Daniel Schwartz
Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead
Thanks, Markus, and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us on today’s call. I am excited to give you an update today on our results for the third quarter. Our continued focus on driving restaurant level profitability and a great experience for our guests led to further system-wide sales growth for each of our three brands: Tim Hortons, Burger King and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. During the third quarter, we grew adjusted EBITDA to $565 million representing 8% organic growth versus the prior year’s combined results of RBI including Popeyes. System-wide sales growth at Burger King and Tim Hortons combined with the inclusion of Popeyes in our results lead to adjusted diluted EPS of $0.58 per share, up from $0.43 per share in the prior year period. At Tim’s we grew system-wide sales by 3% on a constant currency basis this quarter primarily driven by net restaurant growth of 4.2%. Some of our recent initiatives including our espresso-based beverage platform contributed to improved comparable sales in Canada, but was partially offset by softer comparable sales in the U.S. We maintained our strong momentum at Burger King in the third quarter with system-wide sales growth of 11.2% on a constant currency basis both comparable sales of 3.6% and further accelerated net restaurant growth of 6.6% contributed to our system-wide sales momentum. At Popeyes system-wide sales grew by 4.5% on a constant currency basis for the quarter primarily driven by net restaurant growth of 5.9%. We had softer comparable sales at Popeyes where we saw continued competitive activity during the third quarter. We remain confident in our ability to drive further sales and profitability growth for all three of our brands and look forward to updating everyone in the coming quarters. We believe our long-term strategy of focusing on guest satisfaction and franchisee profitability will allow us to build on the recent momentum at Burger King and to further improve results at Tim Hortons and Popeyes for many years to come. Let's start by reviewing the results for Tim Hortons. This quarter adjusted EBITDA for Tim's was $294 million, up $7 million year-on-year including a favorable FX Impact. On a constant currency basis, this represents a slight decline of 1% versus the prior year. We grew third quarter comparable sales at Tim's by 0.3%, which was primarily driven by comparable sales of positive 0.6% in Canada. Our results in Canada reflects growth in coffee as well as breakfast partially offset by some softness in lunch. We began to see the benefits of our recent initiatives in Canada throughout the quarter including the espresso-based beverage platform that we rolled out earlier this year. We continue to grow our sales of espresso-based beverages with our iced latte in this summer and our pumpkin spice latte in September. We believe this beverage platform will be a key to our long-term growth at Tim’s both with existing and new customers and will continue to be a focus of our strategy. Additionally, our breakfast and baked goods results this quarter benefited from successful product launches such as our Canadian bacon breakfast sandwich and our s’mores tea [ph] and baked goods. In September, we had our annual smile cookie campaign where our restaurant owners raised approximately CAD7 million to help support local charities in the communities such as hospitals, food banks and children's programs. And a further display of our brands commitments to communities Tim Hortons coffee trucks were busily supporting communities affected by the wildfires in Western Canada. And at Tim Hortons donation to the Canadian Red Cross was made to support local efforts. Community involvement has always been a distinctive attribute of the Tim’s brand and we're proud to continue serving and supporting our local communities. Our Tim's mobile app continues to remain a strong focus for us heading into the fourth quarter. Since we launched our mobile order and prepay app at the beginning of the year, we've made further improvements based on feedback received from our restaurant owners. The hard work and engagement from our restaurant owners is really important in making our digital platform of success. A great example of this is with one of our owners in Quebec, who spent time promoting the app with guest in her restaurant encouraging them to use the mobile order and prepay functionality. She is already seeing over 300 mobile transactions per week after just a few months. We also celebrated National Coffee Day in both the U.S. and Canada by providing each guests, who downloaded the app an offer to receive a free coffee. The feedback we've received on the app so far has been encouraging and we're going to continue to work further to enhance the app over time as we believe digital is the key channel for the long-term growth of the brand. On the development front, we grew our Tim’s restaurant count by 4.2% year-on-year, primarily driven by growth in Canada. In the U.S., net restaurant growth has been slow though we remain highly focused on supporting our U.S. partners in their expansion efforts and we continue to make progress with new partners. As an example, we recently signed a new agreement to develop the Cleveland and Youngstown markets, which we believe are logical strategic markets for our growth given the proximity to our successful existing restaurant footprints in Columbus, Michigan and in Western New York. Internationally our first openings in both the Philippines and the UK continue to perform really well and the results are encouraging for the long-term growth potential of the brand in each of our new international markets. We have plans to open even more restaurants in both of these markets this year and are looking forward to our first openings in Mexico and in Spain in the coming months. We look forward to further accelerated development at Tim’s for many years to come both in our existing markets as well as new markets all around the world. Now let's review the results for Burger King. We continued our strong momentum from last quarter with overall system-wide sales growth this quarter of 11.2% driven both by comparable sales of 3.6% and net restaurant growth of 6.6%. Growth in top-line resulted in an adjusted EBITDA of $234 million for the third quarter, up 16% on an organic basis versus the prior year results. Our sales momentum in the U.S. continued into the third quarter with strong comparable sales of 4%. In the U.S., we had successful promotions across dayparts and core products, which contributed positively to comparable sales during the quarter. We also continue to innovate around some of our premium platforms such as our new crispy chicken sandwich with the launch of our chicken parm sandwich in July and the crispy buffalo chicken melt in September. We also introduced the mushroom and Swiss King and The Rodeo King limited time offers during the quarter both of which innovate around our successful Bacon King sandwich launched late last year. Our strategy of maintaining a balanced approach to menu architecture continue to drive further sales growth in the quarter. We also had strong results in many of our international markets like Russia, Turkey, Germany, Spain, China and Brazil. And this was offset by some softness in other markets that experienced broad industry weakness such as Korea and Australia. On the development front, we further accelerated the pace of net restaurant growth as compared to last quarter with third quarter net restaurant growth of 6.6%. Our accelerated pace of development this quarter came from markets all around the world including top growth countries such as China, Russia, France and Brazil as well as markets where we've accelerated restaurant growth more recently such as the United States and India. This quarter we opened our hundred store in India, a country that we entered less than three years ago, which is a great example of the type of growth we look for when entering new markets. We're proud of the expansion that our partner has been able to achieve in such a short time and we continue to work towards further accelerating that growth in the future. We also recently announced a new master franchise in Japan. As the third largest economy in the world, we believe there is still a tremendous amount of growth opportunity for Burger King in Japan, where we currently have fewer than 100 restaurants. We're confident that we will continue growing Burger King all around the world both with existing and new partners for many, many years to come. We also want to take a minute to apply the generosity of our Burger King restaurant owners, an example of which was demonstrated by the positive impact they had in their local communities during the hurricanes experience this quarter. In our Puerto Rico, our partner launched a campaign to help address the local communication challenges experienced in the hurricane aftermath. Our partner quickly reopened his restaurants and welcomed guests to come in and fill out a form indicating that they were safe. The partner then posted each individual's name on social media and on the radio to help our guests to reconnect with their loved ones. At Burger King, we and our franchisees recognize the importance of community involvement and we're proud to share examples of our franchisees generosity. Our local partner responses to hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Houston and Florida are one example, but all of our franchisees continue to make meaningful impacts to their respective communities around the world including to our Burger King McLamore Foundation. Now let's review the results for Popeyes. We grew system-wide sales during the third quarter by 4.5% primarily driven by net restaurant growth of 5.9% partially offset by comparable sales decrease of 1.8%. Our comparable sales declined for the quarter was primarily driven by a U.S. comparable sales decrease of 2.6% partially offset by positive comparable sales in some of our international markets. Our U.S. comparable sales for the quarter reflects the continuation of increased competitive activity that we saw last quarter. As we continue to refine our marketing calendar for the balance of the year and into next year, we’ll be focused on finding ways to deliver our great products that our guests love at the right price points in a competitive landscape. Recent examples of the types of promotions that we intend to pursue include the return of the $5 Big Box in September and the new ten for ten dollars that we launched more recently. Our teams along with our restaurant owners are focused on delivering a great guest experience while staying true to our rich Louisiana heritage and flavor profile. In that regard, we celebrate opportunities to highlight the great work of our Popeyes culinary innovation team responsible for formulating our authentic and flavorful recipes. A few months ago, our head of Popeyes Culinary Innovation, Amy Alarcon, was featured in a popular food network television show highlighting our professionally renowned reputation in being Louisiana fests, a label awarded to us given that we marinate our bonafide fried chicken for at least twelve hours, but serve it to our guests fast. Internationally this quarter we saw a notable strength in Turkey, one of our largest markets outside of the U.S. as a compelling family meal introduction drove growth in comparable sales for the third quarter. This was partially offset by softer results in certain other international markets such as Korea. In terms of development, we grew restaurant count for the third quarter by 5.9% primarily driven by growth in the U.S. and Canada. We're working toward accelerating our expansion around the world and we've been encouraged by the interest we have received both from existing and prospective partners seeking to lead that expansion. Popeyes restaurants continue to benefit from strong unit economics, which coupled with expansive growth potential of the chicken category in many markets solidifies our confidence in the potential of this brand all around the world. The combination of system-wide sales growth and overhead synergies allowed us to grow Popeyes adjusted EBITDA to $37 million for the quarter, up 43% organically year-on-year as compared to Popeyes previous third quarter results. I'd now like to turn the call over to Josh.