we continue to look at our process and the technology that we use in stores to make our process and our best in class customer experience easier and faster to deliver. And we know that if we can take a minute out of that service time, It's more cars that can go through the bays during peak periods. And so that, we believe, will continue to provide us a tailwind on transactions going forward. So it's all four of those things, Jim, that will drive the transaction side.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. We have no further questions. I'll now hand back to Elizabeth for any closing comments.

Thank you all for your time today and for your thoughtful questions. We look forward to our ongoing discussions. This concludes our call for today.

Thank you. This now concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.