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.

Thanks, Paul. So just as a reminder, Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp. is a top-line restaurant royalty corp. that earns a monthly royalty through a licensed agreement with Pizza Pizza Limited. In exchange for the use of the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 trademarks in its restaurant operations, Pizza Pizza Limited pays the partnership a monthly royalty calculated as a percentage of royalty pool sales. Growth in the corp is derived from increasing the same store sales of the restaurants in the pool and by adding new restaurants to the pool. As previously announced, on January 1st of 2025, the royalty pool increased by 20 restaurants. So for fiscal 2025, there were 794 restaurants in the pool, comprised of 694 pizza pizzas and 100 pizza 73s. So briefly covering some financial results for the quarter. As Paul mentioned, same-store sales, the key driver view for shareholders, increased 0.2% for the quarter. Pizza-pizza restaurants were slightly down for the quarter, and same-store sales decreased by 0.1, while Pizza 73 restaurants increased 1.8%. The combination of the 20 new restaurants added to the royalty pool on January 1st and the same-store sales resulted in an increase in royalty pool system sales and the corresponding royalty income. The partnership's royalty income, earned as a percentage of royalty pool sales, increased 2.3% to $10.6 million for the quarter. As a reminder, Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 restaurants are subject to seasonal variations in their business. System sales for the first quarter of the year are generally the slowest, while system sales in the last quarter are generally at their peak. Beyond royalty income, the partnership also earns some interest income on its cash and short-term investments. For the quarter, the partnership earned $31,000. This is a decrease in the prior year as the overall balance decreased and the interest rate applied on that balance decreased. Turning to partnership expenses, administrative expenses, including listing costs as well as director, legal, professional, and auditor fees, decreased in comparison to the prior year. This quarter, they totaled $211,000 compared to $221,000 in the prior year. In addition to administrative expenses, the partnership is making interest-only payments on its $47 million credit facility. Interest paid in the quarter was $443,000. As a reminder, in March of 2025, the company renewed its credit facility for three years, with maturity now set for April 2028. The balance of the facility remained unchanged. However, the credit spread increased slightly. Additionally, in April 2025, the partnership entered into new three-year forward swaps. The three-year interest rate swaps commenced when the existing ones expired. The new lock-in rate is 2.51%, which is an increase in the maturing swaps of 1.81. So the all-in rate on the facility for the next three years will be 3.51% compared to the maturing rate of 2.685. So now after the partnership has received royalty and interest income and has paid its administrative and interest expenses, the resulting cash is available for distribution to its two partners based on their ownership percentage. Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp. shares in 73.8% of the partnership distributions. It pays taxes on its share of partnership earnings, and the residual cash is available for dividends to company shareholders. Speaking about shareholder dividends, The company declared shareholder dividends of $5.7 million in the current quarter, or $0.2325 per share, which was consistent with the prior year. The payout ratio in the quarter was 105% and resulted in the company's working capital reserves decreasing $300,000 and ending the year at $3.7 million. The $3.7 million working capital reserve is available to stabilize the dividends and fund other expenditures in the event of short to medium-term variability in sales, which we have seen over the past few years. The company has historically targeted a payout ratio at or near 100% on an annualized basis, and any future dividend decisions will be made with this target in mind. That concludes our financial overview. I'd like to turn the call back to the operator to poll for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star 1 on your touchstone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. If you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star 2. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Derek Lazard of TD Cowen. Your line is already open.

Yep. Good afternoon, Paul. Christine, good to hear you guys.

Hi, Derek.

Likewise. Definitely think you guys are in an enviable position compared to your peers. Just like Q4 tends to be a little bit dated by the time everyone reports now, given that the quarter's kind of like was three months ago, close three months ago. Just curious, Paul, and you might have touched on it in your prepared remarks, but how do you maybe talk about the current environment, whether it's the consumer behavior you're seeing now, the macro backdrop? It's just obviously a lot more in the world than there was three months ago, and it seems to be changing daily. Just get your view on the overall market.

Yeah, it's a good insight, Eric. It's true. And you're right about the timing, too. Q4 was a while ago. I think just generally, and I don't think this is a surprise to anybody, but just the macro environment, I think, just looks scarier than ever, really. I mean, right now, there's just so many things going on at the geopolitical level. I mean, there was so much concern on the, let's say, the U.S. tariff side a year ago, let's say, and that's still kind of a big question mark. But now it's sort of with all the geopolitical oil shock type thing happening in the Middle East and beyond, from an already sort of fragile consumer mentality, I think things have gotten a lot scarier for the average consumer. So we, you know, just sort of sense that there's just greater caution. People are going to be extra careful, more careful than they already were being, I think, this year. So, you know, generally speaking, we do see that, and we've commented on this before, that people have pivoted from things like delivery tip, in our case, that they're still ordering. But we do notice people just generally you know, ordering less, trying to save money, and same on delivery platforms. I think some of them have seen reductions in volumes as well. So, I mean, I think it's just a scary market right now. Very competitive. A lot of competitors are doing deep discounting. You know, everyone's desperate to get that value customer, and we are in enviable places because we are known for value, which is great. And I think we do a great job with things like the XXL and even a piece of 73 under $10 snack boxes and things like that. We have good offerings for people, but you know, we do sense that overall transactions are challenged. I mean, just not only for us, but others. Just the macro picture is just not looking very good right now.

Absolutely. And that's totally fair. I think it's clearly industry-wide. And I guess one question too. So when you think about value, is it helping you guys win share in this environment or is it sort of, is it primarily a tool to, to help everybody sort of hold the ground in a competitive market.

Yeah, it's very true. I mean, it's really, you know, it's such a battleground for share. And so I think we did have some data saying that in Q4, we did gain some share, which is encouraging. But it's really a battle. It's really a slog out there. I mean, we had some gains there, but not major, I would say. So, you know, we'll take it. We're happy with any gain in share right now, and we just need to push harder to get more. But it's, you know, we noticed as well, we had some data saying that, you know, pizza traffic transactions generally in Canada, forget the source, but credible source saying that, you know, they were still growing and still positive, but it did drop off in the fourth quarter, the whole pizza sector. So, you know, we sort of felt that as well. And I think even North America-wide, you're sort of seeing that. that trend, some PTQSRs having some difficulty. So I think we actually overall are very happy that we were able to eke out a positive year, but the macro environment is troubling. I mean, we see definitely headwinds, as I said. And, you know, we know how to pivot into that pretty well, but the fact is customers are hurting and they're going to probably be ordering less food in general, not just from us, but others. So, you know, we're conscious of that and we'll have to be creative. about how we deal with that. But it might be a while. I think the way things are looking this year, there's just so much uncertainty in the, you know, not only Canadian market, but geopolitically and globally with what's going on. Potentially with the oil shock continuing, if you don't see a quick resolution, let's say in the Middle East and just the inflationary knock-on effects of expensive oil right down to the pumps and beyond. And that's a lot of important discretionary or non-discretionary spend for a lot of people. So it really does have a massive trickle down, you know, not only in Toronto, but all over Canada and all over the world. So we'll have to sort of see how that plays out.

Absolutely. And I guess, you know, are the competitive pressures more intense in certain markets or, you know, particularly urban or delivery-heavy regions? Like how do you – I guess how do you manage that?

Yeah, I would say we tailor our, you know, our marketing regionally anyway. We do, you know, notice differences. I would say, you know, we – You know, certainly in the urban environments where we're really well known for our established markets, I think we still generally, you know, are pretty happy overall. But, I mean, it's patchy. I mean, we'll get even very successful urban markets that, you know, we'll do very successful in a geographic region, most stores. But you'll actually have a few stores that are anomalies there. And same with somewhere like BC where, you know, we're certainly a newer brand there to most people. And a lot of those locations are more disparate. We don't have huge urban concentration there yet. But it's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag somewhere out there. And I don't think I would say it's, you know, because it's rural or less urban. Let's say it's just kind of the nature of it. We haven't really been able to ascertain, you know, usually there's certain weakness. It's more store by store. So we're trying to sort of make sure that we take lessons from the best performing stores. We have kind of a very much internal optimization program internally to really motivate stores to hit a higher level in their performance. And then we try and share those learnings and do a lot of sort of community clustering of stores and get the operators, you know, share their best practices and things like that. So it's kind of, you know, I don't notice anything specifically in certain regions. But I would say that, you know, we are happy overall with the organic delivery growth. Because that we've been really trying to push our organic apps and web. And I mentioned, we are going to be making that even better. But we are really happy with how that's going. And pickup wise, we do a great job as well, whether it's picked over the phone or through the apps, for instance, So I think we do have those kind of multiple channels which allow for flexibility with good value offerings, but we are going to have to be extra creative going forward for sure because customers are hurting.

Absolutely. And so I don't want to be the downer on the call, but I promise one last hard question on this. And I think you did talk about it in your prepared remarks. It feels like you're just in terms of your store development plans going to be a little bit more targeted given the inflationary pressures and the other pressures out there. Just maybe just talk about how you guys feel about your pool of available franchisees.

Yeah, I think we're – I mean, I think we feel pretty good about the pipeline for franchisees. I think probably what's more difficult is finding – you know, attractive real estate economics in the places where we want to be, and also construction costs. Because of the uncertainty, I think I commented on a prior call about costs of things like ovens, which we generally do source from the U.S. because they tend to be the best made and actually most affordable, but there's all this tariff uncertainty. Are they going to, you know, they've been ruled illegal, but I'm sure there's going to be some sort of attempt to still keep them in place. So we've seen some of the unit construction costs still be an issue. So it's not so much pipeline of the franchisee issue. We still see a lot of interest as it is I guess, getting the real estate we want and the construction costs we want to make it, you know, a sort of very viable option. So, and we often do see, like, you know, if anything, growth in the pipeline for franchisees when times are tough like this. So, I anticipate our, I haven't seen our latest pipeline stats, but they're probably actually ballooning. But the other challenge is we don't always get franchisees where we want them, right? They'll say, well, I want to be in Toronto. We'll say, well, we actually are pretty good in Toronto. We don't get a little bit of growth here, but It's more of these rural locations across Canada or even some urban locations even in Vancouver. And in Quebec, we've got a pipeline of locations, sites we really like. But we're still, you know, I'd say we've been a little bit slower there lately selling some stores in the places that are not in urban Montreal. So that's really where, you know, getting the demand where the supply is is sort of the trick. So we're trying to be very responsible there and say, look, let's keep a really close eye on construction costs. We do have some ideas on how to just try and reduce our – you know, construction costs, maybe slightly smaller stores than we're already doing, and certain materials and things like that so that we still end up on budget because we are starting to see the beginning of, you know, we haven't seen it en masse, but I anticipate that we will see more headwinds with suppliers for different items, whether it's food, non-food, or construction with the headwinds that we see.

Yeah. Again, I think you guys are operating well given the environment. One positive is the performance at Pizza 73. Curious if you see, is there any potential takeaways from that outperformance that you think you could roll out to the rest of the network, whether it's marketing, promo, or anything else that's working for you out there that you might try at the Pizza Pizza banners?

Yeah, we always try and look at what are the things we can share across, whether we take it west or bring it east. And one example was that volcano thing which we piloted out at Pizza 73, and it really did well there. And so we basically took a slightly different tone with it, but it basically is a very similar product with creamy garlic in the middle, which is popular here more so than Pizza 73. So that's one example. And I think just the create-your-own, the snack boxes out there, things like poutine, chicken under $10 price point have done well. And so that's something that, you know, we think, okay, perhaps we could promote those more heavily here. But here, obviously, we've got the slice market as well. And we've got a two for six slice model that's worked quite well. But we're looking at more of a $5 combo now that is more of a drink in a slice that we think will really help drive walk-in back here. But we always are looking to see which are the successful promos and positioning you know, either brand. And we have, we've got some, you know, some new marketing resources, relatively new that have really, I think, really hit stride there, even though it's very much a battleground in Alberta too. But some of the initiatives we have, I think, are really getting some attention more with the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers, with Gene Principe, this sportscaster now that's, you know, very famous and kind of doing, did a cheeky TV commercial for us. So people notice that stuff and does seem to kind of put the Pizza 73 brand in a little more of a fresh light from what it was, I think, maybe being seen as before. So we always are, you know, looking at that from a marketing perspective and also IT and operations perspective. How can we get the best of both brands?

Yeah, okay, perfect. And I guess without giving too much away, I know in your prepared remarks you did talk about plans to upgrade the website and the app. And, again, without giving too much away, just curious on what you're – looking to accomplish with the revamp?

Yeah, I think it's just to get our, you know, we're actually very happy with our loyalty program overall at Pizza. Pizza has been very, very good. We do see a lot of people that are very loyal as a result of it. But we think that there's just a way to enhance it in such a way that we just get, you know, frequency is a big one and just make us to prefer choice more often and just make it more multifaceted, a little easier to use and really just make it more intuitive on our web and apps And we'll be putting dollars behind it once it's ready to really drive the benefits of the loyalty. So frequency and then obviously, we're hoping to get more size and things too, so that hopefully check does increase albeit with a very value conscious customer. But some of these things are built also for, you know, many years, right? Not just this current environment, we're sure things will kind of bounce back at some point, but we still nevertheless need to build for the future. I think we'll have value offerings that are, you know, threaded in with a loyalty program. And that should help us, I think, hopefully get check and frequency, really, and also just more traffic in general. So those are the levers because those will drive our sales.

Awesome. Paul, Chris, thanks for taking my questions and appreciate the update. Good luck, guys.

Okay. Thanks a lot, Derek. Good to talk to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1. There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Christine De Silva for closing comments. Please go ahead.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today. If you have any further questions after this call, please reach out to Paul and myself. Our information is on the release. And thank you for your continued support of Pizza Pizza, and we look forward to speaking to you again in May.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.