Earnings Labs

The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated (CAKE)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Oct 26, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Cheesecake Factory, Incorporated's Third Fiscal 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jill Peters. You may begin.

Jill S. Peters - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to our third quarter fiscal 2015 earnings call. I'm Jill Peters, Vice President of Investor Relations. On the call today are David Overton, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; David Gordon, our President; and Doug Benn, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me quickly remind you that during this call items will be discussed that are not based on historical fact and are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could be materially different from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements as a result of the factors detailed in today's press release, which is available on our website at investors.thecheesecakefactory.com and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today's date and the company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements. David Overton will begin today's call with some opening remarks. Doug will then take you through our operating results in detail and provide our outlook for both the fourth quarter of 2015, as well as our initial thoughts on 2016. Following that, we'll open the call to questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to David. David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Jill. In the third quarter, we again delivered consistent and dependable results with comparable sales above our historical range. Our sales continue to exceed the performance of the industry. This trend of quarterly outperformance has been pretty consistent during the past five years, leading to significant market share gains during that time. We feel quite good about delivering significant earnings per share growth in spite of the wage inflation that is pressuring the restaurant and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Jeffrey Bernstein of Barclays. Your line is now open.

Jeffrey Andrew Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you very much. Just two things; one, just on the unit growth. It looks like for next year, at least in the U.S., we're talking about eight versus the 11 in 2015. I know your internal goal is to always open up as many as you possibly can that achieve the returns, as I guess you just mentioned. But just wondering whether you can give some color on that, whether or not first and foremost the constraint is the real estate, or whether you're finding a greater constraint to be people? And any other color in terms of new versus existing markets for those stores? And then I had one follow-up. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Okay. I would just say first of all that nothing, as you sort of stated at the outset, Jeff, was nothing's really changed with respect to our thoughts about development. We continue to be very selective. We continue to be very focused on high-quality sites. Our strategy has been consistent and it's been successful for us; and we're opening – we have – our newer restaurants have higher sales metrics than the company average. We're still targeting 300 restaurants. So nothing's really changed, but the environment is dynamic. And in some years we have more sites in the pipeline and in some years less. And as we said, the way next year is shaping up, it looks like as many as eight high-quality sites that we'll be able to open domestically that meet our criteria. And I think it's also important to point out then in years where domestic development is more light, international development is in a good position, where we have now three international licensee partners now opening restaurants to pick up the slack, as is happening in 2015 where we're opening five anticipated international openings, which is our most that we've ever opened.

Jeffrey Andrew Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open

Got it. And then...? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Do you want to talk about location, David?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open

There are diverse locations around... David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. They're just like usual. I don't know if there's some new smaller cities, I think Greenville and Greensboro, and the rest are just scattered around.

Jeffrey Andrew Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open

Got it. And then just on the comp, I'm wondering if you can give a little bit more color, one, just in terms of the components? I know you took more price. I'm just wondering the breakdown of the comp. And then whether there's any color – I know in the past, you offered some color in terms of geography and day parts. Some of your peers are talking about geographical pressures maybe in the Texas region. So any kind of color on that front in terms of the comp trends throughout the quarter would be great. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, okay. So if you break that – the comp was 2.2%, so that breaks down into around 2.1% price. We did take more price, but most of it was near the end of the quarter. So it didn't really factor in that much in this quarter. And there was a positive mix of about 0.6%, which means the traffic was down about 0.5%. On a month-by-month basis, within the quarter, there was nothing really unusual. It was pretty level, although we did have – at least the way it worked for us, we had Labor Day that shifted back into September from August, so September and August were a little off from each other. But if you take that out of it, the months were pretty similar to each other from a sales standpoint. And then geographically, all of our restaurant markets were positive. California and the Midwest and the Northwest continue to be our strongest markets. The Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic were the weakest markets, and which is what we've been saying for a while and I think others have too. They were all – both still slightly positive territory for the quarter; and then the oil markets like, I guess, primarily Texas. Texas continues to be a good market for us. Sales were still very solidly positive in the third quarter. They may be a little bit off of where they had been, but still solidly positive.

Jeffrey Andrew Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays. Your line is now open

Got it. Thank you very much. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from John Glass with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. John Glass - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thanks very much. On the margin side this quarter, can – Doug, is there a way to parse out what benefits you got maybe from the initiatives, the cost savings initiatives you've implemented versus just easier laps versus the medical care, for example, or the medical insurance? And can you also talk specifically about that shift – the third quarter, I think there was that shift in marketing spend? How big was that? And what's the recapture of that in the fourth quarter? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. That shift, I'll answer that one first, was about a penny. So part of the reason the fourth quarter is not a penny higher and part of the reason the third quarter was a penny higher was the marketing shift. And then it's pretty difficult to parse out what caused what from the standpoint of initiatives that we've put in place. I do know that we had better food efficiencies, we had better labor productivity in the quarter. So the initiatives that we have around food efficiencies, for instance, we have the Auto Par, where we're using the system to generate what kind of prep levels we should be doing. That might be making a difference. But it's hard to say exactly how much difference.

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · initiatives that we've put in place. I do know that we had better food efficiencies, we had better labor productivity in the quarter. So the initiatives that we have around food efficiencies, for instance, we have the Auto Par, where we're using the system to generate what kind of prep levels we should be doing. That might be making a difference. But it's hard to say exactly how much difference

I would say, in general, all the operators – the Auto Par is in about 15% to 20% of our restaurants, so all the operators have had a strong focus on food cost efficiencies and we have seen improvement there in the third quarter; and we did see some benefit from that. And, as Doug did state, we did have pretty strong productivity across all the restaurants in all geographies. John Glass - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: And next year, you've got, I think, a fairly conservative view on earnings growth. I understand there's fewer units; labor expenses are higher. Are you just not modeling in pricing? Or what's the missing piece on why you can't – even with an extra week, you are getting a fairly low relative earnings growth, which you've experienced the last couple of years? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, the 53rd week benefits us, as you said, from an earnings per share growth perspective, but we have some pretty big wage rate inflation to deal with that I talked about in my prepared remarks, 4% to 5%. The government mandated piece alone is $12 million. It's $0.17 a share. So we're overcoming some of that, but we're not overcoming perhaps all of that. And we're going to need to manage that inflation, as I said, with an appropriate mix of menu price increases, which we've not exactly decided what we're going to do for the February menu change coming up, and with some margin efficiencies. But we're going to probably not be able to do that all in 2016. We would expect that the P&L impact of wage rate pressures will mitigate over time as we take additional pricing and absorb some of the changes, as well as become more efficient from a margin perspective. In the meantime, in 2016, we think there will be pretty benign commodity cost inflation, which is also helping us to offset some of the labor pressure. But the labor pressure is pretty extreme; and we don't feel that it would be a smart long-term decision to just decide to price to that. So we will be looking for a combination of pricing and other cost savings opportunities. John Glass - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sharon Zackfia of William Blair. Your line is now open. Sharon M. Zackfia - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hi. I guess, just a follow-up to John's question. Doug, how are you getting the guidance for the 1.5% to 2.5% comp if you are really not sure what kind of price you're going to have next year? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, we've factored in some kind of price in our assumptions and we've put a little bit more pricing than normal in our assumptions. Whether we'll actually do that or – here's what I would say, the more cost savings that we can find in other places, the less we would be inclined to take pricing. But I think there's about 2.5% pricing in the whole year for next year. Sharon M. Zackfia - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. And what are you running for the fourth quarter? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: For the fourth quarter, it's 2.5% is what's in the fourth quarter. Yeah. Sharon M. Zackfia - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. That's what I thought. And then when you talk about – if I'm not mistaken, I think you are still on one pricing tier across the country. Is that something that you are analyzing as well as you think about the potential price impact that you might have in 2016? And then in terms of savings, what kind of buckets are you really looking at there? I feel like you are pretty lean already. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. You were asking about our regional pricing, and I would say that we would... David Overton…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Tarantino of Robert W. Baird. Your line is now open. David E. Tarantino - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hi. Good afternoon. Doug, maybe a first question, a clarification on what drove the EPS upside in the quarter relative to your guidance? Which lines I guess surprised you to the upside there? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, it was a little bit on a couple of lines. One, there's a little bit in G&A. The marketing was obviously a shift from the third quarter into the fourth quarter. And then from the tax line perspective, we had a little bit bigger tax credit than we expected to have. So I think when all of the dust settles, if you take the impact of those things that we made the earnings per share for the quarter that you would have expected us to make with the 2.2% comps that we produced. We would have roughly made $0.56 if it wasn't for those items that I just mentioned. David E. Tarantino - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. And then maybe to piggyback on Sharon's question. If I look at the sales during the quarter relative to the comps, it does look like the – at least by our estimation, that the average weekly sales for The Cheesecake Factory restaurants there was a bit more of a gap in the average weekly sales change relative to the comps change. And it did look like maybe that would be either the timing of store openings or the productivity of those openings. So is there any sort of thought on how the new units are performing relative to your expectation,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nicole Miller of Piper Jaffray. Your line is now open. Nicole M. Miller Regan - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Thanks. Good evening. I was wondering if I had heard correctly five international stores for this year? I just want to make sure I followed the earlier conversation correctly. And then I think it was when you were talking about the eight stores for next year and how international can accelerate and pick up the slack. So I want to clarify 2015 and then understand if it's okay to model an acceleration for 2016. Thank you. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So 2015 is three; and then 2016 is as many as five. And we feel with three international licensee partners today that the sort of the bumpiness of opening international openings will kind of smooth out a little bit because if one of them doesn't open as many restaurants as we thought, another one will. So we would say as many as five. So we'll end the year with 11 international locations; and then next year we would to expect to open, in 2016, as many as five. So this is shaping up to be the best development year from an international standpoint that we've had so far. Nicole M. Miller Regan - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): And then a couple of international stores, I guess, would be in the comp or technically close to having their own comp base, albeit just a couple. But what can you tell us about the sales and profitability trends of those early stores that we could loosely define as comp stores now? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I would say that from a profitability standpoint, I won't speak to that because they're not our restaurants. So we're not getting P&Ls constantly with them. But we are getting sales information, obviously, and they've generally been comping up. The first, the Mall of Dubai restaurant, which does fantastic volumes, when it lapped around, it's basically been comping up. Nicole M. Miller Regan - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): And if I may, remaining share repurchase? And then I'm done. Thank you so much. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well this... Nicole M. Miller Regan - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Just the authorization? Yeah. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Oh. The remaining authorization? Nicole M. Miller Regan - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Yeah. I know you said you'll complete $105 million. Does that mean you would just complete – you know what I'm saying. Sorry. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We have plenty of shares authorized, but do you have the number, Jill?

Jill S. Peters - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

We have 4.8 million shares left in our repurchase authorization. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So there's a lot of shares left and we would expect to do, like you stated, about $105 million for this year, for 2015. Nicole M. Miller Regan - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Thank you so much. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joseph Buckley of Bank of America. Your line is now open. Joseph Terrence Buckley - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Research: Thank you. Just a couple of questions. Doug, can you clarify the EPS impact of the 53rd week, what you think that would give you within the full-year guidance? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. It's somewhere between $0.05 and $0.08 in earnings per share. The week between Christmas and New Year's is a bigger than an average week for us. Joseph Terrence Buckley - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Research: Okay. And then you mentioned the pricing on the summer menu was a little bit later to impact the quarter fully. Did you just implement it later? Why did that occur? Did you just roll it out a little bit slower? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. We did what we always do. So we would start to rollout for the summer menu about maybe the middle of August, and it would take almost to the middle of September before it was in every restaurant; and that's what we always do. So the impact for the third quarter of an extra, about 0.5% of pricing, where we would normally take, say, 1%, this being 1.5%, was only enough to make about a tenth or so of difference in the third quarter. But in the fourth quarter we have 2.5% pricing in the menu. Joseph Terrence Buckley - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Research: Okay. And then a question on the international stores. I think when you first got started with the international stores, you were suggesting each store could give 1.5 points of EPS. And I think initially, at least, the stores…

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Bank of America

Also, because in a market like Kuwait, we're about to open up our third location in there. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So there's a little bit of – so when we get a third restaurant in a market, you wouldn't think you could continue to do $15 million or $20 million. Joseph Terrence Buckley - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Research: Got it. Yes, just one more, if I can. The $12 million in government mandated labor increases, is that mostly around the tip credit wage for you? And can you say how much that is in California alone? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, it's two things. It's the New York tip – mainly two things. New York tip credit changes and the fact that we have a large percentage of our restaurants in California. You know what the split out is, Jill, between the two of those?

Jill S. Peters - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

About half of it is the California piece and then about another 40% of it is the New York piece. Joseph Terrence Buckley - Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Research: Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Karen Holthouse of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Karen Holthouse - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi. Actually just a quick follow-up to that question. So when saying half of the minimum wage inflation is California and 40% is New York, is that half of all of the wage inflation or half of the government – what you're considering the government mandated part of it? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: About half of the government mandated portion. So if there's 4% or 5% overall wage rate inflation, half of that is roughly the government mandated portion and the other part is just other wage rate inflation. Karen Holthouse - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And then if we're looking – thinking to unit growth next year, do you have an idea of what the rough mix of those you would consider sort of full-size versus smaller format sources? David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: They're all around 8,000 square feet. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: They're pretty much all more the smaller format stores. David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: (37:17). Karen Holthouse - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Which is – it's – yeah, between 8,000 square feet and 9,000 square feet, let's put it that way. And then as opposed to what was normal two years ago or three years ago, which might have been 10,000 square feet. David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Four years ago. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: The years are flying. Four years ago. Karen Holthouse - Goldman Sachs & Co.: All right. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brian Vaccaro of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Hi. Thanks, and good evening. Just to follow-up – just a couple of questions for me – to follow-up on the third quarter sales reconciliation and kind of putting the pieces together of bakery and other, it looks like it might have been Grand Lux-driven. Doug, can you give us what the comps were in the third quarter for Grand Lux? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. Where do I have that? They were down about 3.8%. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great. Thank you. And switching over to the food cost line, do you have what year-on-year food deflation was in the third quarter, Doug, kind of on a constant mix basis? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. It was probably deflationary; very benign, maybe slightly lower. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, okay. And as you think about – and somebody asked about parsing out sort of the food cost savings with the Auto Par efficiencies and the like, I think you said you're in 15% to 20% of the units at this point. When should we expect that to be rolled system-wide?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Raymond James

We're anticipating getting it rolled in the first half of next year. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. And starting to roll fourth quarter, or is it sort of a roll that accelerates in the first, say, first quarter?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Raymond James

It would start accelerating sometime in the first quarter. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. All right. Thank you. And then just quickly on G&A, Doug, I think in the third quarter, you were originally expecting 70 bps to 90 bps. It came in a little lower than that. Was there also some timing in that or any more color on where the favorability there was on the G&A line? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We had some lower legal costs was basically what most of the rest of it was. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. All right. That's helpful. Quickly, on the 16 openings, the cadence of openings, can you give us any help on that? You said one in the first quarter. And then also, as we think about pre-openings, should we still be thinking low $1 million range per unit on average? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: The cadence, I would say, what, one in the first quarter and a couple in the second quarter; and then the rest, I'd say second half of the year. Sort of like we pretty much always do... Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: ...is what I would say. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: So no change in there. All right. All right, fair enough. And then just one last one. Can you just give a quick update on the CakePay apps? I think you've been testing one or maybe only a couple of units. But maybe talk about how the consumer is using it and when that might be expanded further?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Raymond James

Sure. The test is still in the one unit. We just updated the app in the App Store. We did our first update based on feedback that we had from guest and also just the user experience; and that update went well. We'd like to get it into two more restaurants here before the end of the year and anticipate fully rolling that out as well moving into next year. We'd like to do that at the beginning of the year. Brian M. Vaccaro - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Will Slabaugh of Stephens, Incorporated. Your line is now open.

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Incorporated. Your line is now open

Yeah. Thanks, guys. First, a quick question on unit growth, just to kind of clarify your comments from earlier. So as you move from 11 this year to eight next year, should we view this as a slight step function down over the longer-term, where it may be tough for you to find 10 or more high-quality sites that meet your standards? Or is this just sort of this year, we didn't happen to find those sites and it could come back in 2017, et cetera?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Stephens, Incorporated. Your line is now open

I would say that we would try to still open as many restaurants as we could, so I wouldn't look at it as permanent.

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Incorporated. Your line is now open

Got it. And just one more quick one, if I could, on – given the news on RockSugar, I wonder if you could give us an update on your thoughts around current concept portfolio that you have? And then any new thoughts you may have on additional concepts, if you've looked at anything here recently? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, RockSugar is one of a kind, as you know. And when you build the first restaurant in a brand, as I said, you tend to have to experiment and make some changes and it costs you a little bit more. So when we looked at RockSugar, we just had to look at what the cash flow was and then how that compared with the investment that we had on our books. So that's how that resulted. Looking forward, with respect to new concepts or we're continuing to look externally at other restaurant concepts and staying informed about what's available to see if there's anything that might be the right fit for us. But we'll continue to be very selective. We haven't really done any yet. But we're really not dependent on another concept to achieve the mid-teens of total shareholder return goal that we have. If we were to make an acquisition or investment, it would provide upside to that framework.

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens, Incorporated. Your line is now open

Great. Thanks, Doug. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew DiFrisco of Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.

Matthew James DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

Thank you. I had one bookkeeping question and one just to beat the dead horse on the growth also. On G&A, I think the question was just asked about the 70 basis points to 90 basis points guidance, and you mentioned lower legal, yet fourth quarter is 100 basis points. Are you shifting some of that legal or some of the cost that didn't incur in the third quarter that were implied in your guidance into the fourth quarter with that 100 basis point deleverage assumption? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No. What happened last year was, in the fourth quarter we reversed a large portion of a bonus accrual or a larger than usual portion of the bonus accrual, so it's almost entirely that.

Matthew James DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

But then didn't you expect to have bonus accruals this year to drive the 70 basis points to 90 basis points, in the third quarter? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. And we did.

Matthew James DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

Okay. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: But we had lower legal costs than we expected.

Matthew James DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

Okay, got it. And then I guess just a couple of calls ago, I recall you coming back – just when you returned back to opening double-digit store openings on a year, it took you a while to build back up that pipeline. And I think it was either Doug or David that mentioned upwards of – great sites, A sites you have in the pan of over 20 locations or so. And we were all getting excited and running with big numbers. And you kept saying, no, no, it's just going to be 12 or so out of the 20. We're going to keep them for the future years. What happened to that pipeline? I mean, why only eight openings in 2016? Have things fallen out of the pipeline or are we in a system where now zoning or something as far as getting those stores open are taking longer? I'm just wondering if that pipeline you re-looked at it and you took out some of those stores that might have been planned for multiple years out? David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: No. I think it's a question of some had moved to 2017. A few, in the very end, we couldn't make the deal that we wanted to. So we had to pass on a couple. It could be more than eight, but right now we're giving you that number because that seems pretty confident. We're pretty confident of that. But there's been no major change in what we're doing or what we're trying to do or where we're going.

Matthew James DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

Okay. Just looking at your last four stores, we've talked a lot about the smaller prototype, yet the last four store openings, and I think the next one in Liberty Township, are all over 10,000 square feet. So was there a bias? David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I don't think that's right.

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

No. Actually, we just opened in Memphis, is about between 8,000 square feet and 9,000 square feet. Liberty Center is between 8,000 square feet and 9,000 square feet. One of the only bigger ones that's opening is Santa Monica. David Overton - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And that's because that's what we had to take. I don't know if you're including (45:49) or what you're doing, but to us they're that same size that we feel is our standard today, which is somewhere between 7,500 square feet and 9,000 square feet. But don't forget, sometimes that's just the size. We have to take it. That's what we're moving into. Other times, we have a choice of how many square feet we're going to take.

Matthew James DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open

Understood. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brian Bittner of Oppenheimer. Your line is now open. Brian J. Bittner - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks. Doug, can you just tell us again what your food cost inflation assumption is for 2016? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: About 1%. Brian J. Bittner - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. So just, again, on the 2016 earnings growth being below how you kind of normally view where your normalized algorithm is, it sounds like you are attributing most of that to the labor costs. Obviously, 4% to 5% wage inflation is heavy. But isn't this somewhat or almost mostly being offset by a much lower than expected or normalized food cost inflation? When you look at your overall inflation basket with food and labor, is it still well above normal with that kind of 1% food cost inflation in there? Or what's kind of going on with that? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, we'd expect the cost of sales line to leverage next year to – in other words, we're going to have – we should be better than this year and labor's going to probably be for the year up 50 basis points or 60 basis points for next year. Just everything that we know as of today. You've got to keep in mind, this is October. We don't have like the perfect crystal ball, but we do know and can compute almost precisely what the government regulated piece is going to be; and $12 million is $0.17 a share. So if you just take that into account and assume we're offsetting some of it somewhere, which we are, some of it's coming from the cost of sales piece,…

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from John Ivankoe of JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

John William Ivankoe - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open

Hi. Thank you. I know your traffic – same-store traffic was good relative to the industry, but it's still obviously slightly negative. And as you think about ways of turning that slightly negative traffic into positive traffic, is there anything that you're thinking about other than standard Cheesecake Factory type of menu evolution that you do so well every year, in terms of putting more customers through your store? I remember some time ago it was maybe just getting the server attention to focus a little bit more on peak hour throughput. But if you could just talk about what you're thinking maybe for 2016 to maybe help a little on the traffic side? And I have a follow-up as well. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So I would say first of all that I would not poo-poo too much the strategy for building traffic that has got us to be the highest average unit volume concept around. We're focused on where we're best-in-class, menu innovation, food quality, service levels, and taking steps to get even better and make the dining experiences more compelling. We've built this business through operational excellence. Others have built their business through marketing. Well, we've built it through operational excellence. But we're also focused more on throughput, like you mentioned, as well as redesigning our server training for what guests want, which is a higher level of service, it's tailored to their needs. We're building our gift card program. We're filing the mobile payment system that we put, that we've talked about; and all that should help make incremental progress toward recapturing guest traffic.

John William Ivankoe - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open

And certainly, Doug, I was complimenting the strategy that got you here; just seeing what may have been new for 2016. And then secondly, in the press release, you specifically pointed out that you ended the quarter with no funded debt on your balance sheet. And I just want to understand like how important is that for you, over time, to have no funded debt? Obviously, you have a free cash generative company, very low borrowing rates, stock buyback is accretive based on where current interest rates are. But just trying to see what – see how that no funded debt really means strategically from this point going forward. Or is that just something that happened to happen in the third quarter of 2015 that you wanted to point out? W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I would say that – I think you're asking a good question that we think about a lot and we routinely review our capital structure, including sensitivities with respect to perhaps using debt to repurchase more shares. And we just don't really – the way that we look at this, we don't see a need going forward to take on permanent debt in order to achieve our growth targets for earnings per share and total shareholder return. We like the flexibility of being opportunistic with respect to having the availability, borrowing availability, to be able to enter into M&A transactions and/or do share repurchases more opportunistically. If the stock were to become lower, then we would give it more consideration. And it's always nice to have a little flexibility to weather business cycles. So I guess we were just stating the fact that $25 million was paid off and that we have a lot of opportunity and dry powder to do other things with.

John William Ivankoe - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is now open

Thank you. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Keith Siegner of UBS. Your line is now open.

Keith R. Siegner - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open

Thank you. Just a very simple one. As you think about the next couple of years and a lot of your competitive concepts, thinking about off-premise, and to-go, and delivery and all those things, have you started to think about possible strategies, maybe put some tests in place or come up with some tests to start to think through how CAKE might participate in those types of things?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open

Yes. Actually, we have. We've had ongoing discussions, and some of them very recently. So we are looking at it and discussing it and want to make sure that when we do do it that it is best-in-class. And the guest experience, if it were to be delivery or enhanced to-go is as great as that in-restaurant experience.

Keith R. Siegner - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open

And what's the percentage of sales right now that's represented by the curbside to-go, et cetera?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open

To-go, in general, it ranges, but it's generally between 8% and 10% depending on the restaurant; pretty strong.

Keith R. Siegner - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Your line is now open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from Paul Westra of Stifel. Your line is now open. Paul Westra - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hey. Thank you. Just maybe one more follow-up on the commodity cost outlook. You've talked a little bit about how you are contracted for next year. I know you talked a little bit about your fourth quarter purchases for your dairy needs. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, at this point of time we're – it's October, we're as about as contracted as we normally are through October, so not very contracted I would say. I would say that that's very normal that we wouldn't have contracts in place. The closer you wait to the start of the year, the less risk that a supplier's taking with respect to entering into a contract with us. So we're right now contracted about where we normally are, which is maybe, I don't know – what would it be, Jill? 20%, maybe?

Jill S. Peters - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yeah. W. Douglas Benn - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: About 20%. Paul Westra - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay, great. And maybe one more back last one on the labor mandated pressure. The wages you think you're going to on January 1, 2017, the gap you have versus the minimum wage, I assume, is that shrinking? I'm trying to think how much cushion. Are you going to sort of preemptively still sort of offer wages slightly above the minimum? Or how should we think about how much potential future impacts of maybe future minimum wage hikes as we go into potentially 2017 and 2018?

David M. Gordon - President

Analyst · Stifel

If I understand your question, certainly the tipped staff members will continue to be paid for now at the minimum wage, whatever that minimum wage is in that state. And we've always paid above minimum wage for the non-tipped staff, and we'll continue to do that as we move into next year. Paul Westra - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay, great. Thanks. That's all I had.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's program. This concludes today's conference. You may all disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.