Potbelly Corp (PBPB) 2014 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to Potbelly Corporation's third quarter fiscal 2014 earnings conference call. The call will begin with prepared comments by management followed by a question and answer session. Today's call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Matt Revord, Potbelly's Chief Legal Officer. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Before we get started I would like to note that certain comments made on this call will contain forward-looking statements, regarding future events or the future financial performance of the Company. Any such statements, including our outlook for 2014, should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities and Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, nor should they be relied upon as representing management's views as of any subsequent date. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, and events or results could differ materially from those presented, due to the number of risks and uncertainties.

Additional detailed information concerning these risks regarding our business and the factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements, and other information we will be giving today, can be found in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K under the headings Risk Factors and MD&A, and in our subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at SEC.gov. Our presenters today are Aylwin Lewis, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Charlie Talbot, our Chief Financial Officer. Aylwin will begin with his perspective on the third quarter performance, and discuss some recent developments, and providing a discussion for our ongoing strategic initiatives. Charlie will then review our financial results and future outlook in more detail, before we open the call up for your questions. Aylwin.

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining the call. I want to begin by saying we are encouraged by our third quarter results. The Company operated comp sales growth increased 0.5% during the quarter. Underlying traffic trends improved as we moved throughout the quarter. We opened seven new Company operated shops and one domestic franchise shop, for a total growth rate of about 12%. We remain on track to open 40 to 48 total units this year. During the quarter we opened our second Company operated shop in Denver, our newest hub market, and we anticipate having five shops in the market by year's end. Our adjusted net income was $2.8 million, or $0.09 per diluted share for the quarter. Charlie will discuss our financial results in greater details later in the call. I want to spend a few minutes providing an update on initiatives we discussed in the Q2 call, and give you color on why I am so encouraged by our recent performance. The progress we have made since our Q2 report is good. Comps improved each month in Q3, and continued a positive trend on Q4. This improvement is driven by higher trends. Our 2014 development class is performing well with sales on track, and is achieving steady state in the expected timeframes. We continue to receive positive customer feedback from Flats, and believe this platform will be a layer of sales as we move forward. In late Q3 we introduced the Turkey Bacon Cheddar sandwich on Flats, and the mix has been strong. On the second quarter call I discussed our mindset on sales growth, and talked about some long and short-term initiatives to regain our comp momentum. Many of these activities we discussed are in test or in place. I will discuss the update on a few of these now.

Number one, people development. Our ability to grow same-store sales depends on excellent operations to drive our neighborhood marketing approach. This is predicated on having a strong General Managers leading each shop. Our shops that have experienced consistently strong top and bottom line growth over the years have the most management stability. We are dissatisfied with our current level of management turnover, and we're putting in place a set of plans to reward tenure, people development, and lower turnover. We have built in turnover due to our unit growth.

However, the incentive plan is geared toward the stability so we can continue to fuel that growth. We believe our cultured track and keeps our front line of associates in place. Additionally our front line bonus also helps to keep that level of turnover low. But we recognize that we need to do more to impact the ability of our salaried management people. We expect incremental investments will be offset by lower turnover at all management levels. Number two, throughput and peak. Our throughput during Q3 improved. We believe we must continue to drive throughput in order to impact our peak business, and increase our sales during that critical timeframe. We will use technology and staffing as the key to do that.

For instance, we have high speed ovens in all of our shops as of the end of Q2. In Line Order Taker is now in 49% of our shops. We will continue to invest in In Line order taker where it makes sense in the business. We have installed 33 new shake stations during the quarter, that total is double of what it was from the beginning of the year. Staffing is important to a peak. We encourage our operators to staff at 110% of their assigned staffing levels. In Q2 we tested at over 30 of our shops having our manager's manage the dining rooms at peak. We're finding that there are benefits to having them out talking to our customers, managing the line flow, improving bottlenecks, and stopping walk aways. While this is not a panacea, we believe it is a great program that we can implement in the future.

Number three, our back line sales, roughly 15% of our sales in Q3. We want to double this business over time. We have dedicated sales managers in a number of our shops. Our intention is to hire two to three additional sales managers in 2015. We're also going to hire a national leader for our back line business. We believe this is job is important to help us drive the business from a focused, passionate and thoughtful process. Relatedly in 50 of our stronger back line shops, we tested a catering promotional tool, designed to grow sales with customers that are not current Potbelly customers at peak.

Our fourth sales initiative was messaging outside of the four walls. It's important we pick the right outside partners to help us be successful with digital, social, and mobile. You will see digital, social and mobile becoming a more important part of how we market the business. In fact, social is a critical role to help us establish quality and customer engagement. Recent copy of Destination and Restaurant News, ranked us number two among large restaurant chains with regard to customer engagement across social activities. We will increase our advertising budget next year, the majority of these funds will be spent on digital, social, and mobile. Our messaging will focus on new innovation like Flats, recipes, and our promise of being fresh, fast, and friendly.

Fifth, we will use menu innovation to continue to drive traffic and check. So if you are baking cheddar was our promotional vehicle during the quarter this current quarter, you will see us testing in this also quarter additional proteins, and additional products designed to drives trial and ultimate traffic. Testing means items during this fiscal year will allow them to make the calendar in 2015 and the out years. And lastly day part. From a day part perspective, lunch is very important. It's 60% of the business, but we also want to work on improving our business and doing other day parts. We recently rolled out 21 additional shops for breakfast, which brings our breakfast total to 92 shops, on 29% of our system. We will continue to roll breakfast out in an opportunistic way, based on the trade area, and the site attributes. Additionally, we tested during the quarter a promotional tool designed to help us drive the 2 to 5 sub day part period. We believe over time this time frame should really help us grow the business, concentrating on our excellent dessert lines. There's not a silver bullet to how we improve comp trends. We believe we are working on the right things that will help us in the short-term and long-term.

Again, it all starts with excellent operations. This year comp sales growth has been the gap in our growth model, and we have worked tirelessly during this quarter to gain momentum, and we expect this momentum to continue the balance of the year and beyond. We will keep you abreast on these efforts, and you will see some of these things come to the marketplace in 2015 and beyond.

To close I want to emphasize that we have a very straightforward business model. We want to grow our cash and existing units, that means our comp has to grow year-over-year and the comp stores. We are going to use that cash to invest in growing new units. We have promised plus-10% new unit growth. We believe we have at least 1,000 units that we can do in North America. Then we want to invest the overhead closest to our customers, district managers, trainers, real estate managers, these are all of the folks that help us to grow the business organically, and with new units. We are encouraged by our recent same store sales trend, encouraged by the traffic momentum that we have achieved in a lot of our markets. We're very thankful to the hard work of the men and women that work for us in our shops, and work every day with a lot of positive energy, and a focus on our promise of being fresh, fast, and friendly. We will continue to test and implement proven initiatives that drive our business over time. I'm going to turn it over to Charlie, and he will give you more details of the quarter.

Great. Thanks Aylwin. Good afternoon everyone. I will walk down the P&L and give you some of the highlights and color associated with our results. Additionally, I will provide some initial thoughts on our financial plans for 2015. So starting at the top, total revenue increased 8.5% in the quarter to approximately $85 million, driven by new unit results, and an increase in Company operated comparable shop sales of 0.5%. Comparable store sales growth improved sequentially each month of the third quarter, driven by an improvement in underlying traffic trends, as well as easing comparisons.

The improved traffic trends was extended into October, and we continue to be highly focused on sustaining this positive momentum through year-end and beyond. We are continuing to run at current traffic trends for the balance of the quarter would result in same-store sales being at the highest end of our previously issued flat to negative low single digit guidance for the full year. Our average check growth for the quarter was approximately 2.5%, driven primarily by price increases which we took in February and July, with the remainder coming from menu mix. We have not experienced any resistance to the pricing we have taken to-date.

A big part of the mix increase is the continued success of our recently introduced Flats program. The Flats mix remained relatively consistent with second quarter trends, and remains a healthy part of our menu, and as a reminder Flats are priced at a premium to our original sandwich offerings. We are currently promoting a Turkey Bacon Cheddar Flat in most of our markets, and we will continue to use this platform for future innovation and messaging. Moving down the P&L, cost of goods sold as a percentage of net sandwich shop sales decreased in the quarter to 28.5%, down 110 basis points from prior year. As expected we moved from deflation in the first half of the year, to inflation in Q3, but there are a few things skewing that shift in the COGS result, given the year-over-year and sequential Q2 to Q3 decline. First our supply team has done a great job of managing costs and mitigating inflationary headwinds. During the quarter we were able to secure volume based rebates, and other support from a few of our suppliers that were not contemplated in previous guidance. And were retroactively applied to the beginning of the year during Q3. Second, inflation in the second half of the year as we discussed on the Q2 call is weighted more heavily to Q4.

And lastly we had an effective check growth come in slightly higher than we were anticipating, but did not see any push-back from the pricing that was taken, which obviously is beneficial to the COGS percentage as well. So looking ahead we anticipate COGS in the low to mid-29% range for Q4. We expect full year inflation gross of rebates to trend towards the lower end of the 1% to 2% range we previously provided. Our food cost basket is effectively locked for 2014. We are currently working on some 2015 numbers, but early indications are higher levels of inflation than experienced in 2014. We anticipate the inflationary increases to be weighted more heavily in the first half of the year.

Labor as a percentage of net sandwich shop sales increased in the quarter to 28.2%, an increase of 90 basis points from prior year. The increase was driven by the timing of seven Company operated shops opening in the third quarter which were back half-weighted, as well as incremental training of people investments in advance of the fourth quarter openings. For the full year fiscal 2014 we expect labor as a percentage of net sandwich shop sales to trend to the higher end of the previously issued range of 28% to 29% based on normal seasonality coupled with the higher number of new Company operated openings in the fourth quarter. Our guidance also includes the impact from the Washington DC, Minnesota and Michigan minimum wage increases, which became effective in the third quarter.

General and administrative expenses were approximately $7.6 million during the third quarter, a decrease of approximately $700,000 from prior year. When excluding the $1.5 million of one-time costs associated with our IPO in the prior year, G&A expenses were higher by roughly $800,000. The increase in G&A was primarily driven by higher public company related expenses, offset by the reversal of a portion of the incentive compensation accruals of approximately $500,000, consistent with our pay for performance philosophy.

As we had discussed last quarter, we still expect public company costs for the year to be between $2 million and $2.5 million. We reiterate our expectation for the fourth quarter total G&A expense to be in the $8 million range. As Aylwin mentioned, our adjusted net income for the third quarter was $2.8 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, which is a decline of roughly $400,000, and $0.02 when using comparable dilutive share counts. The decline in our adjusted EPS is primarily due to additional G&A costs associated with becoming a public company that weren't incurred at this point in the prior year, and a lower effective tax rate in the prior year, as a result of provision to return adjustments.

Now turning to development, during the quarter we opened seven new company-operated shops and one domestic franchise shop for a total unit growth of 12.4%. The Company operated shop openings were back weighted in the quarter. In addition, one-half of the new Company operated shops opened to-date are in legacy markets. The legacy to new market opening mix will vary year to year as we move forward, but we will target our new unit developments to be split evenly between new and legacy markets over time. It is also worth noting our international partner Alshaya, closed one franchise slop, an airport location during the quarter.

I would like to reiterate our previously provided guidance of 40 to 48 new shop openings for the year, and capital expenditures trending towards the lower end of the $30 million to $35 million range that was previously issued. Our previous guidance effective tax rate of approximately 39.5% for the full year, 2014 assumed that certain WOTC programs that are currently expired would be retroactively renewed by the government. However, pending the resolution of these tax uncertainties, our guidance now excludes any benefit from these credit programs. We now estimate an effective tax rate for fiscal 2014 to be approximately 41%. We are hopeful that the WOTC program will be extended, and in the event this occurs our tax line will be beneficially impacted by approximately $100,000 to $150,000, however we believe it's prudent to change our guidance at this time given the uncertainty.

So we're encouraged by the third quarter results, and our underlying traffic trends as we move into the fourth quarter. As a result we now believe our full year adjusted net income per diluted share will be in the mid to high end of our previously issued guidance of $0.18 to $0.21 per share. Included in our expectations is the financial pressure associated with our robust opening schedule in Q4, primarily related to training and normal inefficiencies at counter in new unit openings. Coupled with the fact that we anticipate the unit openings will be more back weighted in the quarter. Pursuant to previously-announced share repurchase program, we repurchased 471,000 shares of Potbelly common stock in the open market, for a total of approximately $5.8 million during the third quarter. As a result we have $29.2 million available from our Board authorized program for repurchases which will continue as we move forward. The buy back activity had no impact on diluted EPS results for the quarter. We now expect shares outstanding to be between $30 million and $31 million for the year. This excludes the impact of any additional share repurchases which are not expected to have a meaningful impact.

Finally, I wanted to share few preliminary thoughts on 2015. We remain very committed to our stated long-term growth targets for 2015, which include total new shop unit shop growth of at least 10%, low single digit comparable shop sales growth, a shop level profit margin of at least 20%, annual adjusted net income growth of at least 20%, and return on capital investments of 25% or greater.

We will talk about 2015 in more detail on our Q4 call, but I wanted to highlight a couple of normal and discrete challenges we will be working to overcome as we build out our operating plans. As we have discussed on a year-over-year basis, we are expecting higher levels of COGS inflation, coupled with a more significant impact from the state mandated minimum wage increases. We plan on substantially covering these inflationary pressures with pricing, scheduled to be implemented in January, but we continue to be mindful of our strong value positioning in the marketplace. Pricing will be focused on our original sandwiches, in areas of the menu that we have not taken pricing on in several years.

Also worth noting on a year-over-year basis, our 2015 G&A plan will increase as we reset our corporate incentive compensation to target levels. Additionally, we are at the end of a favorable lease arrangement for our corporate headquarters, and will be moving a few blocks away to new space. Consequently we will have a modest G&A increase for our moving expenses, as well as higher ongoing occupancy costs for our support center. We recognize that every year has its own unique set of challenges, and we will take appropriate actions to offset the financial impact. But to be clear, we remain committed to our adjusted net income growth target of at least 20%.

With that said, we thought it was important to highlight a few meaningful year-over-year influences to our standard model as we sit here today. So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Aylwin for his summary remarks.

Thank you Charles. We are positive about this business both short-term and long-term. I just want to restate that. We improved the business in the past quarter. We have seen the traffic trends continue across the Company, and that lifted everybody's spirits. So we will talk about the business and how we think about it. Our strategy is very simple. Great shops that's the foundation. That's during peak, perfect peak, trying to drive traffic through input improvements day in and day out. We will look at day part to help us, we will look at technical improvements to help us, we will look at staffing. We find and build great shops, that's how we take the cash and improve that part of the business. We want to become a global iconic brand, that means we've got to message differently, drive the brand throughout everything we do. We want to be great franchisors in North America and outside of North America. If we do those four things to ensure we have high margins and terrific returns.

From a tactical perspective in 2015 we have three things that we've really got to focus on, a strong GM in every shop, so we have put initiatives in place, to help us with tenure, people development, and reduce turnover. Tremendous focus on growing sales. We will do that through menu innovation, focus on messaging through social, digital, and mobile. We are going to increase our marketing spend, and we're going to continue to drive the neighborhood sandwich shop ideas. Then finding affordable real estate. We're updating our customer information, to ensure that the decisions we make are the latest and greatest in the neighborhoods that we want to penetrate. We're going to continue to grow in our new hub city of Denver. We're going to continue to focus on our legacy markets to drive new units.

As Charlie said from year to year the difference between our new markets and legacy markets will be 50/50 ideally, between 60 and 40 depending on the situation. There are three value drivers in this business that we have, new units, those that have a greater return of plus-25%, and non-comp economics of plus-20% profit growth, low single digit same-store sales growth that makes 20% margins, and then growing our sales. Great operations, product innovation, and then increased marketing spend that will go towards social, digital, and mobile. We are building again in this year, our new unit growth has been right on target. We will provide more visibility to our classes of 2012 and 2013, as we discussed on our next call. So like our unit economics are still good on our non-comps, and we have gotten better with our sales over the last quarter, and that continues in this current quarter.

So we're very positive about this business short-term and long-term. There's a lot of work to do. There are tremendous excellent competitors in this space, but we believe when we run our mousetrap of providing great service through experience in our shops, that we can win in every neighborhood that we are in. Thank you very much, and now we will open it to questions.

(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Joe Buckley with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Thank you. Can you elaborate a little bit on the General Manager turnover, and what you're doing to address that, are conversation levels going up as a way to try to address that? How should we think about that?

Well, you should think that turnover levels for our GMs have been constant. What we're trying to do is get ahead of the curve, thinking about the growth, we want to put initiative plans in, which means they are performance based, geared towards the number of folks individual managers development, that's people development, geared toward feed and care of new folks as they get into positions, and learn the business from the ground up. So we want to put initiatives in, so we're not increasing the base pay, because that's increasing the cost of the business, but we are putting incentives in, to drive the people development piece, the lower turnover, and then to help with the growth.

Okay. And then just on the traffic numbers during the quarter. I think you indicates the check was up 2.5%, so while it may be improving you're still pretty negative on a traffic basis, and I guess maybe talk about that sequential improvement. When do you think you will cross the mark and be flat, or up on traffic?

Well, I mean I think that the way you framed it was right. Traffic did improve throughout the quarter. It improved more predominantly in late in the quarter, and as we mentioned carried over into Q4. And obviously as we get into the Q4 winter months, that's where we talked about last year, where we had some impact due to the government shut down, as well as some weather impacts. So we're very happy with the trend that we're on. We think we're on the right track to where our model needs to be going forward, and indications in Q3 supported that view.

Okay. Just one more for me. The full year expansion target the 40 to 48 system-wide, it's obviously a pretty wide range for one quarter, two months basically left to go. Are the fourth quarter openings also staged pretty late in the quarter, so it's a little fuzzy if they're going to happen in 2014 or 2015?

Well, it's not fuzzy to us. We have a clear view balance of the year. That's why we gave the guidance to the 40 to 48. We had talked about it earlier this year, that this quarter it was back loaded to development, and the bulk of them were scheduled for Q4, and those are happening as we speak, and we have a very clear view of what's going to happen between now and the end of the year.

And just to reinforce that we're very comfortable with the range, and just making sure that things happen at year-end, but we're very comfortable where the numbers are going to end up for this year.

Okay. I guess what I'm saying is that 40 to 48 seems like a wide range to me, for a couple of months left, so I mean you guys are thinking high-end, low end, middle?

Well, I mean we'll be fine. As we mentioned earlier on a previous call, I think that we will be within the mid-point of that range, if not better.

Okay. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Nicole Miller with Piper Jaffray.

Good evening. A couple of quick ones. Thank you for the color about the comp in the third quarter. Could you just give us an idea of the overall comp or the traffic, however you want to talk about it? Did you go from low single digit negative into low single digit positive total comp? How wide was the variance, so we can kind of understand how you're tracking as you talk about coming out of this?

Yes. I think that your range was in the ballpark. I mean I just think the main point that we want to emphasize is coming out of Q2, we saw fairly consistent improvement as we moved throughout the quarter, and then as I mentioned P9, it continued to improve into Q4.

And then just I want to make sure that pre-opening gets modeled appropriately. It seems like back on Joe's questions about how many stores would open here at year-end, we would have at least as much dollar openings in the fourth quarter as we had last quarter? And then as you think about 2015, the 10% unit growth, is it kind of back weighted towards the back half, so that we can model pre-opening that way as well, or is there going to be a different opening convention next year by quarter?

Next year is not as severe as this year. We are hopefully trying to smooth it out. It's hard when you're dealing with the markets we're in, and a lot of new development. It's hard to predict, but you can anticipate a similar curve to this year. We're working hard to smooth it out. We hope as we go in the out years that it's evenly distributed, but it's just hard to do.

And then just a final one. The tax rate, I just want to understand your normal tax rate as we approach next year, is it the 39.5% you guided to earlier, or the 41% you are guiding to now?

No it's the 39.5%. The gap is the WOTC credits. The assumption in that comment is that Congress will pass that on an ongoing basis, so we view that as just timing, and so if they were able to pass it before the year is up, then that rate will come back down to the normalized 39.5%, or thereabouts.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

No problem.

Your next question is from the line of Sharon Zackfia with William Blair.

Hi. Good afternoon. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about marketing in the quarter. I think you were trying out some different tactics, and what you're learning about how Potbelly resonates in different marketing media, and how that might influence your cadence and marketing spending going forward?

Well, you can rest, the money we did spend was primarily on traditional media in Chicago and DC historically. We're moving away from that model, and going to spend the majority of it on digital, social, and mobile. What we have decided that we need really smart partners to help us spend that money, and where to place it, and how to place it, and to keep it fresh, and that's kind of a new departure from us. I think you can call it a new learning. Again it will be spent against our promise. Sometimes it will be spent against our back line business, and then spent against innovation that we plan on having in 2015. Additionally we tested some promotional vehicles around targeted geographies, targeted lines of business, and we're in the midst of getting readings on those things, and things that worked we will carry it forward. We were looking for tools that we could use to mitigate the situation we found ourselves in earlier this year. So everything we've tried to do in last quarter and balance of the year, is to learn about the business and have levers we can pull so we don't have the same results that we had in the middle of the year.

Okay. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Komp with Robert W. Baird.

Yes. Hi. Thank you. Charlie, if I could just start with two clarifications on the quarter.

Sure.

Could you maybe clarify the cost of sales benefit? You mentioned having a benefit from some supply chain rebates, can you just maybe clarify the dollar amount that you recognized?

Sure. Well, I will talk more in percentages, but we ended up the quarter at 28.5%. It was lower than we had planned coming into the quarter. A lot of that had to do with as I mentioned some work the supply chain team did with our supplier partners, and they were able to within the quarter put into place some agreements where they participated in some of the volume increases in our business, and so we were able to get some one-time volume rebates, that in some cases were retroactive, that really helped us with the percentage for the quarter, fall below where we expected it to be, which was closer to the kind of the 29% range. So that was important. Obviously, I mentioned the pricing impact we took in July, and we didn't lose any traffic from that. We didn't see any push-back from the pricing, which obviously ultimately helped the overall COGS number as well. Those are the two main pieces relative to our internal expectations going in.

Great. That's helpful. And then on the G&A line the $500,000 roughly of initiative accruals that you mentioned?

Yes.

Being reversed. Was that contemplated in your guidance previously for the year?

No, it wasn't. I mean I think that as we said in Q2, we were still working through how the year was going to play out, and working with our accounting partners to make sure that we accrued appropriately for our incentive compensation, and as we got further into the year we adjusted that accordingly. It's important to understand we are a paper performance organization, and so that was an appropriate adjustment given our 2014 results.

Got it. Thank you. And then maybe just coming back to the recent same-store sales and traffic trends and the improvement that you have seen. Maybe just to clarify some of the comments about the full year. I think you mentioned that it could be tracking closer to the high-end of guidance for comps for the full year or near flat, and the simple math that I used to get there would be something close to 3% in the fourth quarter for your comps to get to the high end of your range. So I just wanted to make sure that's the type of level that you're trying to signal?

Well, yes. I mean a couple things. Remember, I mentioned just a few minutes ago, remember in Q4 last year we had some things, the government shut down, as well as some December weather challenges, that we're not anticipating from a DC trend perspective as we forecast the business. So obviously we still have a couple months to play out this year, but as we look at our business from a trend perspective, we're encouraged with where we're at, and what we're seeing, and that's how we're forecasting the business for Q4.

Great. And then last one for me, maybe for Aylwin. As you laid out the broad range of initiatives that should be rolling in maybe over the next several quarters, and as you work through 2015, can you maybe just give a little more context on maybe the timing of some of those, or what you expect to be the most meaningful potential drivers, and then in the context of, as we think about same-store sales growth for next year, do you think you can get back to a place where you're sustaining kind of flat or slightly positive traffic growth, given all of those initiatives?

Yes. Obviously the goal is to grow the business organically with the range we have given, and we don't want a repeat of what we've had, and so the menu items that we tested we feel good about, some of the promotional things we did geographically, and targeted toward either day part or lines of business. We've got some early positive results but we're still reading this stuff. What we try to do once we're in this situation, it's like what can we do to improve our innovation pipeline, what can we do to find levers in the business we hadn't contemplated before, so we can honor commitments around the sales growth, and so you will see things that the goal is once you have stuff, you don't want to spend them all in one year.

So strategically we're working through what the calendar is going to look like. We have made the determination to invest more in media, and make that investment largely digital, mobile, and social. And picking the right partners to help us do that from a targeted perspective and a timing perspective. So the trends we're seeing, we hope we were going to see earlier this year, so we feel good, but when you've had the experience we've had so far, we're very cautious about our enthusiasm.

We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but the new shops feels good, understand the pipeline balance of the year, got a good visibility of the pipeline next year, the running a great shop thing is very imperative. When kind of summarized that, as a strong GM in every shop, and then the marketing piece, growing the sales in a very emphatic way is very important, and we know that's the big question mark a lot of folks have about this management team and the brand, so we're going to do everything possible to make sure we do that next year.

I appreciate the color. Very helpful. Thanks again.

(Operator Instructions). There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to management for closing remarks.

Yes. This is Aylwin, and again I want to thanks folks for your interest. Thank you for your continued support, and we feel like we're working our way out of what happened in Q2, we feel good about where we are, a lot of work to do, but looking good. The underlying business long-term is strong, and we're seeing an improvement short-term. So keep buying those sandwiches, and we'll talk to you next quarter.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.