Krispy Kreme Inc (DNUT) 2023 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Hello. My name is Jean-Louis. Welcome to the Krispy Kreme Q1 2023 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions)

I will now turn the conference over to Rob Ballew, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Krispy Kreme's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Thank you for joining us today. Our earnings release and the accompanying earnings presentation deck are available on the Investor Relations portion of our website at investors.krispykreme.com.

Joining me on the call this morning is Mike Tattersfield, President and Chief Executive Officer; Josh Charlesworth, Global President and Chief Operating Officer; and Jeremiah Ashukian, Chief Financial Officer. After prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this call contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities and Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements of expectations, future events, or future financial performance. Forward-looking statements involve a number of inherent risks and uncertainties, and we caution investors that these risks could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 2, 2023.

Forward-looking statements made today speak only as of today. The company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law. Additionally, today's call will contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between non-GAAP financial measures and their closest comparable GAAP measures can be found in the company's first quarter earnings release this morning and is available at investors.krispykreme.com.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mike.

Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are pleased to share our first quarter results, marking another period of accelerated organic growth, driven by our continued successful execution of our omnichannel strategy and a robust performance of our premium offerings for celebration events and holidays. I want to start today's call by thanking our Krispy Kremers, our team members, for another quarter where we once again achieved positive organic growth in every country we and our partners operate. Thank you. Without your efforts and dedication, this would not be possible.

Since 1937, we've been serving our iconic Original Glazed doughnut and it has always been about sharing joyous full moments. As an affordable indulgent, we love that more than 80% of our doughnuts are bought to be shared with others. Nearly 40% of our customers buy our doughnuts for a party or a special event in their life, up from just 10% a few years ago. Our customers trust us to be part of their special moments. We don't take that lightly. We are proud to carry on the best of what our Founder, Vernon Rudolph knew. Consumers love fresh doughnuts. We appreciate our history, yet we know we're a doughnut company that is constantly evolving.

And freshness is important as it is the most important attribute our customers want in a sweet treat. We see this in the continued impressive growth of our delivered fresh daily, or DFD, business. Our ever-increasing confidence in our ability to continue to grow fresh points of access by 10% to 15% a year, allowed us to make the decision to exit our start-up CPG business Branded Sweet Treats, and focus our efforts in capital where our customers want us to bring in a fresh and delicious crispy green doughnut to a convenient location.

Our omnichannel strategy where we provide convenient access to consumers through many channels is unique in the industry and is fueled by our passion for innovation and our understanding that access to our brand is our biggest opportunity. Through the efficiency of only 400 doughnut producing hubs worldwide, we know how to think differently and creatively delivering fresh doughnuts when and where consumers want them. Thinking differently is that we not only think like an experiential doughnut company, but also a doughnut logistics company, which makes our model very unique. That change in our model and culture enabled us to open and service more than 12,000 points of access daily with a long-term goal of at least 75,000 by growing global points of access by 10% to 15% per year. While those points of access started as grocery and convenience stores, today, they include mass merchandisers, restaurants and drugstores.

The uniqueness of our current model allows us to maximize an idea that was once only available at the 400 producing doughnut hubs, taking it to every potential point of access in our system. Thinking like a doughnut logistics company with our DFD network truly unlocks the power of our brand and reach. And thinking differently leads directly to the purpose of our company to touch and enhance the lives of others to the joy that is Krispy Kreme. We are committed to positively impacting the world by loving our people, our communities and our planet.

In the first quarter, we donated much of our remaining Branded Sweet Treats doughnut inventory to food banks across the U.S. We also saw another strong quarter of community fundraising and local giving across the globe as we donated book to school children, supported the elderly and held more than 100 Acts of Joy worldwide. We worked hard to share joy in a way that really connected people to Krispy Kreme.

Turning to our results. The first quarter marked a great start to the year for our brand with organic revenue growth accelerating to 14.4% as we had a highly successful seasonal global campaigns, including the critically important Valentine's Day with great partnerships with Hershey's as well as a strong St. Patrick Day. These global campaign serves as the playbook moving forward for significant events and power base as we'll be able to leverage marketing costs, media coverage and brand partners across many or all of the country's Krispy Kreme and our franchise partners operate, driving increased efficiencies on both the top and bottom line.

Also, strengthening our omnichannel capabilities in the first quarter was our e-commerce efforts. In the U.S., that included expanding availability of specialty doughnuts and more targeted marketing efforts. Additionally, Insomnia continues to benefit from the expanded radius of warm cookie delivery of up to 10 miles. These efforts led to a 23% increase in e-commerce revenue in the first quarter compared to a year ago and led to a 220 point basis increase in sales mix of e-commerce to 19.6% of retail sales for the company during the quarter. This was our strongest quarter ever in e-commerce, both in revenue and percent of retail sales. Even when you compare that to the height of the pandemic, and we continue to see significant opportunity to grow in this channel. We also continue to execute on our global expansion strategy, with a strong increase in points of access in our market development and international segment, which led to strong organic growth around the world, particularly in our equity-owned Japan and Canada markets and international franchise markets.

Since the end of the quarter, a new franchise partner opened for the first time in Chile. Chile saw one of the highest openings in the company's history. We expect to open in 3 additional countries during the second quarter, including Switzerland, Costa Rica and Jamaica. We continue to be on track to open in up to 7 new countries this year and expect to sign 3 to 5 new development agreements for additional countries to open in 2024, including further locations in Western Europe and South America. Our pipeline of new hubs and fresh shops from our franchise partners is now well over 1,000 shops over the next 5 years, which will be used to further unlock additional points of access in those markets.

We've seen that Insomnia is really working across the entire country, the United States of America. And recent new store openings are performing better than expected. To accelerate their growth, we are investing in capabilities and processes to rapidly expand the number of new Insomnia store openings both in 2023 and longer term. And to launch internationally, as they remain on track to open in the U.K. and Canada later this year. We expect to open nearly double the number of cookie shops this year compared to last year with further growth to come in 2024 and 2025.

As we look ahead, our focus remains relentless on driving the capital-light expansion of our omnichannel model. We continue to see momentum in our hub and spoke model as well as existing DFD channels and are now excited to grow our fresh business to new channels such as QSR, club and drugstore. That's why we have such confidence in our ability to grow to more than 75,000 points of access globally from 12,400 today. In addition to expanding DFDs, we will also continue our work to align our specialty doughnuts across all channels and expand our e-commerce capabilities. Krispy Kreme Crispin has great momentum right now, and we remain confident and excited about the long-term 2026 expectations we highlighted at our Investor Day last year, including growing revenue to $2.15 billion and adjusted EBITDA to $215 million.

My excitement about the growth of this incredible brand is stronger than ever. My belief is that brands with a purpose and clear direction will thrive in even challenging economic times. We've seen that in the resilience of the Krispy Crème brand and culture. We have worked diligently over the past 6 years to transform our business model and operations to give more customers exactly what they want, where they want it, an awesome fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We have incredible momentum as we continue our journey to become the most loved sweet treat brand in the world.

With that, I hand the call over to Josh to give an update on the business and our DFD efforts. Josh?

Thanks, Mike. In the last few months, we've made great progress around the world with the fresh daily hub-and-spoke operating model that we discussed back at our Investor Day last December. This is especially the case in the U.S., where strong growth across all our sales channels helped us to deliver 16% organic growth and EBITDA margins above 16% when excluding the now discontinued brand Sweet Treats line.

The operating leverage of the model is particularly affected when we generate revenue off-premises by e-commerce or the local point of access, such as grocery stores, all from our existing fresh doughnut production hubs. In the U.S., upgrades to our web and app as well as continued expansion of our delivery zones helped us to generate over 22% of retail sales via e-commerce in the first quarter. And in delivered fresh daily, we added over 350 doors, both well-established customers like Walmart and Publix, but also with emerging newer customers like Target and Albertsons.

We now have over 6,000 DFD doors across the U.S. with average weekly sales up 35% from 2 years ago to nearly 650 doors. We're also adding a larger DFD display cabinets, which add up to 70% sales to a door. 3 of these premium cabinets went into grocery stores in the first quarter, including Kroger's Ralphs division and a test with Target is more expected in the coming months. This off-premises sales growth is benefiting our 137 production hubs in several key U.S. cities, including New York, Dallas, Houston, DC Metro and L.A., which all saw year-over-year margin growth in the first quarter. Our previously announced U.S. shop network optimization program, which focuses on poorer performing hubs with spokes, which do not benefit from the DFD expansion is also well underway. 29 shops have now already closed, all being converted into different shop formats. And as a result, pubs without spokes have seen a 180 basis point margin improvement year-over-year. We expect another 5 to 10 more shops to go through this process through the end of 2023.

We're also making improvements to the doughnut shop experience itself, including the addition of new equipment in our drive-thrus, which represent around 60% of retail sales in the U.S. as well as the introduction of digital kiosks in our lobbies at select locations across the U.S. These kiosks have already proven popular with our customers, especially at the flagship shop in Times Square in New York.

The fresh daily hub-and-spoke operating model is also showing early success in some newer international markets, including company-owned Canada and Japan, which both saw organic growth above 35% in the first quarter as well as in international franchise markets, which grew even faster. In Japan, specifically, an acquisition we completed at the end of 2020, we have brought back the hotline experience to our doughnut shops, strengthened e-commerce and added over 160 DFD doors. This omnichannel led growth is expected to deliver $60 million in revenue for Japan in 2023 at a more than 15% adjusted EBITDA margin. This compares to a loss at the time of the original acquisition.

As Mike explained, our long-term global points of access goal of 75,000 includes the opportunity to take DFDs to new partners and new sales channels. We now have DFD listings in drug through Walgreens in the U.S., in clubs through Costco in the U.K., Canada and Australia, and in QSR through an expanded test of over 160 McDonald's restaurants in Kentucky, which kicked off at the end of March. We are closely monitoring all of these new channels for quality, product freshness, service and, of course, performance. Regarding McDonald's, we are happy with our team's ability to service these additional restaurant locations from 3 of our existing local production hubs, and we have not seen any adverse impact on existing sales at our doughnut shops or other DFD doors in Kentucky.

I'll now happily turn the call over to Jeremiah to give us more detail on our financials, including an update on our balance sheet and our 2023 financial outlook.

Thanks, Josh, and good morning, everyone. We had a great first quarter. The fresh omnichannel model is working, and we are building confidence in our ability to drive both top and bottom line results. Sales per hub in the U.S. increased 9% to $4.6 million, led by both strong points of access growth and record average weekly sales per DFD door. New door productivity is strong and e-commerce revenue saw its highest quarter ever, even higher than the height of the pandemic.

In addition to the benefits of the actions Josh outlined a few moments ago, we have also successfully taken pricing to offset significant inflation, plus, we believe the exit of Branded Sweet Treats will allow us to focus even more on our U.S. fresh business. Outside of the U.S., we're seeing similarly strong performances in Japan, Canada and our international franchise segment and continue to make great progress on our global expansion clients.

Turning to the financials. As Mike said, we saw strong growth across all our reporting segments in the first quarter with net revenue of 12.5% year-over-year to $419 million. Organic revenue, which excludes the impact of acquisitions and changes in foreign currency, grew 14.4% and acceleration from last year, driven by pricing, our premium seasonal innovation, the growth of our delivered fresh daily doughnuts, in grocery and convenience stores and in e-commerce. We took further pricing in the first quarter in several key markets, including the U.S. and the U.K., bringing our effective global pricing to a low double-digit increase, and we continue to see lower levels of elasticity, thanks to the infrequency of purchases, strong specialty campaigns and the fact that it remains an affordable indulgence for all income.

Adjusted EBITDA grew 12.3% in the first quarter to $55 million or an increase of 16% in constant currency once the $2 million impact of the stronger dollar is considered. Pricing, hub-and-spoke efficiencies, the improvements in our U.S. network and labor optimization offset elevated commodity and labor cost inflation and a negative mix shift to maintain adjusted EBITDA margin levels at 13.1% in the first quarter compared to a year ago. GAAP net income of $1.6 million in the first quarter was negatively impacted by a $13.4 million largely noncash expense related to the exit of Branded Sweet Treats, partially offset by a $9.7 million gain on the sale leaseback.

Adjusted net income for the quarter increased 15.5% -- $15.3 million and adjusted diluted EPS in the first quarter was $0.09, an increase of 13% or 25% in constant currency. The U.S. business segment's total revenue increased 14% in the first quarter to $281 million, and organic revenue growth was also up 14%, despite decreased revenue from Branded Sweet Treats. Growth was driven by sales per hub increases to $4.6 million from $4.3 million a year ago and double-digit same-store sales growth by Insomnia Cookies. E-commerce and DFD revenue were strong in the first quarter, with record revenue for both channels in the U.S.

Adjusted EBITDA for the U.S. segment in the first quarter increased 19% to $39 million, with margins increasing 60 basis points year-over-year to 13.7%, driven by strong performance in our U.S. fresh doughnut business, which saw EBITDA margins expand 120 basis points. This reflects the successful pricing actions taken in the last 9 months, the absorption benefits in our hub-and-spoke, hubs with spoke from the growth in DFD off-premise sales and improved performance in hubs without spokes. These factors more than offset double-digit ingredient cost inflation and elevated labor cost growth.

International organic revenue growth was 7.3% and total revenues of $90.3 million. while adjusted EBITDA for the quarter declined to $13.6 million. Organic growth was offset by continued softness in DFD in the U.K. as well as increased cost of goods sold in logistics cost in Australia and the U.K. However, we are seeing continued strengthening in the retail environment in the U.K., and we are making efforts to streamline costs, reduce waste, and we'll continue to review pricing on a regular basis in all 3 markets. In the U.K., we're also working to expand visibility in the grocery channel, including secondary placement of all product, range, pack sizes and grocery as well as looking at new partners and channels.

Market development, which is made up of our franchise businesses around the world and equity-owned Japanese and Canadian markets, saw organic growth accelerate to 36%. Total revenues in the first quarter increased 27% to $47.3 million, even with a 9% impact from foreign exchange headwinds and franchise acquisitions. Market development and adjusted EBITDA increased 36% to $17 million despite a $1.3 million negative impact from foreign exchange headwinds. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased 250 basis points to 35.9% in the first quarter compared to the prior year and would have been higher if not for a mix shift due to the very strong organic revenue growth in equity on Japan and Canada. The growth in Japan led to adjusted EBITDA margins of over 20%, up nearly 800 basis points from a year ago.

During the first quarter, we completed a well oversubscribed refinancing of our Term Loan A and revolver facilities, extending our maturities at the same terms through March 2020. Last quarter, I mentioned we would begin efforts to reduce our reliance on vendor financing programs to reduce what has become a more expensive financing vehicle and an increased impact to adjusted EBITDA as these costs do not hit net interest expense. We made progress on that reduction in the first quarter, reducing those levels by over $45 million. We expect this to be a long-term tailwind to our adjusted EBITDA and net income, and we remain on track to be between 2x and 2.5x net leverage in 2026.

We are also reaffirming our 2023 guidance. This includes growth of 9% to 11% in organic revenue and 8% to 10% in net revenue, $205 million to $215 million in adjusted EBITDA and between $0.31 to $0.34 adjusted EPS. We continue to expect capital expenditures of $105 million to $115 million or roughly 6.6% of revenue, including opening at least 30 to 40 new Insomnia Cookie shops and roughly 10 company built hubs in 2023. Our 2023 guidance continues to include modest headwinds from foreign exchange rates for the year, which was roughly negative 1% impact on revenue growth and approximately $3 million hit to adjusted EBITDA. While the impact for the full year is negative in the second half of 2023, we'll start to see the benefits year-over-year from foreign exchange at current U.S. dollar rates percent in the fourth quarter as the dollar peaked in early December 2022.

Despite seeing roughly $25 million to $30 million of lower revenue from exiting Branded Sweet Treats for the balance of the year, we remain confident in our guidance range for 2023 and are currently trending to be towards the middle or higher end of our revenue and adjusted EBITDA ranges. We have good momentum in the business, and continue to have a high degree of confidence that we can meet or even exceed our long-term outlook in 2026 that we provided at our Investor Day.

Operator, we can open up the call to Q&A now, please.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of John Ivankoe of JPMorgan.

Mike, I'd like to quote thinking like a doughnut logistics company and obviously, there's a lot of implications in that. So, I guess a couple of things. Talk about your intelligence or scale, your capability is probably the best word, of really evaluating profitability per DFD account. I mean is that something particularly in the U.S. that you're specifically honing in on? And maybe a related kind of comment to that, McDonald's is on a demand planning model, which means they order and actually own the product once it goes in the back door. I don't think that's the case in other U.S. accounts. I mean, is that kind of a possibility for you going forward as you maybe reduce some of the risk of your business and have a more predictable profitability of each drop, each day to each account.

John, I'll start with the McDonald's piece today. I think as you think about the demand planning piece that they do, it's pretty interesting. It's actually something we do in other markets, right? So it's not the first time we've done this. But it's sometimes consumer-centric that really works for them and the uniqueness it can even be the drop that we're doing today where we still do our own route system and actually drop to each McDonald's individually or you can do a center drop where another logistic team can then do the drop as well. So that opportunity from where they own the demand planning is something that we look for in customers. And we continue to see that as viable options anytime we look at different channels to see if that opportunity exists.

Josh, I'll pass it on in terms of -- you were trying to get into the sophistication of how we're thinking about a logistics company. Anything you'd like to add on that?

Sure. John, I think that you mentioned the profitability per DFD account and profitability in DFD have obviously significantly improved over the last couple of years as we've gone at selling the same doughnuts in our doughnuts at the same source, but very close price point. And that applies across all these channels, including the McDonald's opportunity. From there, the profitability is impacted by how quickly you can make the delivery, get in and out of the store, whether it's prepacked doughnuts or a high proportion of loose, which -- and we're selling both in the McDonald's example.

And then yes, the sophistication of adding more trucks and routes is why Mike, I think, referenced the logistics company in the earlier remarks because just take, for example, with the McDonald's and Kentucky test are adding trucks, adding significant -- in production, doubling production in those existing hubs, completely sort of changes the context of us becoming much more of an operator behind the scenes as well as obviously upfront at the doughnut counter. And that we're seeing with a lot of our DFD partners. Walmart continues to grow. We're adding new points of access with Target, adding both prepacked doughnuts and these cabinets -- these bigger, more premium merchandising units. That all introduces complexity for us to manage. But we're certainly stepping up to the game right now and seeing the profitability pretty consistent across all those different DFD customers.

There's not another example of a quick service chain that I can think of in the U.S., maybe I can think hard, that gets 7-day-a-week delivery of a perishable product, which yours functionally is because it has to be sold the day that they get it. How is McDonald's, the 170 stores, kind of doing with that? I mean, does -- do all 170 stores continue to want to have doughnuts 7 days a week? Might it be a Friday, the Sunday kind of business or what they want to have products available to customers whenever they order. Just give us a little bit to whatever extent you're comfortable on this call, give us a little bit more insight, 170 stores is something bigger than just a test. It's like basically a market rollout of how that market experience is going, if we can?

Sure. Well, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, we're really pleased from an operating point of view how it's going. As I mentioned, getting those production hubs to double their production overnight, our Krispy Kreme has really sort of stepped up to the game. We're only 6 weeks in, though. So it's too early to sort of share too many specific results around it, very specifically about our experience with the McDonald's restaurants. I mean we're finding that the hours that we're able to operate, often during operating hours -- opening hours during the day, actually even complementary to what we do with, for example, our other grocery customers, which often need very early morning drops, the McDonald's restaurants are able to do at other times of the day. So that's working well.

We're doing it daily, as you say and we've been very clear. And actually, McDonald's been a fantastic partner so far in understanding this is a fresh daily proposition. That's how we see our delivered fresh daily business and channel expanding, whether it's in QSR or some of these other newer channels that I mentioned earlier. So I think that we certainly see it as a fresh daily business. That's how we've built it, providing those amazing doughnuts to folks off-premise in all these more convenient locations because as you may have heard us say before, the #1 reason why somebody might not buy Krispy Kremers, they didn't come across it. It's not convenient to them. And an opportunity like this, obviously, makes it a lot more convenient for them when they see it.

I'll only add one thing, John, keep in mind as well. It's a different need states when you're looking at the QSR, right? What are they using it for? What type of pack and all those things. So we will always do what we do in our routing system, right? Deliver fresh daily and then you adjust to what needs state McDonald's or any other QSR would look at. This is what I need for my customer base.

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell of Truist Securities.

A couple, I guess, quick ones. One, just on the Sweet Treats discontinuation line. Is -- there are many things you could have done with that, I mean, you could have licensed it and just kept the product in the store, you could have sold the business right, stuff like that. Was the thought that it's really just a focus on fresh and you don't want the name to be attributed with kind of multiday-old-type products or was it too much competition? Just trying to understand, as you go forward, what other opportunities you would look at to extend the brand versus keeping it just all-fresh?

So Bill, it's Mike again. With the amount of growth that we have, not just in the U.S. but in the international markets and even our market development, including Insomnia, but for Krispy Kreme, in particular, the fresh business is just absolutely growing significantly and how to make sure that we can look at where we want to allocate resources, where do we want to allocate capital, how do we want to make sure that we can continue to improve the DFD experience logistics. It was a pretty simple call for us in terms of this is where we should be. What we did learn again is that the brand does translate in that category. But at this point in time, we're focusing our energy on fresh.

Got it. And then the second, I think you talked about a lot of different opportunities of kind of new door expansion, but what I think you said was a test to target. Can you maybe just give us a little more, I understand the test, on the thought process because obviously, a lot of Targets don't offer doughnuts of any sort, they have a bakery in-store. It's a different kind of customer mix, different kind of look and feel from kind of a grocery or even a club. And so just trying to understand how that works and what's kind of the opportunity behind that?

Yes, sure. In Dallas, we've been able a few months ago to list in a few targets, around 20 with originally our prepackaged range that we typically have seen in other big grocery players. But what's really interesting is Target been great to talk to, and they've been asking us about how we can present the brand in different ways. And we talked to them a lot about our cabinet merchandising units, these premium units that offer both loose and prepackaged doughnuts alongside each other. And the test that we've got running in Dallas is now also we've got 5 locations doing that with those -- and of course, they are much higher sales per door for us, and they're really interested in that. We've also talked to them about expanding the prepacked doughnuts to Chicago market as well. So, it's early days. But what's really promising is that with us, they're looking for ways to show why Krispy Kreme is a premium differentiated offering. And it's obviously something that has real promise.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Wolf of CL King.

Just kind of want to contrast or ask you to contrast the sales profit performance in the U.S. versus the major international markets. I'm trying to frame it in different ways, but it seems like the velocities are much different at same doors. And obviously, you referenced that the price -- the cost increases are now accelerating in some of these international markets. Could you just unpack some of that, either by contrasting or just talking about the international markets directly in terms of same-store like the U.K. being down, obviously, at least in units. And so, sort of why it is in the quarter and what's the outlook in the U.K. and maybe Australia as well.

I'll kick off, Andrew, by talking a little bit about the international sales, and then I'll hand over to Jeremiah and I talk about profit, I think. I mean, all the markets -- all the international markets delivered growth, with Japan and Canada, as mentioned, being the highest over 35% Australia you asked about, low double-digit performance from them. U.K. more mid-single digits. I mean, we're seeing, as we look across the international markets, DFD points of access, a very big driver of pricing, obviously, a driver of growth. We've got markets also adding around the world, new DFD doors, like, we described and discussed in the U.S., including with new channels.

I mean, Costco in Canada is one of the big drivers of that growth up there, also listed at Costco in the U.K. during the quarter. I mean, overall, on the U.K., which we have talked a lot about with the backdrop of some of the economic challenges there. We are seeing retail business in double-digit growth. We can see it's doing -- people are still excited to come out to a doughnut shop for Valentine's event or other sort of celebrations.

But in DFD, the supermarket shoppers seem to be a little more careful in the U.K. with their basket size. So it's not growing as much in DFD. So there's a few ups and downs, but generally, I would say it's a good growth, strong performance. And in terms of DFD door performance specifically, we're now seeing that it's still got a way to go, but the U.S. is closing the ground with its growth in DFD door weekly sales to get up to some of those international levels, which is also exciting.

Jeremiah, do you want to talk about profit a little more?

Yes. Yes. Thanks for the question, Andrew. And I think where I'll start is you look at a macro level, the international margins are slightly accretive to the U.S. So despite some of the challenges we're seeing today, they are still quite profitable. And over the medium to longer term, we do expect to generate 20-plus margins in our international equity markets.

What I would say is they're going through a bit of challenge at the moment. answered more challenged the most from a margin perspective. The international teams are very focused around driving efficiencies and continue to be very agile on the pricing front. So the U.K. and Mexico have already taken mid- to high single-digit pricing in the first quarter with Australia plan to take price in the high single digit in Q2.

The only thing I'll add is in Australia, in addition to inflation, we're experiencing some kind of cost growing pains as it launches into DFD and Woolworths. And we're still kind of fine-tuning the demand and supply planning models there and seeing a higher level of waste that the team is working on fixing. But again, overall, in the longer term, we continue to expect decent accretive margins in our international kind of market.

Okay. So sort of a follow-up that's kind of my summary takeaway is that it's more -- it sounds like the profitability being down in these markets as a total is more regarding rapid cost inflation versus price realization or catching up in price, more so than DFD store productivity. Is that the -- is that the right takeaway how we think about profitability? And as you're adding increasing pricing, the profitability will increase since the velocity seems to be not really an issue.

I think that's fairly accurate. Andrew. And I would say the nuance on pricing is we're probably a bit behind in international markets, and now we're catching up for that. So we do expect improvement in the back half, so.

(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of Sara Senatore of Bank of America.

A question on the DFD doors in the U.S. You mentioned growth in sales per door, I guess, a couple of clarifications. One is, are you seeing any difference as you add new kinds of doors? Is that a reflection on our mix of doors or is that strictly just existing doors or the same sort of same door sales, if you will? And on that point, do you have any kind of insight you can give as you're testing with grocery stores target. Just I know you mentioned that you're not seeing any cannibalization from the McDonald's test. That's obviously a question that comes up a lot. Anything you can share about differences in terms of the types of the end customer use cases in terms of how you think about density, sort of the number of doors per capita or anything that can help people get comfort with the absence, I guess, of cannibalization as you continue to densify DFD doors?

Sara, a few questions around DFD there. I think I'll start with the trends on weekly sales for DFD very positive, including on the existing doors. Some of that is just momentum. Some of it's pricing. But also a big part is the specialty doughnuts, more premium price specialty done that's doing really well and helping us deliver record performance weeks when we have a Biscoff or Valentine's or St. Patrick's Day, spring minis or Easter in the range. And what's really good is even on a day like a St. Patrick's Day or Valentine's Day, we're putting them on for a couple of weeks in the lead up, and we're seeing good sales performance throughout that 2 weeks. So that is helping us a lot with that performance on the existing doors. Interestingly, the new doors, we're finding they are at least as good. In fact, many of the new doors have better sales performance right now. Partly, we think that's because we're expanding with new customers, new channels.

And so certainly, as we see it right now in the U.S. And not only we don't see cannibalization, but the incrementality is very, very clear. I called it out for McDonald's just because that was such a growth in just a couple of cities, and we were curious ourselves. And yet, we haven't seen an impact there. So I don't think we know the full answer about where it is. But I mean, do remember that 6,000 doors in the U.S. is still a fraction of all the grocery convenience and actually other places where people are looking to purchase, arguably, if you add in QSRs, club, drug, you're getting 0.5 million locations where people we now realize could well be looking through the convenience through the opportunity of having a special donor occasion that they will pick up our doughnuts.

So cannibalization is just not really on our mind a more mature market like the U.K., where you have a lot more points of access, we also have seen the data there is even if the doughnuts are in a Tesco right next to a subway station, they don't see cannibalization. So it continues to be the case that shoppers go to these locations for different reasons. They're not going to the Target, the Walmart and McDonald's necessarily for a doughnut, they're going for something else. And whilst they're there, they go wow, it's available here, I'll pick it up. And we're still resident frequent 3 times a year even in DFD. So I think that the way we're thinking about it is let's just make it more convenient, let's get those awesome fresh doughnuts to people where they want to pick them up. And we're just learning as we go, that the demand is there in multiple locations.

The only other thing I'd add, Sara, to your first question, start out with a difference and we see one thing when we get the full assortment cabinet in place, the customer really reacts sometimes we see up to 2x of the sales of what's there in front of it. So then they get a broader range, they can see the doughnuts, they can choose to make your own. You got a broader representation of Krispy Kreme. That's a big deal.

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Harbour of Morgan Stanley.

Maybe just first, could you dig into your comments on e-commerce a little bit. Certainly, I'm sure Insomnia has kind of helped there as that's grown quickly. But how about just for the Krispy Kreme brand specifically, has that been driven more by delivery recently or have you done more to kind of promote online ordering, for example?

Well, yes, I mean, definitely, e-commerce has been really, really strong for us in recent times on the Krispy Kreme side and the Insomnia side. To your question on the Krispy Kreme side, we've been making improvements to the web and the app experience to literally just make it easier to use and increase the conversion rate from when a customer first goes on the site or the app to making a purchase. We have indeed continuously been looking to add to the delivery areas. We do have some dark shops that we've been adding to the system that's helped us with that. We've also worked a lot on very much more basic things around ensuring that when people preorder, the doughnuts are always there.

It sounds obvious, but on these big event days, people want Valentine's doughnut, St. Patrick's Day doughnut, we've really focused on e-commerce because a lot of people are ordering well in advance. They want to be part of that celebratory occasion and guarantee their doughnuts. And we're finding that sometimes it's those most simple operating focus delivers the growth as much as improving the brand and what have you. We do, as we look ahead, see an opportunity on loyalty to relaunch loyalty, and we'll be looking to do that in the U.S. early next year, really to make it more intuitive the loyalty program. We have now in the U.S. over 11 million loyalty members, but we really see the opportunity to drive more e-commerce growth with them by relaunching the loyalty program. So yes, it's been really great to see more than 20% growth in e-commerce in the U.S. in the last quarter, and we'll continue to focus on that along with the DFD.

Okay. And then in the past, you've provided comments just on labor cost inflation and also kind of input cost inflation and how much of that is contracted. Could you just update us on that, if it's changed at all versus kind of your prior comments? And then if you have any more plans for pricing in the U.S. in the near term?

Yes, Brian, I can take that, and thanks for the question. For key commodities like sugar, wheat edible oils were essentially locked in with low double-digit inflation on average for the year. Higher increases, obviously, in the front half of the year, as I think I probably would have talked about in the last call with a little softening inflation in the second half. We're also starting to look out into 2024 as well as we start to think about the commodity outlook and pictures.

With respect to the question around pricing, we have taken additional pricing in several markets year-to-date already, including Mexico, as I mentioned, in the U.K., in the U.S. also took low double-digit price and we'll continue to be agile as the market unfolds and have planned pricing, as I mentioned, for Australia in Q2, but also Insomnia. What I would say as well, the only other thing that will help with kind of price realization for our business is just a focus on premium specialty campaigns as we obviously have a nice pricing tier when we do those activities.

Just to clarify one thing on the pricing. We've been taking pricing a little more on DFD. So the low double-digit Jeremiah referenced was on DFD taking low single-digit pricing on retail. We just did so again, but it's -- we're doing it more frequently. As we look to make sure that when the customer sees our dynamics is at a similar price point across all the channels, one of our strategic goals.

Your next question comes from the line of David Palmer of Evercore.

Just a couple of questions or follow-ups on the McDonald's stuff. Given the numbers you gave with the doubling of the sales of those hubs in that market, it would imply something like $200 per day per McDonald's in Krispy Kreme sales which might be about 2% of the sales of McDonald's. Is that way off? And if not, I wonder how McDonald's would view that given what they will be putting into this and the incrementality of course, of those sales? Any thoughts on all of that?

Yes. It's definitely too early for us to get into the performance measures just 6 weeks. And my comment is focused on the 3 production hubs that cover a big area across the whole of that Kentucky co-op. And obviously, those hubs had we saw an opportunity within them. We actually have a hub without spokes also in the -- in Kentucky. So we saw the opportunity there to really ramp up production and support them in the way that's needed.

And we'll continue to partner with them on what's the right way of doing this, what are the right targets, what are the right measures. They're the experts on the impact on McDonald's, I think we really focus on the things that really we can control, which is make sure the doughnuts are there at the right time, the doughnuts at the right level that are ordered by them. As was discussed earlier, they're advising us on how many doughnuts they want rather than us guessing it. It's a great partnership. We love the way we're working with them. But obviously, they're being thoughtful about things that are important to them, and we're focusing on the things that we can control.

If -- any sense of the next steps if this is successful, if they think that this is a good partnership, what would happen next? And I guess maybe related to that, about your fulfillment of this, if it went national, how many McDonald's within reach of Krispy Kreme hubs today as it stands?

Yes. I mean, we have no plans yet to expand beyond Kentucky or anything like that. It' s a -- we expect to be doing this test with them for months. And I'm sure that they will be evaluating all sorts of parameters important to them. Regarding your question, more general question about capacity, if you step back and just -- and we have been -- not just McDonald's, but because of this DFD growth of all these customer types -- we have been thinking about the future and what happens if you recall at Investor Day, we said that we thought there was about 15,000 points of access opportunity in the U.S. as part of that 75,000 number that Mike referenced.

And so we've been looking at about our ability to fulfill that. We have 6,000 points of access today, give or take that we service. We think we can add about 50% of that with adding to production around the system. Once you start getting beyond that, you start to look indeed at our proximity to all our different DFD customers and their locations, both in existing channels and new channels. And so, to go beyond that would require us to unlock new capacity in some target locations -- and we're starting to look into how we can do that, whether it's at our existing sites because some of them can be adapted or new ones. I mean for that 15,000 points of access, though, do bear in mind that our production hubs can support a lot with DFD doors, especially when they're designed with that in mind, smaller lobbies, bigger load-out areas, places to put trucks, a lot of our U.S. shops not set up for that.

So future production hubs that we could invest in, will be able to support a lot of doors. So when you start to do the math to get to that sort of 15,000 DFD opportunity that we mentioned at the Investor Day for all those DFD customers, they still about 30 to 40 additional hubs we're talking about to get all the way there. So we're focused on with McDonald's just on the test, delivering great doughnuts, fresh every day, that's what we know how to be an expert on. We're thinking more broadly around growth and fulfilling the 75,000 opportunity around the world with 15,000 in the U.S. and we'll go from there. Most important is those awesome doughnuts.

Your next question comes from the line of Jon Tower of Citigroup.

Great. Maybe just following up to that question. I don't believe the test with McDonald's is exclusive. So can you talk about your thinking around the U.S. QSR market? Would you wait until the end of the test or trial period with McDonald's before potentially looking at other QSR operators? And then kind of thinking more broadly beyond the U.S., how should we think about the opportunity outside in some of these international markets where there are plenty of QSR brands that probably would be looking to add some sweet treats to their lineup.

Yes. So it's Mike again. So when we thought about partnering with McDonald's and you're going to a test, there's a lot of learnings that are going to happen with McDonald's as we start to explore what does that mean in the QSR space. We're learning what we're learning is we can deliver to the QSR space. And then when you look at, hey, are you ready to go beyond other partners. We really like the partnership with McDonald's as it stands today. We're going to continue to learn both from each other and to see where it grows. If you look outside the world, there's plenty of other spaces and partners out there, but we're going to focus on McDonald's as a partner right now.

Got it. Switching gears a little bit. In terms of the business. I think, Mike, you've mentioned in the remarks earlier that about 40% of the business today comes from special events. So I'm curious that outside of these special events, key holiday windows, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day. How are you getting consumers to -- or what are you doing to try and drive kind of that nonspecial event window going forward? Is it just expanding points of access or even just at the existing hubs today, what are you doing to try and lift existing sales per box?

Right. So when we referenced the 40%, right, we referenced it because the product that dozens that are actually bought 40% are gifted a lot of times. So that's the real big number from a -- and that gets into people's special occasions, right, not just the Valentine's Day, not just the St. Patrick's Day. Those are great. They create a lot of energy. But just the ideation of premiumization of doughnuts where you've seen an English brand that they brought around the world to be places such as Biscoff, right? So you can see how that can -- as you premiumize the brand and people engage in it, the biggest opportunity still is about access, right?

So getting the DFD and growing our business is through the DFD and getting the customers is how they continue to be engaged with Krispy Kreme. When we can bring that total doughnut experience that you can see in the shop and bring it to actually a DFD door, that's when people really start also to connect with the brand because it's clearly an opportunity. On top of that, you can see the growth that's happening in e-commerce, right? The consumer is choosing where they want to be and when they want to get the doughnuts, that really matters.

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call over to Mike Tattersfield, President and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

So appreciate everybody listening to our story this quarter, and thank you for that. And I really appreciate all the Krispy Kremers around the world that make this happen every single day. Thank you. See you next quarter. Ciao.

This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect.