Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc. (NYSE:ARCO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Daniel Schleiniger: Great. Thanks, Mariano. And we have another one here from [indiscernible] from Morgan Stanley. Her question is, will your expansion strategy or operations will be impacted in Argentina with the impending change in leadership towards the end of the year? And that one is for you, Marcelo.

Marcelo Rabach: Okay. Thank you [Gladys] for the question. Last Sunday, there were primary presidential elections in Argentina, but there is still at least one more round of elections in October, and it will be inappropriate, I think, to speculate on the outcome, especially because there are three different candidates within 3 percentage points in terms of the votes that they received in the primary. So I think that anything can happen in Argentina, and we cannot speculate around that. But having said that, it’s important to notice that the business itself remains very strong in Argentina even these days with systemwide comparable sales still growing well above inflation. In fact, our business in Argentina is operating with one of the highest levels of guest traffic in the region.

And we continue to execute our strategy in the market to shield our market share, which is very high in the country and to continue to produce excellent results like it was a case in Argentina for the recent quarters. It’s important to mention that this kind of volatility in Argentina is not new. I’ve been in the business for more than 30 years, and a big part of those years, I spent my professional life in Argentina. We’ve been dealing with these kind of situations for many years. And I think that we have the right knowledge and the right tools to make the best with the initiatives that we are executing in terms of generating the best possible results in Argentina.

Daniel Schleiniger: Great. Thanks, Marcelo. And we actually don’t have any more questions in the queue. So we’ve reached the end of the Q&A session today. Thank you, once again, all of you for your interest in Arcos Dorados and for joining today’s webcast. We look forward to speaking with you again in the middle of November on our third quarter 2023 earnings webcast. Until then, stay safe, and have a great day.