Potbelly - Earnings Call - Q1 2022

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Potbelly Corporation's First Quarter twenty twenty two Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note this event is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms.

Adia Dixon, Potbelly's Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter twenty twenty two earnings call. Our presenters today are Bob Wright, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Steve Surrilas, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please note that we have provided a set of PowerPoint slides that will accompany our prepared remarks. You may access these slides on the Investor Relations section of our website. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions.

I'd like to call your attention to our cautionary statements on slide two, and note that certain comments made in this call will contain forward looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. Any such statements, including our outlook for 2022 or any other future periods, should be considered forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance nor should they be relied upon as representing management's views as of any subsequent date. Forward looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, and events or results could differ materially from those presented due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Additional detailed information concerning these risks regarding our business and the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements and other information that will be given today can be found in our Form 10 ks under the headings Risk Factors and MD and A and in our subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at sec.gov.

During the call, there will also be a discussion of some items that do not conform to US generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix to the investor presentation and press release issued this afternoon, both of which are available in the Investors tab of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Bob.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Adia, and good afternoon all. Thank you for joining us today. As always, I would like to begin today's call by thanking our employees for their continuous hard work and positive energy. Our people are the heartbeat of our brand, and it is with their dedication that we continue to deliver our craveable quality food and good vibe service to our loyal customers. In a word, we trust them, and we know our customers do as well.

I'm so proud of our associates, and I'm grateful they choose Potbelly as the place to grow their careers. Now let's begin on Slide three, where I'll provide a brief overview of the first quarter twenty twenty two. Revenues of $98,200,000 increased by 25.8% compared to the first quarter of twenty twenty one, and same store sales increased by 24.4% as compared to Q1 of twenty twenty one. Following Omicron and weather related headwinds early in the quarter, same store sales gained momentum at an accelerated pace, and we're extremely excited to have achieved record AUV performance in the month of March. This momentum was supported by notable success in our digital channels as well as significant recovery in our airport and CBD shop types.

In March, CBD shops delivered their strongest volume and a v AUV performance since the onset of the pandemic. We're particularly encouraged by the recovery of these shop types. Our expectation is that they will serve as a tailwind supporting our broader portfolio as we continue along our path to growth. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was a loss of $300,000 which although negative, still represents a significant improvement compared to a loss of $6,600,000 for the first quarter twenty twenty one. Turning to Slide four, I would like to highlight our strategic successes in the quarter.

During the period, we renewed our focus on food innovation and food focused promotional initiatives, including the rollout of our seasonal red velvet cookie for Valentine's Day and buy one get one free promotion celebrating our forty fifth anniversary and National Meatball Day. We've also seen strong improvements in our catering business following successful promotional activity, including a focus on social catering for occasions such as the Super Bowl and March Madness. Additionally, we have further invested in our digital marketing and paid social advertising campaigns, which have yielded sizable increases to sales dollars and daily transactions. Following the rollout of our upgraded tech stack, we also enjoyed continued positive response from our customers as well as increased enrollment and engagement in our Perks loyalty program. Not only have our digital platform investments enhanced customer value, but they've also driven top line performance through increased check, traffic, and accessibility to our shops with the various order and service channels that meet our customers' needs.

We are diligently aware of and focused on the macro environmental headwinds in our business today, especially the cost, availability, and quality of talent necessary to continue growing our brand. We've implemented a number of new initiatives to strengthen the workplace environment for our dedicated associates, thus driving stronger employee satisfaction and retention, which have resulted in continued improvements in our overall customer satisfaction. For example, we've successfully rolled out our digital tipping in all of our shops. Our customers now have the ability to demonstrate their appreciation directly to our associates for delivering our special good vibe service. We've seen extremely encouraging results from this initiative, including better service for our customers and better pay for our associates.

We will continue to make enhancements in our workplace with balanced goals of driving a positive employee environment and enhanced customer satisfaction. Lastly, we've been very active in executing against our Franchise Growth Acceleration initiative announced last quarter. We're building our pipeline of multi franchise candidates. We've enhanced our franchising and refranchising market planning as well as sales and marketing tactics. We also continue to develop and implement internal control systems, processes and tools that will strengthen Potbelly as a franchisor of choice.

We look forward to building further relationships with potential franchisees as we move toward our goal of refranchising approximately 25% of our company units over the next three years and sign deals for new shop development area agreements. I'd also like to briefly highlight that we have aligned the company's internal controls and expenses with certain digital and marketing expenses now carried at the shop level as we shift to a more franchise focused organization. Later in today's presentation, as we discuss SHOP level margins, Steve will provide a more detailed explanation of this presentation change. Franchisees and franchise candidates are happy to see us align our SHOP P and Ls to reflect their business model. I will now turn the call over to Steve to detail our financial performance in the first quarter.

Steve?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to Slide five of presentation, where we outline the progression of average unit volume, or AUV, as well as same store sales throughout the first quarter twenty twenty two and the month of April. As you can see, we continue to report steady growth in same store sales in each period this year. More important is the evolution of our AUVs. We experienced a drop in AUVs in January from fourth quarter levels due to seasonality, weather and Omicron impact.

However, starting in February, momentum in the business accelerated, resulting in record AUVs in the month of March. So far, we are sustaining this momentum into the second quarter. Turning to Slide six, I'll walk you through our income statement and specific financial performance for the 2022 compared to the first quarter of twenty twenty one. During the first quarter, total revenues were $98,200,000 an increase of 25.8% compared to $78,100,000 in the prior year quarter. This was driven by a combination of increased traffic, improved staffing and customer service, successful marketing and promotions, our new menu launched last year and strategic price increases.

While all of our shop types performed well, our previously lagging CBD and airport locations showed notable recovery. We reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2,300,000 compared to a loss of $6,600,000 in the year ago period. The previously mentioned headwinds and seasonality impacted sales early in the quarter along with heightened inflation, which placed pressure on margins. That said, we are encouraged by recent trends. Our G and A costs were $8,500,000 or 8.7% of total revenues compared to $7,200,000 or 9.2% of total revenues in the first quarter of twenty twenty one.

The decrease on a percentage basis was largely due to top line leverage. The increase on a dollar basis was driven primarily by compensation as multiple senior leadership team positions were vacant in Q1 twenty twenty one, and our CEO is receiving a $1 salary in his first year. As we turn the discussion to the components of SHOP margin, I want to highlight the accounting reclassification Bob mentioned earlier. As we continue to pivot our business towards being a franchise focused organization, we have adjusted our shop level margins to better align with this shift. Shops now carry certain advertising and marketing expenses, including fees to support our scaled media spend based on a percentage of sales.

This realignment best allocates shop level costs. To reflect this adjustment, we will be providing a reclassification of shop level margins for the past four quarters on our Investor Relations website to support easier comparison. The SHOP margin components reflected here incorporate the reclassification and show up primarily in the other operating expenses line. To be clear, we are undertaking these changes on a voluntary basis, and they only involve the geography statement to be more consistent with industry practice. Food, beverage and packaging costs, or F and P, were $27,300,000 or 28% of SHOP sales versus $21,500,000 or 27.7 percent of SHOP sales in the year ago period.

The increase in F and P on an absolute basis was due to higher volumes and higher input costs, primarily proteins and packaging. As we've discussed previously, we are working to mitigate the impact of increased input costs and have optimized our cost saving actions to drive the greatest value for our customers. While the inflationary environment is expected to persist, we continue to prioritize our efforts to protect our margins and bottom line. Our 5.4% pricing increase enacted in February helped support those objectives. Labor expenses were $33,300,000 or 34.1% of SHOP sales compared to $28,600,000 or 36.9% of SHOP sales in the year ago period.

The increase on an absolute basis is due to an increase in staffing to service higher volumes as well as continued wage increases in line with the broader industry. During the quarter, we saw our average hourly wage increase 14% compared to the year ago period. Despite these headwinds, we drove labor more than 200 basis points lower year over year as a percentage of sales. In an effort to recruit and retain our employees, we're proud to have implemented new recruiting measures, referral programs, and as Bob alluded to, our tipping program. This program has provided over $1,000,000 of additional compensation directly to our employees.

Other operating expenses were $18,100,000 or 18.6% of SHOP sales compared to $14,000,000 or 18.1% of SHOP sales in the year ago period due mainly to the aforementioned increase in and reallocation of certain marketing and advertising expenses to align with the shift to a franchise focused business as well as an increase in third party delivery fees. Shop level margins under our new presentation were 5%, a meaningful improvement compared to negative 0.2% in the year ago period driven by strong top line performance and cost discipline. It's also worth noting that just as sales built through the quarter, margin performance was strongest in March as well. While CBD sales recovery was significant, their overall impact on margin remains a slight headwind. Our liquidity position at the end of the first quarter was $19,500,000 which consisted of $9,500,000 in cash on hand and $10,000,000 available on our credit facility.

Turning to Slide seven, I will talk you through our same store sales metrics for each of our shop types versus the year ago period. Each of our shop types except drive thrus delivered growth in same store sales on a year over year basis. We saw a substantial recovery in our airport and CBD locations with the return to travel and employees coming back to the office. We are excited that our airport and CBD locations are returning to strength. We expect our continued recovery to serve as a meaningful tailwind for Potbelly.

Moving to Slide eight, we illustrate how our channel mix has evolved since the first quarter of twenty twenty one. We are pleased to see the percentage of sales attributed to our digital channels increased by 300 basis points in the quarter to 39%. This reinforces the positive response our customers have had to the functionality enabled by our upgraded tech stack, including app only promotions and our Perks loyalty program. Additionally, we saw a positive uptick in our catering performance, driven by increases in both office and social catering occasions. While in shop dining saw a slight step down in contribution sequentially, primarily due to weather and Omicron related challenges, we are pleased to see our dedicated customers continue to come into our shops at an elevated rate year over year.

AUVs for the quarter were slightly below $20,000 which is attributable to the aforementioned challenges in the early parts of the quarter. However, we saw a meaningful rebound in AUVs as the quarter advanced. We are thrilled that momentum continues to build as we work towards our long term targets. Before I pass the call back to Bob, I'd like to turn to Slide nine to discuss our 2022 priorities and guidance. First, we would like to reiterate our commitment to our 2022 priorities that we shared with you on our last earnings call.

We are making good progress the first few months of the year. We are continuing to execute against our five pillar strategy and long term growth driving initiatives, strengthening our market presence and making strategic disciplined investments in marketing, development and operations. Additionally, we remain on track to deliver our 2022 guidance of record AUVs, double digit growth in same store sales and shop level margins in the low double digit range. For the second quarter, we are expecting revenue of between $110,000,000 and $116,000,000 as well as shock bubble margins between 911%, a notable increase on a sequential basis. With that, I will pass things over back to Bob.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Steve. On Slide 10, I'd like to briefly remind everyone of our five pillar strategy, which continues to serve us well as the foundation for our three year strategic growth objectives, which we unveiled last quarter. Since establishing our five pillar strategy, we have enjoyed great success on our path to growth. Most recently with strong receptivity to food innovation and promotions, digital marketing engagement and ongoing improvements to our staffing and training programs. You've seen and will continue to see our strategic initiatives ladder up to these five pillars supporting the achievement of our growth goals.

To wrap up my prepared comments on Slide 11, I'd like to remind you of the 2024 growth targets we unveiled last quarter. Number one, AUVs of $1,300,000 achieved through continued shop recovery, customer service and satisfaction and our target marketing efforts leveraging digital and our Perks loyalty program. Number two, shop level margins of greater than 16%, supported by top line leverage and aggressive cost discipline, including labor as well as supply chain and food cost management. Number three, refranchising approximately 25% of our company shops is significant as we move towards a franchise growth company. And number four, achieving franchise unit growth at a pace of at least 10% through our shop development area agreements or SDAAs.

We have and continue to work diligently to expand our franchise marketing and sales tactics as well as the tools develop our pipeline of multiunit franchise candidates. We look forward to building upon the great momentum we achieved in the first quarter as we progress towards our goals. We see our long term U. S. Potential to reach 2,000 units and at least 85% franchise system.

As I said last quarter, we have the team, we have the brand and we have the strategy to deliver. With that, I will now turn the call back over to the operator so we can address your questions. Operator?

Speaker 0

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. And the first question comes from Matt Curtis with William Blair. First

Speaker 4

one on pricing. I understand from your comments and from the release you took a 5.4% increase in during the quarter in February. But could you tell us what the cumulative price benefit was in the menu for the full first quarter?

Speaker 3

Sure, Matt. You know, we we spent some time, as you can imagine, like most do, thinking about the right way to put pricing in place to to to accomplish a couple of things. Right? One is to make sure that that we continue to have a a well balanced kind of price value equation for our customers, but also, you know, to offset some of the inflationary headwinds that we had coming our way. And we we didn't quite outrun it completely in terms of the price increase.

We came pretty we came pretty close. We we look at our price increases as not flowing through at a 100%. It's closer to about 80% flow through when we put a price increase in place. And we've been we've been consistent with not just this past price increase, but with with prior price increases that we've seen as well.

Speaker 4

Okay. So are are you planning any additional price increases right now? And, basically, how much price benefits you expect in the menu going forward?

Speaker 3

Yeah. So we we are planning two more price increases through the year, but I would emphasize that, you know, similar to the thoughtfulness that we put into this past price increase that that they're they're discretionary to a certain extent. Right? As we see the inflationary environment evolve as well as the the the consumer behavior environment evolve evolve, we wanna make sure that we are flexible in determining, you know, at what level we wanna adjust those prices. I think based on the way we thought about inflation evolving both on the wage side and on the on the f and p side, the price increases that we've considered should net us out pretty pretty close to even in terms of net margin impact.

So that's inflation versus price increase. That's what we're looking at.

Speaker 2

Yes, Matt, if I can add to Steve's comments on the pricing. And I think you hear a lot of this, this earnings cycle, just a lot of sensitivity to the inflation on the one hand and consumer demand on the other hand and kind of threading that needle. We do see pricing as a necessary move. We talked about it very openly in first quarter. As Steve said, we've got those two discretionary price increases on our calendar for later this year.

We're to be really careful about maintaining value. So we're looking at a lot of things internally that that measure the customer's perception of value and how they're reacting to those price increases and ensuring that, especially for our loyal customers, as you saw us do things like our BOGO offers, some loyalty perks promotion activity, And, even, you know, we're we're, frankly, we're we're very excited to continue to see the value of our three size menu with those skinny sizes gives people our lower price point, and and the, the pick your pair that they can use. So our customer reaction to the price increases has been, sure, some have noticed it, but we're we're really pleased with the flow through and the and the persistent consumer demand. And and that's what's really kinda kinda govern our ability to to price out the inflation, while still holding on to that that consumer demand. But we think we've got all of the right hydraulics in place to balance that out the rest of this year.

Speaker 4

Okay. Understood. So just to kind of close the roof on the pricing discussion, I guess. Your full year restaurant level margin guidance as well as, I guess, the guidance for the second quarter you've provided, does that include the impact of the two price increases you're planning or or not yet?

Speaker 2

It it includes the contemplation of those. Yes, it does. But, again, and metered based on what we think is appropriate I think it's also good to reiterate, as Steve talked about, it also includes the the the marketing funds that are now in the shop margin. So that's fully burdened the way that a lot of franchise p and l's are burdened now.

Speaker 4

Okay. Understood. You know, shifting gears to staffing and wages. I guess, first, just a basic question. What was your wage inflation in the quarter?

How much do you expect in wage inflation for the full year? And are you planning any additional wage increases at this point? So so I guess we'll start there.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I think our go ahead, Steve.

Speaker 3

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't I I think our our just to get to the numbers really quickly. Yeah. We mentioned in the prepared remarks that we saw wage increases at about 14%, and those are associated sort of hourly wage increases for the for the quarter. That's that's versus prior year.

And, you know, we we've, I think, seen a a somewhat of a somewhat of flattening of of the acceleration that we saw kind of last end of last year into this year, and that's that's helpful to us. You know, we we mentioned some things that we're doing to to remain competitive in the marketplace as it relates to some of our recruiting. And as as you heard in the prepared remarks, we've we've instituted a tipping program, which has been beneficial to not just recruitment, but retainment of our of our store level employees.

Speaker 4

Okay. And

Speaker 2

then Yes. Specifically to your question about planned increases, Matt, we Right. We have we have budgeted, you know, relative inflation in wages throughout the year. We are finding that those those tips that we mentioned are able to to help us mitigate what we had thought we would need in terms of natural wage inflation. And, of course, in those markets and there are fewer of those this year than last year where there'll be legislative wage increases.

Obviously, we'll we'll comply with those. But, candidly, in many cases, most cases, we're well ahead of those legislative numbers anyway because the market drove the wages higher.

Speaker 4

Okay. I I guess just talking about staffing more generally. How are your staffing levels right now, either relative to 2019 or to what you would consider to be optimal levels in this environment? And could you tell us what hourly employee and shop manager turnover trends have been like recently?

Speaker 2

Yeah. We don't share those internal trends, but we we we are excited to tell you that our our CHOP turnover numbers, both at the associate level and at the manager level, are well below, the numbers that we get for fast casual as an industry. Of course, fast casual runs a lot lower than, QSR a lot lower than QSR. So we're we're very pleased with our turnover numbers. And, overall staffing, where I think we talked a couple of quarters ago, it was probably one of the worst environments I've seen in over thirty years in the business.

It has gotten better for us. We are back to net, hiring. So and we're retaining and hiring more, associates and more managers than we're losing. And so we're growing our staffing as we head into the busiest season. We we can always use more high quality people, but we're not in crisis mode and and certainly in much, much better position than we were even six months ago.

Our expectation is that many of the the workplace things that we've been working on training and staffing and positioning guidelines and the labor guidelines, the management staffing that we've done, all of that is beginning to bear more and more fruit for us. It's not only showing up in our employee, turnover numbers as those, as I said, are are proving to be very good. We're also seeing, customer satisfaction scores accelerating in a positive direction as well, and that's always a reflection of how the staffing environment is going. So we're we're very pleased with where we are, but not yet satisfied.

Speaker 4

Okay. Got it. I guess just to talk about your your franchising initiatives for a moment. I mean, I know it's still relatively early days, but what what are you specifically working on right now to attract new franchisees to the system? I mean, is it mainly just initial outreach efforts?

Are are you are you a little bit further along in the process where we could potentially expect to hear about some ADAs being signed as as soon as later this year or early next year?

Speaker 2

Yes. We are much further along in initial outreach. We've got marketing campaigns, outreach campaigns. We've got digital marketing campaigns that are underway that that have begun to bear fruit for us. As you as you suspect, we we look forward to making news on any deals that we sign, and we'll do that when we when we sign them, much like we did last week when we issued that press release for our Reef partnership for our, mobile Ghost Kitchen partnership that we have with Reef.

As we have new deals, whether they're refranchising deals or new SDAA deals, we'll make sure that you guys know about them in, you know, in in real time. Suffice it to say though that we have active dialogue with multiple candidates, not only for refranchising, some of the the markets that we are refranchising, but for new territory and SDAAs as well. So we're very comfortable, reiterating our our three year goal of 25% of our shops. We still believe that that'll come at a fairly even pace across those three years, including this year. And and we we're very pleased with the, you know, the interest and the response that we're getting from franchisees.

Speaker 4

Good. Glad to hear look forward to hearing more about that in the future then. I guess final question for me is on digital marketing, which is, based on my understanding, one of the core components that you were getting the system to 1,300,000 over time. It it sounds like your efforts today are primarily focused around really driving engagement with the current core customer base, a few things like leveraging Potbelly Perks loyalty and so on. I was wondering if I could hear your thoughts on using digital marketing to maybe broaden your reach more to other demographic groups.

I'm thinking mainly about outreach to younger customers here.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thanks for that. You're right. We talk a lot about our perks program because those those loyal customers are so important and so valuable to us. But much of the spend that we're investing in that scale media is in fact in awareness building.

So it's digital advertising placed in social arenas that that allows us to create an outreach campaign, building the brand where people either have lapsed awareness or have have limited awareness of the brand. I think we we we as we've shared before, we hold ourselves to a very high standard for the returns on those investments. That's why we continue to talk about it in a scaled manner. We what we look for is overall lift in sales in a group of shops where we make the additional investments. And unlike a lot of, you know, a lot of ecommerce where you're simply tracking the click throughs and the online purchases, we're actually measuring pre post net of control sales lift, overall sales lift because we recognize that much of our advertising drives foot traffic into the shops.

And it is that three to one expected return that allows us continue to incrementally scale that media as we take each step. We test it. We prove that it works for us. We're comfortable that the investment is delivering returns, and then we take the next step, to expand it a little further. So in fact, quite a bit of it is is awareness building advertising, and and we're very pleased with how it's working for us.

Speaker 4

K. Sounds good. Well, listen, guys. Thanks very much for the time, and good luck with the rest of the quarter.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Matt.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Matt.

Speaker 0

We still have time for questions. We have no further questions. So this concludes our question and answer session, and I will turn the conference back over to

Speaker 3

management for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, operator. I know our call is crossing over with, a lot of reporting today, and and, so please know that we are looking forward to any follow-up calls, and and plan to do a lot of those, throughout the evening and tomorrow. But, for today, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for your time today. We're excited about how 2022 has begun and, what is in store for the remainder of the year.

We believe Potbelly is at the forefront of growth, and we look forward to unlocking the company's fullest potential. We appreciate your interest in and support for Potbelly, and we look forward to meeting many of you and many of our investors in the upcoming William Blair and B. Riley conferences that Steve and I will be attending. So have a great night, everyone. Thanks for dialing in.

Speaker 4

The conference has now concluded.

Speaker 1

Thank you for attending

Speaker 0

today's presentation,

Speaker 3

and you may now disconnect.