Restaurant Brands International Inc (QSR) 2024 Q3 法說會逐字稿

And sure, good morning, and welcome to the Restaurant Brands International Third Quarter 2024 earnings conference call.

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I'd now like to turn the conference over to Kendall back all the I's Head of Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Very good morning, everyone, and welcome to Restaurant Brands International's earnings call for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2024.

As a reminder, a live webcast of this call can be accessed on the Investor Relations web page at RBI.com, foreign slash investor, and a recording will be available for replay.

Joining me on the call today our restaurant brands, international Executive Chairman, Patrick Doyle, CEO, Josh Carlson, and CFO, Sandy Siddiqui.

Today's earnings call contains forward looking statements which are subject to various risks set forth in the press release issued this morning and in our SEC filing.

In addition, this earnings call includes non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release and trending schedules available on our website.

As a reminder, following our acquisition of Carrols Restaurant Group, which closed on May 16th, 2024, and our acquisition of Popeyes China, which closed on June 28th, 2024, we introduced a six reportable segment Restaurant Holdings.

This segment includes results from operations of Popeyes China business and the Burger King restaurants acquired as part of the Chemicals acquisition.

The consolidated growth metrics discussed during the prepared remarks, including organic adjusted operating income growth and organic adjusted EPS growth exclude results from our Restaurant Holdings segment.

And now I'll turn the call over to Josh.

Thanks, Wendell, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

Our teams and franchisees are doing a nice job navigating difficult macro and competitive environment in the U.S., Canada and many of our international markets.

The brand's winning today are consistently executing the fundamentals there, serving fresh delicious food and beverages in monitored restaurants and providing excellent value to every guest.

On every occasion.

We see the power of great fundamentals and great value in our own businesses, including Tim Hortons and our international division, which drove nearly 70% of our adjusted operating income.

Tim Hortons, for example, remains number one.

Value for Money in Canada is one of the only major QSR brands in the market with positive traffic growth in the year to date.

Great in our international business continues to outperform many of our largest global peers.

Our goal is for all of our businesses to provide compelling value to guests the right way with quality products, exceptional service and unmatched convenience.

If we can do this, we'll outperform the competition and deliver sustainable growth for our franchisees and our shareholders.

Turning now to our results.

Comparable sales were relatively flat, up 0.3% year over year, and net restaurants grew 3.8%, which translated into system-wide sales growth of 3.2%.

Our cost discipline helped offset softer system-wide sales growth, resulting in organic adjusted operating income growth of 6.1%.

We've been encouraged to see the business accelerate in October with consolidated comparable sales up low single digits, led by improvements in international BURGER KING and Popeyes with only two months remaining in 2024 and year to date system-wide sales growth of 5.3%.

We believe full year system-wide sales growth will come in slightly below the expectations we laid out for you in August.

That said, our year-to-date organic adjusted operating income growth is over 7.5%.

And the great work, Sammy and team are doing is keeping us on track to exceed 8%, a one growth for the full year 2024.

I'll take a few minutes to walk through the performance of each of our business segments, starting with the largest contributor to why the Tim Hortons, Jim is drives 43% of a wide, an excellent team, continued to demonstrate the power of having high-quality food and beverages at a great everyday price, excellent restaurant level execution, unrivaled convenience and dedicated restaurant owners.

Tims in Canada delivered a 2.7% increase in comparable sales, primarily driven by traffic growth.

While we continue to see a softer consumer environment impact the broader QSR industry in Canada, Tim's number one restaurant brand love and number one value positioning allow us to maintain our leading market share and coffee and baked goods and breakfast sandwiches and wraps morning daypart sales grew in line with overall sales and grew by mid-single digit growth in breakfast sandwiches and wraps.

We offered a hot breakfast sandwich for $3 with any size coffee purchase, which delivers great value for Canadians and was incremental to both traffic and gross profits for our restaurant owners.

We continue to make progress in RPM food journey with our loaded anytime snacks and flatbread pizza platforms and grew PBM main food sales 5.2% year over year.

Flatbread pieces are giving Canadians another reason to visit their local Tim's boosting restaurant traffic during historically slower dayparts and driving higher average check.

We've seen nearly 70% of flatbread pizza sales occur after 2 p.m. or on weekends.

And the platform is generating 2.5 times higher average check than non flatbread tickets.

We're balancing PM food extensions with a strong beverage, Jacques beverage lineup as well.

Cold beverage sales represented 43% of total beverage sales this quarter with some weeks reaching 50%.

This is remarkable for a brand that is low for a top brewed coffee.

We continue to innovate around our Cold Brew and ICE cap offerings during for Canadians fresh and exciting new options.

Following the success of our team issue innovation we introduced in the telecom collaboration, which contributed to a 7% year over year increase in cold beverage sales.

This quarter.

An important driver of our performance in addition to our strong marketing calendar is strong operations.

Matt more his team and our restaurant owners delivered another quarter of year-over-year improvements in drive-through speed of service.

It is truly impressive to visit a drive-through in Canada on a weekday morning and watch the Karstadt move so quickly.

Our ongoing improvements in operations, coupled with our marketing initiatives, remain consistent driver of traffic growth.

And I'm proud to see the dedication of our teams, teams and restaurant owners, driving positive sales growth and industry outperformance.

Moving now to the international segments, which drives 25% of our adjusted operating income.

We saw comparable sales in international grew 1.8% with net restaurant growth of 7.6% and system wide sales growth of 8.0%.

While a bit slower than earlier in the year.

Our results were nicely ahead of some of our low largest global peers and reflects some great work of our partners around the world.

Burger King remains the largest driver of our international business and grew in key markets like Australia, Spain, Korea, the UK and Japan, each of which accelerated from Q2.

This helped offset softer results in France and continued pressures from the difficult operating environment in China and the conflict in the Middle East helped to our country level Burger King leaders capturing over 80% of the brand's global system wide sales for ICEO. summit in Italy, there was a very engaging and interactive forum for our top CEOs to connect and share marketing, development, franchising and operations best practices.

It's clear that while Burger King has already established around the world, we still have a long runway for growth and tons of appetite from our master franchisees to deliver the best further in each of their markets.

While overall development in 2024 is going to be below our long-term target of 5%, which Sandy will address in a bit.

I want to give some perspective on where our international net restaurant growth will come from in the years ahead, there is so much opportunity to capture.

And one of the best examples is Japan, which I visited two weeks ago.

Our performance has improved dramatically in Japan over the past few years, and we are now the clear winner for best burgers and the market.

I tried some amazing local offer innovation there, and it's clear why they're doing so well.

We now have almost 250 locations in Japan with enormous runway and our growing between 40 and 50 locations per year.

We're also working to accelerate development and many of our Popeyes markets and Popeyes UK is a fantastic example.

We recently spent time with Tom Crowley and his team in the UK and tried some of the best Popeyes Chicken I've eaten anywhere in the world their operating beautiful modern restaurants with exceptional service and are generating great sales and returns.

Popeyes UK already has over 55 restaurants and just three years and drives over $130 million in system wide sales on a trailing 12 month basis.

They have a lot of room to grow.

And then there's China where you've seen us take meaningful steps on Tim Hortons and Popeyes this year.

We're also actively working to find the right long-term path for Burger King.

We know the consumers momentarily pressured in China, but we are positive on the mid and long-term opportunity for each of our brands in the market.

Turning now to Burger King in the US and Canada, Burger King U.S. comparable sales were down 0.4% and net restaurants declined by 1.6%, resulting in a 1.5% decline in system wide sales sales were softer than we'd like this quarter and were impacted by a tough consumer environment over the summer.

Our calendar initiatives, including Fiery, were unable to cut through all the value messages in the market and were less impactful than our Royal Crispy Chicken ramps launched in the prior year.

As a result, we saw gap versus the industry take a slight step back beginning in August after several quarters where we've been outperforming burger QSR peers.

As we've moved into October, performance has shifted, particularly with the great success of our Adam family meal, including Wednesdays Whopper and helped us return to same store sales outperformance relative to the burger QSR industry.

Again, taking a step back.

There's a lot going well at Burger King.

And it's clear the business is in a much healthier place today than when we launched reclaim the flame and September of 2022.

At convention last week, Tom and team updated franchisees on the important foundational progress we've made over the past two years that is setting us up for long-term success.

We have a new discipline and operations that our franchisees have embraced and are executing, which has driven notable improvements in operations.

Our focus on quality remodels is paying off with mid 10s uplifts, net of control and even better improvements and franchisee profitability.

We're on track to accelerate our pace of remodels and move towards our goal of 85% to 90% modern image by the end of 2028.

Accelerating the modern image of our system is one of the primary motives behind our acquisition of Carrols, aside from creating new franchise opportunities for existing and new operators when we move to refranchise those restaurants over the next few years.

Furthermore, our 120 million investment end of the ad fund allowed us to break a difficult cycle, significantly increase our share of voice start regaining market share and drive a positive trailing 12 months same-store traffic gap versus the industry for the first time in a very long time.

The enhancements our digital team has made to our app and delivery capabilities are also driving strong growth in digital sales, which now represent nearly 20% of total sales, up from around 10% in Q3 of 2022.

As you know, our ultimate scorecard is franchisee profitability.

We're in a completely different and better play place than where we were two years ago.

We said on this call two years ago that our goal was to reach $175,000 of four-wall EBITDA by the end of this year.

We achieved far more than that, reaching $205,000 by the end of last year.

We expect average franchisee profitability to be flattish to slightly up for 2020 for a pretty great result considering the labor, commodity and top line sales pressures facing the industry this year.

And we have our sights set on reaching $230,000 by the end of 2026 with a longer-term commitment to drive the system to 300,004 wall EBITDA.

Tom and team delivered a powerful message at convention, underpinned by incredible progress over the past couple of years.

Our time together, convention really highlighted the optimism and excitement and confidence, the franchisee share and Tom and his team's leadership to take us forward to great success.

Turning now to Popeyes.

Popeyes.

Us grew net restaurants by 3.6%, while comparable sales declined 3.8%, resulting in a system wide sales.

The decrease of 0.8% in a more value sensitive environment.

This quarter, Popeyes calendar was missing some of the offers consumers were looking for, and this resulted in softer comps since September.

We've reoriented our marketing strategy to better align with the needs of consumers today or mining.

Guess what makes Popeyes so special.

Our delicious fresh hand battered and fried chicken wing No, we need to provide better value, which we can deliver through better price points and a better experience.

As an initial step, Jeff and his team introduced three pieces of chicken for $5 in mid-September and folded in early October with a CAD6 big box leveraging a strong existing brand asset.

We're already seeing both offerings drive traffic and sales improvements.

Moving beyond the short term, we know that Popeyes has to provide a better experience and that will come from more consistent operations.

Easy to run kitchens are one part of a multiyear opportunity to improve operations and enhance the guest experience.

We've identified easier and faster ways to install the upgrades and will continue incorporate feedback to optimize this investment before scaling it across the U.S. system.

We also need to make Popeyes easier to access, and we're exploring new formats to infill in key markets and improved build costs.

In the meantime, we continue to enhance our digital capabilities and drive strong growth in digital sales, which were up 21% year over year and reached 28% of total sales.

I'll wrap up my comments with Firehouse Subs in the US and Canada.

The team and our franchisees have done a good job navigating a difficult environment while unable to offset industry headwinds.

This quarter, we did bring back firehouse fan and a personal favorite of mine, the hot sauce bar in mid-September.

This is an incredibly unique and perfect granted for firehouse faring 13 hot and flavorful source options with our assets overall firehouse, all system wide sales decreased 1.3%, driven by a comparable sales decline of 4.8%, partially offset by net restaurant growth of 3.9%.

Mike and team have been hard at work on new unit development and added 49 net new restaurants since Q3 of 2023.

That's nearly 60% more than where we were this time last year.

And we're on track to further accelerate development in 2025 with a strong pipeline of new and existing franchisees.

In August, I spent time with many of our franchisees in Austin, Texas, celebrating the brand's 30th anniversary.

There's a ton of excitement and energy in the system that will allow us to keep opening new restaurants and introducing our delicious hot tubs to more and more guests throughout North America.

With that, I'll pass it to SME to walk you through our financial results for the quarter.

Semi.

As Josh and good morning, everyone.

See length of our businesses and our team's ability to navigate a tougher consumer backdrop while staying focused on our long-term goals.

For the third quarter, global comparable sales were relatively flat, up 0.3% year over year.

We grew global system-wide sales by 3.2%, organic AOI. by 6.1% and organic adjusted EPS by 4.6%.

A lot of growth outpaced system-wide sales growth this quarter for a few reasons.

First, segment G&A, excluding Restaurant Holdings, decreased 11% year over year to $146 million, with approximately 12 million of the decrease related to the lower equity based compensation.

And then mentioned on our Q2 call, incentive-based compensation is expected to decrease year over year.

We've also been working closely with our business leaders to drive operating leverage in our P & L, and you're seeing the benefits start to flow through this quarter.

Second, we continue to work through lower average cost of inventory in our 10 supply chain and CPG businesses, which contributed to an $8 million increase in organic gross profit dollars are Q3.

Supply chain margin was 20%, and we continue to expect our full year supply chain margin will be approximately 19%, meaning Q4 margins should be in the mid 18% range.

Tissue Factor segment, G&A and supply chain were partially offset by incremental advertising, expand Burger King U.S. and net bad debt expenses.

In the quarter, we invested $7 million behind fuel defined marketing at Burger King U.S. as compared to no direct investment in the prior year period.

In addition, net bad debt expenses primarily in international were over $3 million compared to approximately $2 million of net bad debt at net bad debt recoveries in Q3 of 23.

Shifting now to EPS, our adjusted EPS was $0.93 per share compared to $0.9 last last year, representing an organic increase of 4.6% year over year.

Excluding an FX headwind of $0.02 per share and a $0.01 benefit from Restaurant Holdings.

Our adjusted net interest expense increased approximately 18 million during the quarter, mainly driven by a higher debt balances following our Carol's transaction, which closed in mid May.

In addition, we saw an increase in adjusted income tax expense due to a higher adjusted effective tax rate, which had a $0.03 per share negative impact on earnings.

Our adjusted effective tax rate this quarter was approximately 17%, and we expect our full year tax rate to be in the 18% to 19% range.

We ended Q3 with available liquidity of 2.4 billion, including 1.2 billion of cash, and our net leverage ratio was 4.8 times.

We continue to expect to reach mid four times net leverage by year end, assuming a full year of Carrols results.

In September, we issued 500 million of five and five at first lien senior secured notes due in 2029 and used the proceeds together with cash on hand to redeem our outstanding $500 million five and three forks notes, which are which were due in 2025.

We feel good about our capital structure with no no significant maturities until 2028.

Turning now to free cash flow.

We generated 485 million of free cash flow, excluding the benefit of our FX and interest rate hedges, which added approximately $46 million of positive cash flow this quarter, we continue to execute against our reclaim the planned plan at Burger King US., which is designed to engage new and existing Burger King fan, accelerate our path towards modern image and drive franchisee profitability.

This quarter, we spent 24 million on replaying the flame investments, including $7 million on our fuel, the planned marketing investment and 16 million towards Royal reset.

We have 41 million of fuel the flame marketing remaining in Q4.

Since we are tracking well ahead of the 2024 fields, the planned franchisee profitability target beginning in 2025, franchisees will increase their ad fund Levy from 4% to 4.5% through at least 2026.

And our advertising fund contribution, which has been 60 million per year year over the last two years will follow at.

This will provide a nice tailwind to both AOI. And adjusted EPS growth in 2025.

And to close on our dividend, we returned 261 million of capital to shareholders through our dividend, which we declared for Q4 at $0.58 per common share and unit with a full year total of $2.32 per share.

I'll now wrap up with an update on our expectations for 2024.

Considering Q3 comparable sales and system-wide sales growth came in lower than anticipated.

We now believe full year 2024 system-wide sales growth will be in the 5% to 5.5% range.

Embedded within this, our expectations for an acceleration in consolidated comparable sales from Q3 levels slightly offset by tempered expectations for net restaurant growth to the mid 3% range, primarily due to Burger King China as well as on the impacts we're seeing from macro and geopolitical challenges to be more specific, about 100 basis points of our energy shortfall this year compared to our 5% long-term unit growth target is attributable to a significant year-over-year deceleration and Burger King China Energy.

As many of you know, Burger King, China has been struggling.

We have recently sent termination notices to our master franchisee, which they have disputed, and we are currently in a dispute resolution process with them.

At the same time, we're in active discussions with the master franchisee in an effort to reach an amicable solution.

We believe this is a short-term situation and we are committed to the long-term success of the business in China.

We will update you when we have more to share.

Overall, we remain confident in achieving over 8% organic AOI. growth this year.

This confidence is driven in part by the improved top line results we saw in October as well as our cost discipline initiatives, which have allowed us to tighten our 2024 segment G&A guidance to between 640 and 650 million, including equity-based compensation between 170 and 175.

Finally, 2024 has obviously been a more complicated environment with more moving pieces in any of us had envisioned.

As such, it's been important for us to provide more detail on shorter term expectations for sales and our G. and AOI. than we normally would have.

As we looked at 25 and beyond, we're committed to achieving our long-term outlook of 3% plus comparable sales growth, 5% plus net restaurant growth, 8% plus system-wide sales growth and 80% plus AOI. growth on average over the next five years.

And we will keep you informed of our progress along the way.

In the meantime, I'm confident we'll achieve our goal of at least 8% and organic AOI. growth for 2024.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Patrick.

Thank you, Sammy, and thank you to our teams and franchisees who are doing a terrific job delivering value to our guests through delicious products and improved experiences.

one of my routines is to do a gut check.

Are you in a better job than we were a year ago?

And I strongly believe that to be the case in each of our businesses, our customers are getting better, more consistently made food with better service in a better environment for good value.

That's what ultimately drives growth.

And while we all understand those elements to be the foundation for all restaurants, I believe our progress on these customer benefits sets us apart and is what ultimately drives great returns for our franchisees and our investors.

We all know the environment's been more challenging, but we are not allowing that to impact.

Our plans were outperforming our largest global peers.

We are actively addressing the areas of our business that have fallen behind, and we are protecting profitability for our franchisees and our company, all while positioning our brands for last since success, we have a remarkable business in Canada, one that I can't remind you enough generates over 40% of our adjusted operating income.

Tim's continues to outperform the industry and deliver strong absolute results.

The discipline axle, his team and our dedicated restaurant owner, others have had executing against the multiyear back-to-basics plan has been paying dividends for the past few years.

I am confident it will continue to do so for years to come international as many pockets of strengths.

But there are few markets where we're struggling a bit.

In some cases, this is due to macro factors out of our controls, but in others, there's more we can do to change our trajectory and we are tackling them head-on, saw us take control of Popeyes China.

You saw us invest in Tim's China, and I can tell you, we're working on a solution for Burger King, China.

These two businesses, Tim's in international drive nearly 70% of our earnings and have solidly outperformed the competition from a top-line perspective.

In fact, they've outperformed the industry for many quarters.

I think that gets lost done a lot of folks, but it's definitely not lost on me, and I'm very confident in our teams and franchisees' ability to continue delivering great results.

Now let's turn to the other 30% of our earnings Burger King U.S. 18% of our business is only two years into its multiyear plans.

While we work hard to navigate the current environment, which has been more complicated than we expected entering the year, we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

Sure.

We've already made a ton of progress in just two years.

We have a lot more work to do, but I am confident we will get there.

We have the right plans, the right teams and dedicated franchisees.

And our BI. and our franchisees are committing the right resources is going to work.

So we are remodeling restaurants, improving service and continuing to grill amazing whoppers.

Popeyes is fundamentally do it all the right things as well.

Improving operations, introducing quality menu innovation, enhancing its digital capabilities and opening more restaurants.

We simply need to entice for people to Trier food firehouse as long term value will come from opening more and more restaurants.

And Mike and the team are doing just that they've accelerated growth meaningfully this year, and their 2025 pipeline will bring another major step up.

So overall, our business is trending in the right direction.

Franchisee profitably 30 is far stronger today than it was 18 months ago.

Year to date, organic adjusted operating income growth is over 7.5%, which I view as great performance in this environment.

And we are on track to deliver 8% plus growth for the year.

While we are already seeing signs of improvement in the US and overseas in October, it may take a few more quarters for the macro environment to even out and for us to see consolidated same store sales track towards our 3% plus long-term guidance.

But if you're invested in this Company for the long term, Gaiam, I can assure you the fundamentals are better today than they have been in years.

With that, I'll pass it back to the operator for questions.

Thank Keith.

Can you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad.

If for any reason you would like to me that question, please press star followed by tape.

Again to ask a question, please press star followed by one.

Once again, all callers will be limited to one question.

Our first question today comes from the line of Brian Bittner from Oppenheimer & Co., please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Thanks.

Good morning.

I wanted to ask my question on the international business and focus specifically on Burger King International, where you had almost a 2% positive comp, which is nicely above your global peers said, as you talked about in your prepared remarks, can you just unpack this outperformance versus your peers or is it related more to just a better market mix of exposures across international?

Or do you actually believe you're taking share in most of your major Burger King international markets?

And and what do you believe is behind and improved international trend?

As far as we're moving into the fourth quarter.

Brian?

Good morning.

It's Josh, and thank you for that for the question.

I do think our Burger King teams in a lot of our international markets, they're doing a fantastic job.

And and that's leading us to take market share in many of those markets.

I'll give you just a couple of examples that I think for me really brought home how we win in some of these places.

We were in Australia a couple of months ago with the Hungry Jack's team led by Chris Green and Jack Allen news on the business for a very long time.

They're just doing a fantastic job.

They're getting all the basics right there really engaging their teams and their managers.

They're delivering high-quality products.

They've been really focused on quality enhancements in the perception of quality and communicating that quality across the menu and really elevating the perception of lumber.

And they're there outperforming by healthy margin.

I just I saw this again in Japan two weeks ago, we were there, and that's a fantastic example for us.

There's a market that was struggling.

If you go back to kind of five, seven years, we had under 100 restaurants in the team just really got all the fundamentals, right?

They've really driven product quality, which we follow a lot in our brand trackers and have who has the best burger in the market.

And we win by a big margin in Japan.

And I think that's the critics formula that you've got to get the operations, right, have high-quality locations in really win on product quality.

And thankfully, we've got the best burger in the world with the Whopper when we get that right and really landed well with consumers, we had the opportunity to outperform really meaningfully.

So we've got a lot of markets like those to Spain has an average is sample.

Brazil is doing well.

But some of our biggest markets are they're getting the basics, right, and they're outperforming and taking market share.

And I think that's what you saw in the quarter.

Our next question today comes from the line of John Ivankoe from JP Morgan.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Hi, thank you.

On the question is on growing the 100 franchisees to 500 franchisees, which obviously have a very big change, especially considering I think you'll have a lot more than 200 new franchisees that enter the system.

So that just kind of like the big story.

But the specific question that I want to ask specifically on the on the Carrols units that you presumably would have the most opportunity with if there is some discussion or planned or were any further along of making General Managers spent a lot of cases actually more responsible to somewhat personnel.

Are there specific units, which I would really be more of a more consistent with our other systems that have, I'll say, remain nameless at this point.

But other systems have become very successful in the US is making people that formerly worked in the restaurants become franchisees.

Thank you.

Hi, John.

Good morning, Ed.

And thanks for the question.

You're right that there's a big change were contemplating in CDKUS. system in terms of the franchisee base.

And we do expect to have a lot of new franchisees.

I think they'll come from a few different places, and we're in the midst of a lot of these discussions.

We've already started some discussions that we've done a few refranchising all already, and there are a couple of different profiles that we have some.

I think some of our new franchisees will be folks who are already on our teams.

So some of our field team members within Burger King US. were on the corporate side or running some of our Company restaurants.

We have some of them who are interested in becoming franchisees, and we're in discussions for them to take over ports folios.

We're also in discussions with some of the folks at Carol's could be a general manager, a district manager, director of operations.

Some of those team members have ambitions to run their own business and they might take over a smaller portfolio of to five, 10 restaurants.

So we're having a lot of those discussions.

And I think that's a that's really exciting.

And in my mind, I think you sort of hinted at it.

I think the idea here is there something very powerful.

If we can get closer ownership of those restaurants, whether that's how you compensate the general managers or having smaller franchisees who have ownership of the business and are in the restaurants in the communities every day, I think the there will be a lot of different versions of the exact form of that.

So there may be smaller and larger versions of how we accomplish that.

But it's very much front of mind to us that having more local ownership in the business at the restaurant level is really the key to outsized performance and taking market share.

And I think that you'll see that the a big piece of what we do over the next few years.

Burger King in the U.S. Saturday, I think.

Yes, John, the good.

What I'd add to that, and I'm the obviously my past life, I know well, what it's like.

They have the local owner operators in the restaurants, and it's a powerful thing.

And if we continue to make the progress on franchisee profitability and the returns that you get by building or buying Burger King restaurants, and in fact, all of our brands of the capital becomes easy.

What's hard is the operations and having great dedicated local owner operators have to be the answer ended up with I've said this before, but franchisees are people refer to the middle chart, I believe as owner operators.

And the older part of that is relatively easy.

If the cash flows are there, the operating part is the critical part and we're dedicated to that.

And the best example of that.

The reason that we are the juggernaut that we are in Canada with Tim's is the law local ownership.

Those owner operators that we have in Canada are fantastic.

They've done a great job for decades.

And we take the learning from that.

Now we're going to have big franchisees that are going to have success in the US.

Those are operated at a high level and there are many of them.

We love having them in the system, but we've set a standard.

You've got to be running your restaurants really well to have an opportunity to be part of the system before we begin.

Let me just add one last thought there because it ties a little bit back into sort of Brian's question to you know, I mentioned I mentioned the outperformance of Australia and one of the things that I think Jack and Chris and the projects you have been really focused on and it's been a big driver there.

Results is a program where they're doing bigger profit sharing program with some of their restaurant managers.

And I think it's really powerful to engage and empower our restaurant owners.

And some of that thought process is already starting to get into our company restaurants.

So we've started a more substantive profit-sharing programs with some of the restaurant managers in our company, restaurants, that effort as well.

And those restaurants are doing really well.

Our Company restaurants, especially the ones that that we've acquired and run over the last few years are really starting to outperform the system.

So we're seeing some exciting things on that front, and we'll continue to take those learnings and expand them as they work.

So next question today comes from the line of Dennis Geiger from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Great morning.

Thanks, guys.

I wanted to ask a bit more on the unit growth outlook.

Maybe if you could speak to any key considerations are notable impacts for the rest of 24 development beyond BK. China, which you spoke to, and maybe just at a high level that global unit growth opportunity as we look ahead over those next few years and your ability perhaps to offset some of the BK. China pressure with contribution from other market and brand combinations.

Thank you.

Morning, Dennis.

Um, I don't think we're too much additional data on 24.

But just as we think about can look out towards 2025 and beyond, I'll highlight a few of the things that that we're working on and where we see some good progress.

First and foremost is Burger King in the US.

We've seen a ton of progress there from a moment in time, not too far back or where are we had a drag from net closures to where we're getting pretty close to flat here.

And I think a lot of that's driven by the progress that we've seen on franchise profitability.

As we mentioned earlier, we made a huge step forward last year, and we're still doing well this year.

So I think that's been a big driver.

And I think that will continue to be a tailwind as we look into 2025 and beyond.

We've also been making progress in a couple of our other US brands.

Still firehouse is starting to pick up a lot.

As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, are our trailing 12 month net restaurant growth is up 60%, and we expect to make even further progress through the balance of this year and into next year.

So that's starting to become a more material contributor in Tim's in the US is starting to have more positive momentum.

We think a lot of good year this year out cat and her team have put together a lot of new development agreements for that business.

So we've got a good outlook for for tens and the U.S. just as important or perhaps equally important is Tims in Canada.

We've mentioned a couple of times that there's been a lot of population growth in Canada, which means that there's opportunity for Morton's in their particular pockets that the team's been going after.

And I think you'll start to see some benefit from that next year in places like Western Canada now where we just have lower density of units than we have in places like on Mario, I think we'll start to see some some of those units get opened as we get into 2025.

In addition to that, there's some exciting other areas of growth in our international business, specifically places like India, which we think will be one of the biggest growth driver.

Early enough businesses like Popeyes they're in.

Hurricane keeps growing really well.

But we're also making progress in countries like Mexico.

Mexico has become one of our best growth drivers around the world.

Our Tim Hortons business is doing fantastic there with great sales, great margins and a lot of restaurant growth.

Japan I mentioned is a big positive story.

Uk, particularly around Popeyes, though we're building a lot of Popeyes in the UK and I mentioned it earlier, but the average restaurant sales are fantastic.

Margins are good.

So the returns on capital are compelling for our franchisees.

There's a lot of there's a lot of good markets I would characterize, especially within Popeyes and the Internet national business where we're getting ramped up on that development curve.

And we're seeing we're seeing really strong results on the sales side.

So those are some of the things that we're working on to make sure that that will pick up the pace of growth even if we have a couple of soft spots in other places.

The next question today comes from the line of David Palmer from Evercore ISI.

Go ahead.

Your line is now.

Thanks.

Just two areas or maybe you could make another comment on with regard to China and Burger King China, and I know that's going to be at a situation that you have some limited ability to comment on.

But what is our best guess about you mentioned that 3.5% this year could have been five without China being a drag and and they would be great to have that reinflate as quickly as possible.

How long a time do you think it could be before you get China growth back up to where you wanted to be yet and to fill that gap by itself?

And then separately, what is your message on on comps outlook for for Tim's Canada?

That's not one of the markets that you said accelerated in the fourth quarter.

If you have a 3% comp, which was still quite healthy, given that world we're in right now and traffics appears to be pretty good there.

But how do you feel about that brand market share outlook going forward, initiatives for Tim's?

Thanks.

Hey, morning, David.

Sammy, I'll just tackle the first part of your question and a slight correction on China.

Our long-term growth algorithm, as we've talked about a 5% unit growth on average over the next five years.

This year, we talked about being around three mid threes in terms of unit growth.

China represents about 100 basis points to one point of that 1.5 point roughly shortfall.

So on, as I said, we are actively working on on an amicable solution there, and we will update you when we have more to share.

I'll turn it over to Josh to expand on a little bit more.

Yes.

Is that a little bit to what Tony said, I would tell you the business performance there has been challenging in the short run, but we are all very committed and very excited about the long-term prospects for the Virgin business and all of our businesses.

Frankly, China has been number two QSR market in the world.

We think we have brands that have every right to win in that market.

We're going to make the right decisions to support that long-term growth of just I would ask for a little bit of patience and time like you saw with Tim's and Popeyes.

Sometimes it's uptakes.

Will that little bit of time for us to work through, and we'll keep giving you updates as soon as we have anything material to share on that front.

Yes.

I'm going to add a little bit of perspective on this.

I know it's interesting on the China business.

If you look at our business and where it is and frankly, all three of the brands, while we've got some scale, it is still relatively early in their journey and our bigger from competitors and peers there.

If you look at the businesses of government, Starbucks and McDonald's, they are kind of at a point where they're cash flowing, probably Domino's as well there at a point where the cash flow from their businesses, not only enough to manage their day-to-day but to fuel their growth, we're in a position where we still lead fresh capital to go into these businesses to develop these businesses at the pace that we think we need to do to get them on to what the scale that we want for the long term.

We are very bullish on the medium and long term, but we've got some things that we've got to work through, and it still requires some capital.

So I wish right now as China became more complicated that we were a little bit further along on that journey.

But we're committed to getting there and we're going to work through it.

And what are the things I believe, been strongly on everything.

We are not just going to talk about the things that are going well in our business.

We're going to talk to you about the things where we think we need to make improvements.

And that's not only important for you to know, but it's important for our franchisees and team members who are listening to this call to know that we talked about things.

We did get better, that we're serious about it, and we're going to talk to you the same way we talk to everybody else about where we need to work to make improvements.

The one thing you asked about Tim's and I'll do that and Josh can add on as well on that.

But what's changed in Tim's is fundamentally ticket growth.

The bulk of our growth in this quarter was was from a firm order count growth from ticket growth, not from check growth.

And so it's a very healthy business where we feel great about where Tims in Canada, when we were putting up bigger numbers a year or two ago, a lot of that wallet had good order count growth.

A lot of that was also just from the inflation that was in the market as inflation has worked its way out of the market on, you're seeing what we think is a very sustainable growth path that involves bringing more customers into our restaurants day in and day out.

Yes, to reinforce what Patrick mentioned, what makes me feel so good about tendons.

Both the current performance and the outlook is they're doing all the basics, right?

Were all the underlying fundamentals of the business.

The operations are getting better or remodeling more restaurants were launch and high-quality products.

I think that's what's been driving our results and the ticket growth.

And as I look out into 2025, we have a great pipeline of new innovations, both on the on the food side and on the beverage side.

And so I think if we keep doing what we're doing, I keep bringing new, exciting innovations to Canada.

We're going to keep seeing good results there, and that's why we feel good about that business.

The next question today comes from the line of Gregory Francfort from Guggenheim Securities.

Go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks for the question.

I just wanted to double-click on Popeyes.

I think it's around 30% of your international growth, more than 100% of your of your domestic growth on comps slowed in kind of both regions this quarter.

And I just want to me what happen how you bridge back to improved comps then maybe a state of play and where cash and cash returns are for the brand?

Thanks.

Yes, Greg.

So on unpopular same-store sales, there were a little softer in Q3.

And as I mentioned, I think we've probably had a little bit of a gap in terms of value offerings.

And we saw that.

And I think we fixed that as we got into September and October.

And that's a meaningful part of what I mentioned in terms of turn-ins in global, say that in three to positive low single digits in October.

So Bob, I saw a meaningful uptake once once we got those value offerings.

And so I think we're back in a better place with Popeyes, um, as it was as it pertains to the cash-on-cash returns that that's primarily driven by franchisee profitability.

And we reported a pretty big step-up in franchise profitability last year were also making a bunch of progress this year.

While sales have been a little bit softer in the last quarter, we found that a lot of good opportunities to be smarter on the cost side.

And so we're seeing a healthy uptick in franchise profitability, and that's ultimately what drives your cash on cash returns and that unit growth that you've continued to see being pretty strong.

The Nexen today comes from the line of Lauren Silberman from Deutsche Bank.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Thanks very much.

Just a follow-up on Can can you just talk about the cadence of translate that the corner and any changes, perhaps what you're seeing in the competitive environment, either implying that we should see pretty similar trend in the fourth quarter versus what you've done in the third quarter?

And then my larger question is just on the 2025 guide here rolling off reclaim the flame low-single-digit benefits op income as we think about 25.

Should that be an outsized here?

Just any thoughts on the puts and takes that underlying grass?

Thank you.

Hello, and thanks for the question.

I think Tim's and turn it over to Sandy on on the 25 question, um, feel we're going to get too much into kind of the intra quarter dynamics there.

But I would just reinforce we saw good healthy growth throughout driven by transactions.

So it's pretty good.

And you can tell you within the that what we said about October trends overall improved across the business.

I'm more driven by improvement in began Popeyes.

So I'll give you some sense in the aggregate of what's going on.

But we'll probably wait to update on the kind of on the specific business performance until we get to get through the whole of Q4.

Morning, Arne up there.

Just with respect to a Burger King U. S and as you think about the implications every time the flame on on what the outlook looks like for next year, you're absolutely right.

Going into next year, we will roll off at the multiyear ad fund investment that we had put in.

As a reminder, it's around $60 million a year that we have we contributed this year.

So that $60 million structure they will roll off.

And because we did achieve, we actually achieved by a wide margin.

The franchisee profitability threshold at fund kind of in a good investment will come off will come off our P&L next year.

I think the only other dynamic to keep in mind with we claim to fame is it the on capital investments alongside the franchisees that we make around remodels, we do expect the remodels to accelerate going into 2025.

So you'll see those invest men's hit at cash flow and on a smaller impact on the P&L as as it's amortized over over the course of the franchise agreement and any Fitbit and D&A buydown.

But the vast majority of it will be the roll-off of the $60 million going into 2025, which would be a nice tailwind for adjusted AY. and EPS.

The next question today comes from the line of Danny local Cielo from Bernstein.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

I kinda have a two-part question.

First of all, on on Burger King U.S., I mean some of your peers have been taking toward expanding their value messaging into 2025 and even evolving the structure of their value menus.

So I'm wondering how you might be responding to that changing competitive dynamics.

And the is that the second part is I think you were setting expectations on profitability for Burger King in this year and next year.

What's your expectations for other brands?

And maybe if you can?

Well on the most positive feedback and the biggest data opportunity that you're receiving from your franchisees on each of the bank.

Thank you.

Morning, Daniel, up first on Burger King in the US.

I think what we've seen it and I think this plays out, especially in what's happened in October is Burger King in the U.S. And it really around the world.

We do best when we've got good value offerings and we have things like the $5 a year away, the others had for a while.

But we also pair that with relevant innovation and a big focus on the Whopper.

And you saw that with what we did with Adams family, we did a really cool Wednesdays will offer for the purple potato bond and a lot of really innovative sides.

And that's what really drove the business to perform the best at.

As in fair while here.

And I think that shapes a bit of our thinking as we look into Q4 and really into next year, we do need to have good value offerings.

We think we have something right now that works really well for the business.

We may tweak it slightly into 2025, but I think we're pretty happy with it overall.

But as much as that, we want to make sure that we have relevant innovation and big Whopper focus, really elevating our flagship Whopper that when we have both of those things, I think is when we perform our best, and you'll still see us trying to balance those as we get into next year.

In terms of franchise profitability, I think the good news here is that in the three of our four kind of domestic businesses in the three biggest ones, we're making good progress.

We mentioned already that the Burger King is doing well.

This year.

We're kind of stable to slightly up already, and we're seeing progress and Popeyes, as I just mentioned.

And of course, with Tim Hortons, we've had great sales, and that's that's been followed with some good progress in franchise profitability.

So I think it really speaks to the focus.

We've brought to franchise profitability that even in a year that's been a little bit more challenging on the sales side, we're continuing to make progress, making sure that the unit economics of our biggest businesses are healthy and improving.

And I think that's real important to us and to our franchisees.

The next question today comes from the line of Sara Senatore from Bank of America.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Thank you.

I guess, Sam, I'll ask him any questions on them.

Burger King, US and in tons at times, respectively.

And what I'm what I wanted to and that partner is you mentioned some strong outperformance on our Telguard on Moorebank and flush are Sachin Lawande market funding, charcoal, McKesson, essentially in a whole of our house cannabis terminals, Taiwan.

And so I guess an issue, the improvement in the overall demand for the category versus other parts of their category and our REMS, I guess, training share back and forth.

And if that's the case, I guess, how do you that comfort that the channel can parcels and our franchisees can use for their EBITDA of it hasn't it does seem like maybe we've harvested some low-hanging so he loan books from a little bit more of an industry, quite a few wells and now on the ground and unless vetted and persistent Charles Chon signing given brands.

And then I guess just Kim's, maybe a similar question.

You talked about strength in loan finance bank.

Can you hear some of your competitors have had very strong success businesses?

So yes, in aggregates, yes.

Are you kind of giving some ground and practice and maybe taking some than on any financing on nonessential starting to have kind of consistent with the overall Canada passing back end?

Thanks.

Morning, Sarah, and thank you for the questions.

First, on Burger King in the US, I think there's a couple of things going on.

There are some are specific to things we're doing and I think there are some signs of some improvement in the category.

I think it is the case that what we saw in October was an improved performance of some of our marketing initiatives.

I mentioned the Adams family.

That was a really great partnership that we did there.

That was very successful both on the flagship offer, but also on some of the sides that really resonated with it was things, right?

Things are neutral fries and those did fantastic.

So I think when we get the marketing right, when we really focus on the Whopper, we tend to do really well.

And I think that helped us take some take some share here in the near term, but I also do see some positive signs on the overall consumer.

I think if you look at a few of the things that help our guests out, things like inflation have have been persistently trending down.

Gas prices have come down a little bit recently and interest rates have started to come down.

And I think using start to see that reflected a little bit and things like some of the consumer sentiment and disease.

If you look at the University of Michigan, one, for example, the last couple of months, it's started to trend upwards.

So it's early, but I think there are some positive signs for overall industry demand as well.

That are have been encouraging to us.

And with respect to the Tim's business, we're really doing pretty well across the business.

I would mention just on on both both the afternoon we already talked about, but also on breakfast, nor our breakfast food was up 5.8% year on year in the quarter.

So we're actually doing pretty well across the business.

And as I said, that's that's what gives us confidence as we go into Q4 and into 2025.

Hey, Sara, it's Patrick.

The one thing I would kind of add is Josh and I were both just out of the the Burger King convention last week, and Tom and his team are doing an amazing job.

But maybe more importantly, the franchisees are engaged and excited about the progress we're making.

And while you may see some short term back and forth based on, you know, who's running what promo At which time, what gives us real confidence and what give our strong operators and Burger King real confidence is they're seeing in systemic improvements in service levels that are driving and stronger sales.

There seem still the kind of mid teen lifts that as we do remodels, we're seeing these fundamental thing is as our restaurants look better as we give better service that are driving sales for them, and we just need to continue to drive progress on those initiatives.

And we frankly need to have more and more of our Burger King franchisees join the top half of our franchisees and drive those great results, and we're going to get where we need to go.

But our big advantage is we do have those core improvements that we can making our business.

And that's going to drive results, which is what gives me some confidence that while you will see some short term back and forth based on who's doing what we've got, the ability to improve, continue to improve fundamentals.

And that's what got us from underperforming the category A few years ago.

So performing kind of in line today, and it gives me confidence on how we can outperform into the future.

The next question today comes from the line of Jon Tower from Citi.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Great.

Thanks.

Just a couple of quick ones from me on the Burger King U.S. business.

First, I just wanted to confirm you guys are still on track to launch the $1 million offer campaign.

I think it was November 24 when you guys had initially gone after it with with the consumer.

And then secondly, can you just speak to the returns you're seeing in the remodel?

Obviously, you're talking about the sales lift, but just the aggregate investment required so far and paybacks are seen to date.

Thank you.

Hey, John, such on the first one on purchasing U.S. and the offer.

Yes, that is still planned for November and down in terms of returns on the remodels, we underwrote those looking for sort of a low 10s uplift in sales.

And as we mentioned, it's coming a little bit better than that.

So the realized returns on average are coming in a little bit better than than we expected.

And we usually target those for sort of a low 10s return on capital.

So pretty pretty happy with what we're seeing there so far.

And I would tell you even some of the recent ones are losing some of the new sizzle restaurants are really amazing.

I'd really encourage everybody to check them out and they're beautiful, but also some of the sales results.

So we're seeing on those and really fantastic.

We've done a bunch here in Miami with our Company restaurants with some tremendous results so far.

So I am very excited to see more and more sizzle is out there in the market.

As we get through the end of this year and especially into next year, I think it's a really transformative image and that really elevate the brand in the market.

Our final question today comes from the line of Christine Cho from Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead.

Your line is now open.

Thank you for taking the question.

So I was hoping maybe you can shed some light on any chance just spending shifted to more cost sharing income cohorts at this as a team.

I think in the last call, you did mention the five near CAD5 more deals actually successfully driving trial and the commission you mean in the low end consumer cohort.

But how does that look in terms of repeat and sequencing accuracy front for the client can keep?

Yes, Christian, as it's nothing too new to call out this quarter in terms of income cohort performance down, most of the trends have been pretty consistent over over the last few months there.

So I don't have anything else particular to add there that that, though that we found notable.

That concludes today's question and answer session.

So I'd like to pass the call back over to Josh Hirsberg for any closing remarks.

Saying all the great questions.

We look forward to updating you again on our Q4 results in early 2025.

Thanks and have a great day.

This concludes today's call.

Thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect your lines.