Yum China Holdings, Inc.

and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the YUM China fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 earning conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Florence. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone.

Thank you for joining Young China's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. On today's call are our CEO, Ms. Joey Wu, and our acting CFO, Mr. Adrian Ding. I'd like to remind everyone that our earnings call and investment materials contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to future events and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statement in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our findings with the SEC. This call also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. you should carefully consider the comparable gap measures. Reconciliation of non-gap and gap measures is included in our earnings release, which is available to the public through our investor relations website located at ir.yamchina.com. You can also find a webcast of this call and a PowerPoint presentation on our IR website. Please note that during today's call, all year-over-year growth results exclude the impact of foreign currency, unless otherwise noted. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Joey Watt, CEO of Yum China.

Joey? Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We just celebrated Chinese New Year last week. I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy Year of the Snake. I'm excited to share that we achieved another quarter of strong results in quarter four, capping a record-breaking year. In the fourth quarter, system sales grew 4% year over year, outperforming the industry. Same-store sales index sequentially improved to 99% of prior year levels. Restaurant margin and OP margin expanded significantly year over year. Co-operating profit grew 35%. For the full year, we set multiple new records. we opened a record 1,751 net new stores, ending the year with 16,395 stores. Adjusted operating profit reached $1.2 billion. Core OP increased 12%, and dilute EPS grew 22%. Our due focus on operational efficiency and innovation led to improvement in both the top and bottom line. Despite a challenging environment and value-minded consumers, our efforts have led to eight consecutive quarters of positive transaction growth. We have sequentially improved the same-store sales index and expanded margins since quarter two. KFC has shown considerable resiliency and growth momentum. KFC accelerated store openings and reached 2,200 plus cities in China. Delivery sales grew 16%, continuing our decade-long double-digit annual growth momentum. 2024 feels to me like an inflection point for Pizza Hut. It has made significant progress in transforming itself by enhancing its mass market appeal and operational efficiency. Core OP more than tripled in quarter four and grew 19% for the full year. Both brands have tapped into underserved markets and expanded into adjacent categories to drive incremental traffic, sales, and profit. Our breakthrough models, K-Coffee Cafe and Pizza Hut Valve, showed promising results and have significant potential for further growth. I want to thank our incredible team for delivering these strong results. Embracing our People First culture, we celebrated our achievements with over 11,000 restaurant managers at our RGM convention in Hong Kong. We continue to delight our customers with great food and excellent value for money. And we are grateful to our shareholders for your continued support. With that, let me turn the call over to Adrian to discuss our results in detail. Afterward, I will share additional highlights on our CNY activities and our strategy. Adrian?