Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Pizza Pizza Royalty Corps' earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2025. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star one in your telephone keypad. As a reminder, This conference is being recorded on March 25th, 2026. I will now turn the call over to Christine De Silva, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp's earnings call for the fourth quarter ended December 31st, 2025. Joining me on the call today is Pizza Pizza Limited's President and Chief Executive Officer, Paul Goddard. Just a quick note that our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements that may involve risks relating to future events. Actual events may differ materially from those projections discussed today. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary language in our earnings press release and the risk factors included in our AIS. Please refer to our earnings press release and the MD&A in the investor relations section of our website for reconciliation and other disclosures related to non-IFRS measures mentioned on the call. As a reminder, Ann lists our welcome task questions after the prepared remarks. Portfolio managers, media, and shareholders can contact us after the call. I'll now turn the call over to Paul for a brief business update.

Thank you, Christine, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for listening, Ann. We always appreciate it. This afternoon, we released our 2025 fourth quarter and year-end results, which you can find posted on our website. While the macroeconomic conditions continue to deteriorate over the course of the year, our fourth quarter performance highlights the resilience of our operating company and the strengths of our brands, people, and core fundamentals. During the year, we opened 37 new restaurants, bringing our three-year total to 130 new locations opened across Canada. We started off 2025 strong, and for the full year, Pizza Pizza restaurants delivered same-store sales growth of 0.7%, and Pizza 73 achieved sales growth of 1.9%. In the fourth quarter, our brands achieved a combined same-store sales increase of 0.2%. Pizza Pizza restaurants experienced a slight decline of 0.1%, while Pizza 73 reported same-store sales growth of 1.8% for the quarter. For the third consecutive quarter, we were happy to see growth in Pizza Pizza's organic delivery channel, which helped increase the overall average check. However, at both brands, we did see a decrease in transactions as we faced heightened competition and felt the impact of reduced consumer spending. So we saw a more cautious consumer environment developed throughout 2025, but we remained focused on executing our strategy. As a reminder, that's really leveraging the strength of our brands, delivering compelling everyday value propositions anchored in our core products and supported by menu innovation, and maintaining a strong, seamless customer experience across all channels. So starting with brand strength, Q4 is always our most important quarter, driven by key occasions like Halloween and New Year's Eve, along with the turn of our major sports partnerships. This year, Pizza Pizza launched a new partnership with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., head of the Toronto Blue Jays playoff run, while Pizza 73 partnered with Brian Lomberg of the Calgary Flames to strengthen our hockey positioning. Overall, it was a highly engaging quarter for both our marketing team and our brands. We continue to build on successful programs like Score Slice and Score a Pie at Pizza 73, promotions across NHL and NBA partners nationwide. These initiatives drive customers to our apps and enable ongoing engagement that encourages repeat visits. And for fans watching the games at home, we offered free game day delivery, where on game days, customers receive their orders with no delivery charge. And that's certainly been a very popular promo for people too, which we're really happy about. Our partnership with the Blue Jays Superstore, Vladimir Aguero Jr., or Vladdy as he's known, literally and figuratively hit it out of the park. The campaign featured our double XL 18-inch three-topping pizza at a value price point of $19.99, giving Canadians across the country a large, shareable, and affordable pizza to enjoy during the games. It was actually really, really exciting for us when he and his agent reached out to us directly. So that was a great timing last year. We were really excited and really kudos to our marketing team for really executing well on that with him. And this promotion really exemplified how we effectively leveraged brand partnerships while reinforcing our value propositions. Turning to our second pillar, value, we remained focused on delivering strong value across our core products. This was particularly important as we lapped the sales tax holiday in December 2024 and and as we saw customers becoming more diligent in how they choose to spend their money. We reinforced our position as a value leader through a range of price-conscious offerings. At Pizza Pizza, everyday offerings like the $19.99 mix and match and $15.99 pizza and pop deals remain customer favorites, complemented by limited-time offers like the 20 wings for $20 deal, demonstrating our consistent commitment to providing high-quality meals for under $20. At Pizza 73, we continued to promote the XXL offer, and brought back the popular holiday helper promotion during the December period. Our core pizza category remains resilient, supported by offerings across all price points, from slices and pickup specials for value-focused customers to more bundled options designed for families, gatherings, and special occasions. While value remains critical, staying top of mind through innovation is also important. Our innovation pipeline allows us to attract new customers, trade up our existing pizza mix with more premium offerings, and deepen brand engagement. This quarter, as an example, Pizza 73 launched the Volcano Pizza, generating strong consumer buzz and millions of impressions on social media. And due to its success there at Pizza 73, the Volcano Pizzas were rolled out to Pizza Pizza in Q1 of 2026. All of these efforts are underpinned by our third and most critical pillar, customer experience. We serve customers through multiple channels, including in-store, by phone, and on our organic digital channels, and also on third-party food delivery platforms. In a highly competitive landscape, delivering a seamless end-to-end experience is essential. So to meet and exceed customer expectations, we continue to invest in our digital ecosystem with plans to relaunch our website, mobile apps, and loyalty platform in 2026. At the same time, phone ordering remains an important channel, accounting for roughly one-quarter of our orders. Our customer contact center is fully staffed to ensure minimal wait times. On Halloween, our busiest day in company history, our systems performed exceptionally well due to our robust, highly scalable, and reliable technology infrastructure and exceptional people working together. So congrats to the team on your effort there on Halloween. It was record-setting. And beyond ordering, we are focused on ensuring our restaurants are accessible, modern, and welcoming. This quarter, we have 95% of Pizza Pizza locations and 50% of Pizza 73 locations refreshed. which will further enhance customer satisfaction and engagement. Turning to our restaurant network, we ended the year with 815 locations in Canada. Nice to cross with that 800 mark. And that includes 712 Pizza Pizzas and 103 Pizza 73 restaurants, along with four international locations in Guadalajara, Mexico. During the year, we opened 12 traditional and 20 non-traditional Pizza Pizza locations, as well as five traditional Pizza 73 restaurants. We closed three traditional and 11 non-traditional pizza locations, along with five Pizza 73 restaurants. And notably, four of the five Pizza 73 closures involved territory transfers to nearby locations. So it was really more of an aggregation exercise for bigger territory, thereby minimizing any impact on overall sales. Looking ahead, we continue to see opportunities for growth within our restaurant network. However, we are taking a more disciplined approach, carefully selecting locations and formats to ensure long-term profitability particularly in the context of rising costs. As I close out my comments, I expect that we will continue to face more headwinds across our system in the near future. Consumer confidence is still low, businesses are facing rising costs, and there continues to be much uncertainty. However, we will continue to be there to provide our customers with the best food made especially for them. Finally, I would like to thank you for the continued interest in Pizza Pizza, and I would like to thank our entire team of employees, franchisees, and our operating partners. for the support and resilience in this difficult macro operating environment. So thank you again for listening in, and I'll now hand it back to Christine to provide her closing remarks and financial update.