TH International - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tims China Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode during management's prepared remarks, and there will be a question-and-answer session to follow. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Gemma Bakx, who heads Tims China Investor Relations efforts for prepared remarks and introductions. Please go ahead, Gemma.

Gemma Bakx (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Desmond, and hello everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. My name is Gemma Bakx, Head of Investor Relations for Tims China, and Tims announced its Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results earlier today. The press release, as well as an accompanying presentation which contains operational and financial highlights, are now available on the company's IR website at ir.timschina.com. Today you will hear from Yongchen Lu, our CEO and Director, and Albert Li, our CFO. After the company's prepared remarks, the management team will conduct a question-and-answer session. You can find the slide presentation and the webcast of today's earnings call on our IR website. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that our earnings presentation and investor materials contain forward-looking statements which are subject to future events and uncertainties.

Statements that are not historical facts, including but not limited to statements about the company's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factors included in our filings with the SEC. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe can be helpful in evaluating our performance. However, those measures should not be considered substitutes for the comparable GAAP measures. The accompanying reconciliation information related to those non-GAAP and GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release issued earlier today. With that said, I would now like to turn it over to Yongchen Lu, our CEO and Director. Please go ahead, Yongchen.

Yongchen Lu (CEO)

Thank you, Gemma. Good morning and good evening, everyone. In Q3, we returned to positive net new store openings and continued our strong momentum in system sales, achieving a 12.8% year-over-year growth. With our successful light and fit lunchbox platform products launched in Q2, we further enhanced our differentiated coffee plus freshly prepared food strategy, driving a positive 3.3% same-store sales growth for company-owned and operated stores. As a result, food revenues increased by 24.2% year-over-year, and food revenue contribution as a percentage of sales reached our historical high of 36.5%, an increase of 5 percentage points from 31.5% in the third quarter last year. We are also benefiting from the promotional offers from those delivery aggregators to take more market share. Delivery revenues increased by 23.1% year-over-year. At the same time, our sub-franchisee and the retail business maintained their steadily growing contributions to cash flow and profitability.

Profits from other revenues achieved a year-over-year increase of 58.2% during the quarter. For the first nine months of 2025, our Adjusted Company-Owned and operated store contribution margin was 8.1%, same as that for the first nine months of last year. Our Adjusted Corporate EBITDA and Adjusted Net Loss, we continued to improve by 10.4% and 11.5%, respectively. These results underscore our team's resilience and discipline in execution. Our store development, leveraging sub-franchisee partnerships, we expand our store footprint into 91 cities, including the city of Yanji in Jilin province, Changshu in Jiangsu province, and Wuhu in Anhui province that we entered in Q3 while maintaining capital efficiency and delivering absolute convenience for our guests. Since we launched our individual franchisees program in December 2023, we have received over 8,400 applications and successfully converted over 300 stores by the end of September, showcasing market confidence in our franchisee model.

We have attractive and desirable store unit economics for our sub-franchisees with reasonable two-year to three-year payback period on average. We are also focused on strategic channel development with 64 stores in locations such as high-speed train stations, airports, highway rest areas, hospitals, universities, and schools at the end of September. As of the end of September 2025, our registered loyalty club members reached 27.9 million, reflecting a remarkable 22.3% year-over-year growth. The average number of members per store is now over 27,000, serving a strong catalyst for our future growth. Q3 represents the peak season for China's beverage market. This summer experienced record high temperatures, driving a robust consumer demand for freshly prepared beverages, albeit amid heightened price sensitivity.

Compounding this dynamic, the coffee sector faced intensified competitive pressure from the rapidly expanding tea beverage categories, not only due to strong demand for non-coffee alternatives, but also because leading tea brands have begun entering the coffee space, further intensifying market competitions. Our strategic initiatives, including a celebrity partnership during the Bagel Festival, and enhanced summer beverage portfolio and targeted seasonal lunchtime operations, enabled Tims China to return to positive same-store sales growth in Q3. We partnered with Wang Xingyue, a highly influential Gen Z celebrity, to elevate brand awareness and drive engagement. The collaboration was integrated with compelling product bundles to convert interest into purchases, supported by targeted promotions to encourage repeat visits. This holistic marketing approach delivered strong results. July marked our highest sales month of the year, and the September Bagel Festival drove double-digit same-store sales growth, significantly outperforming the broader market.

Building on the Cold Brew platform launched in Q2, we executed a series of monthly innovations throughout Q3, centered around refreshing some appropriate beverages. This was an intentional offensive strategy, leveraging a balanced portfolio of trending SKUs spanning coffee and non-coffee categories to capture incremental share in the summer beverage market, particularly among younger consumers whose preferences align closely with our endorsers' audience. We anticipate competitive encroachment from tea brands and responded decisively, reinforcing our coffee leadership through premium offerings like Cold Brew and Water Buffalo Milk Lattes, while deploying non-coffee SKUs to directly compete for tea drinkers' wallet share. Notably, this dual-track approach resonated strongly with our target demographics, contributing meaningfully to beverage sales growth.

Following six months of focused lunchtime development, we proactively adapted our food strategy in Q3 to counter seasonal softness by introducing six new SKUs featuring chilled and boldly spicy options to stimulate consumer interest and maintain meal relevance. In order to sustain momentum from our ongoing lunchtime expansion strategy, we also introduced seasonal cold food offerings tailored to evolving consumer preferences during hot weather. Additionally, we expanded our afternoon tea offerings with chilled variants of cakes and Smile Bagel of five SKUs. The launch of the Smile Bagel series further reinforces our leadership in the bagel category and enhances our competitive differentiation. These initiatives have firmly helped cement Tims' reputation as the go-to lunch destination in consumers' mindset. Thanks to our efforts over the past three quarters, more than half of all orders now include food, and food sales make up over a third of total revenues.

At this time, I would like to turn it over to our CFO, Albert Li, to discuss our third quarter financial performance in more detail.

Albert Li (CFO)

Thank you, Yongchen. We remain focused on delivering high-value for quality healthy products and thoughtful services to our ever-growing customer base. Our overall monthly average transacting customers reached 3.85 million in Q3 2025, a 16.7% increase from 3.3 million in the same quarter of 2024. Additionally, digital orders as a percentage of total orders rose from 86.6% in Q3 2024 to an all-time high of 91.0% in Q3 2025. We continue to enhance our digital capabilities to meet the growing demand from delivery and takeaway services. In Q3, our company-owned and operated store revenues dropped by 5.5% year-over-year, which was primarily due to the planned closure of certain underperforming stores, partially offset by a 3.3% increase in same-store sales growth for company-owned and operated stores. We have also achieved positive transaction growth in Q3, driven by strong momentum from food orders and delivery orders.

In the meantime, revenues from our franchise business and retail business increased by 25.0% year-over-year. The number of our franchise stores increased from 382 as of September 30, 2024, to 479 as of September 30, 2025. Accordingly, our system sales increased by 12.8% year-over-year. Moving to costs and expenses for company-owned and operated stores, since we offered higher discounts during the quarter, especially to orders through those delivery platforms, food and packaging costs as a percentage of revenues from company-owned and operated stores increased by 1.6 percentage points year-over-year. Food and packaging costs accounted for 30.6% of our company-owned and operated store revenues during the quarter, and we maintained relatively stable labor costs, rental and property management fees, and other store operating expenses as a percentage of revenues from company-owned and operated stores in Q3.

Delivery costs as a percentage of revenues from company-owned and operated stores increased by 2.9 percentage points to 13.2% in the third quarter of 2025, compared to 10.3% in the same quarter of 2024, which was primarily due to the higher delivery revenue mix as a percentage of total revenues from company-owned and operated stores. The number of delivery orders from company-owned and operated stores increased by 20.9% year-over-year. Benefiting from our improved brand influence, marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues accounted for approximately 4.4% during the quarter, representing a 0.7 percentage point decrease from 5.1% in the same quarter of 2024.

Adjusted General and Administrative Expenses increased by 23.2% year-over-year, which was primarily due to an increase in outside service fees related to audit, IT, and business travel, an increase in credit loss of accounts receivable partially offset by a decrease in headquarters staff compensation costs, and a decrease in depreciation and amortization. Adjusted General and Administrative Expenses as a percentage of total revenues increased from 10.7% in the third quarter of 2024 to 13.2% in the same quarter of 2025. As a result of the foregoing, Adjusted Corporate EBITDA margin was -4.2% in the third quarter of 2025, compared to +0.6% in the same quarter of 2024. Turning to liquidity, as of September 30, 2025, our total cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, and restricted cash were RMB 159.3 million, compared to RMB 184.2 million as of December 31st, 2024.

The change was primarily attributable to cash disbursements on the back of the expansion of our business, partially offset by the drawdown of additional bank borrowings. Looking ahead, with profitable growth always being front and center of everything we do, we are poised to further enhance our operational efficiencies, such as supply chain capabilities and optimizations, and rigorous cost controls to roll over our differentiating made to order fresh and healthy food preparation model to drive traffic, to optimize the overall store unit economics, and to accelerate the expansion of our successful sub-franchising. I will now turn it over to Yongchen for concluding remarks, followed by Q&A.

Yongchen Lu (CEO)

Yeah, thank you, Albert. Our third quarter performance reflects continuous improvements and resilience in our business and execution, as well as both challenges and opportunities in this industry. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our guests, team members, business partners, shareholders, and everyone supporting our endeavor and journey. Together, we have built over 1,000 stores in 91 cities, a robust community of nearly 28 million [loyalty club] members, a unique coffee plus freshly prepared food business model offering the best value for quality products, a unique advantage of offering franchise opportunity as an international coffee brand in China, and refined store unit economics with attractive payback period within two to three years on average. With these milestones, we are steadfast in our commitment to sustainable profit growth and to generating long-term value for our shareholders.

We're excited to announce the successful issuance of approximately $89.9 million senior secured convertible notes due September 2029, the restructuring of our unsecured convertible notes due 2027, and the repurchase of all outstanding amounts due under our variable rate convertible senior notes due 2026. These strategic transactions enable us to focus on the development of our overall store network and the core Tims coffee brand nationwide. I will now turn it to the call over to Gemma for today's Q&A session. Gemma.

Gemma Bakx (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you very much, Yongchen. We will turn it over to Q&A and open it up for our registered questions. Let's begin with the first question. Go ahead, Operator.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question on the phone, please press star one one and wait for a name to be announced. To cancel your request, you can press star one one again. You can also submit your questions via the webcast. One moment for the first question. Our first question comes from the phone line of Steve Silver from Argus Research Corporation. Please go ahead.

Steve Silver (Security Analyst)

Thanks, Operator, and thanks for taking my questions, and congratulations on the system and same-store sales growth. With the closing of the new convertible notes transaction in Q3, I was hoping you can provide just the company's latest thinking on its liquidity status and its long-term financing plan.

Albert Li (CFO)

Okay, sure. Thanks, Steve, for asking this question. I will take this one. Okay, so we raised the successful issuance of the $89.9 million 2025 senior secured convertible notes. I think the company we have used part of the proceeds to fully repurchase the entire remaining amount of our 2021 convertible notes actually due 2026. And actually, in the meantime, we have also extended the due date of our 2024 unsecured convertible notes from 2027 to the same timeline of September 2029. So actually, after the closing of these transactions, the company does not have any near-term offshore liabilities so that actually we can focus more on our daily operations. And we believe this financing would also help reduce our onshore leverage ratio actually quite significantly.

I think we will also benefit greatly to actually get more in terms of the onshore bank facilities in terms of the expansion and renewal from these PRC commercial banks. I think, as we have also mentioned, in order to take the advantage of the lower rent level at the current market environment and also to roll out our attractive made-to-order store model, I think we are also working very hard in terms of securing additional alternative debt or equity financing in order to support the development of our company-owned and operated store network. Lastly, I also want to mention with the further improvement of our store and corporate level margins, we are expecting to generate positive operating cash inflows. We will become more and more self-sustainable in terms of supporting the long-term sustainable growth of our business.

So hopefully, I have addressed your question, Steve.

Steve Silver (Security Analyst)

Yes, that was helpful. Thank you. So in Q3 specifically, it looks like there was some pressure on the store contribution margins. It sounds like gross margin and delivery costs were impacted a bit. Do you expect that trend to continue over the near term? And maybe what are the company's thoughts about the margin profile moving forward?

Yongchen Lu (CEO)

Okay, yes, Steve, I will take this one. Thank you for your question. Yes, the lower store contribution margin in Q3 was mostly because of higher delivery revenue mix led by the delivery war in China. Those platforms gave out aggressive subsidies trying to take in market share from the competitors. We would think this would be a temporary play in our view. So in the first nine months of 2024 and 2025, our company-owned store contribution margins were consistent at 8.1%. And we aim to further expand that to mid- to high-teens by enhancing gross margins and driving same-store sales and also the network optimization. Essentially, we need to continue to close some high-rent loss-making stores and we open high-quality new stores.

We plan to further improve our gross margins through supply chain optimizations, increase pricing on delivery platforms, high-margin new product launch, and optimize the recipe of existing core products. By doing so, we expect, okay, we'll achieve double-digit store level margin next year.

Steve Silver (Security Analyst)

Great. And one last one, if I may. The company has discussed focusing on strategic special channel stores under the franchise model. I was curious if there's any information about the performance of some of these stores.

Yongchen Lu (CEO)

Yeah, sure. So I mean, as of the end of September of 2025, we have over 60 stores in those special channels, including high-speed rail, stations, airports, highway rest areas, hospitals, etc. Those stores at the special channels perform very, very well, generating store contribution margin of mid- and even high-teens EBITDA margin. And the payback is around two years. So I mean, we have gained lots of interest from the sub-franchisees which have access to those special channels. In China, there are thousands, tens of thousands of such special channel locations. So we have seen great momentum in these channels, and we're expecting to open much more next year.

Steve Silver (Security Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much for taking the questions, and best of luck the rest of the year.

Yongchen Lu (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for the questions. As a reminder, to ask questions, please press star one one and wait for a name to be announced. At this time, there are no further questions. So with that, that concludes today's question and answer session. I would like to hand the call back to Yongchen for closing remarks.

Yongchen Lu (CEO)

Yeah, thank you so much for your time. And we are very glad we returned the growth of system sales and also, more important, on the same-store sales. So we are expecting the progress toward the end of the year and even better next year. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Gemma Bakx (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you all very much.

Operator (participant)

That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.