Brinker International, Inc. (NYSE:EAT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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I think it’s very, very competitive. Versus like, doing an offer on the part of a meal, or something that you’d have to buy other full price items to complete a meal. So I don’t, I don’t anticipate needing to change that offer, and I’m excited to see what 21 weeks will do for our business versus four, based on what we’ve learned what four did for our business. So, I’m very confident that that plan is going to work, and we’ll continue to monitor. We don’t want to be naive about what the competitors do, but I do feel like we’re in a place – we’re in a very good place right now to continue to close that traffic gap.

Jeff Farmer: Okay, that’s very, very helpful. And just one quick follow-up, so you shared a bunch of information in terms of your pricing expectations for 2024, in terms of maybe some early incremental pricing in the year and then some rollover pricing, but if you put all the pieces together based on what you know right now, what would you expect your FY ’24 menu pricing number to be?

Joe Taylor: Jeff for the year, we’ll be in that mid-single digit range. Again starting, you’d expect to see the first quarter, you’re going to have a little bit higher up in that upper single digit range, just thinking about price, working its way down into the mid-single digits as you go through the quarters and exiting the year at that level too.

Jeff Farmer: Okay, thank you guys.

Operator: Your next question is coming from Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays.

Jeffrey Bernstein: Great, thank you, Two questions, the first one. If I just think about this past quarter, and following up on that pricing comment, you were running nine points of price, the traffic was down 8 points. And looking ahead, it sounds like you said the comp for the full year is expected to be mid-single digit positive, with pricing mid-single digits. So that’s assuming – again unless there’s big moves in mix, relatively flattish traffic. Relative to the current down 8%, it seems like a major move, and the industry we know, hasn’t seen flat to positive traffic in 15 years. So I’m just wondering, Kevin, I know you mentioned the three drivers as to what effective advertising does, but any concern or anything that would derail that, where the traffic could fall short of that – return to flattish again, it just seems like a big move from traffic down 8% with the current macro uncertainty so large. And then I had one follow-up.

Mika Ware: Okay. Hi, Jeff, it’s Mika. So there are some nuances in those numbers, when we’re speaking in ranges. So I don’t think that we’re planning to go flat on traffic. So we still know that the industry has been negative, and we have that factored into our expectations for F ’24. There’s really some movement or there’s – there some latitude in your price and mix assumptions to make all that work.

Jeffrey Bernstein: Okay. And then I think last quarter you mentioned that the consumer was maybe more discerning and skittish, and they were I think you said episodic pullback. So I’m just wondering, has that changed over the past three months? Do you think maybe that’s eased a little bit and then I mean I assume that your response would be your value offer. So I’m just wondering what is the current mix? However you define value that Chili’s is at today versus maybe where it was a year two ago? Thanks

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