Driven Brands Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:DRVN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jonathan Fitzpatrick: But I mean, just to put a fine point on it, you’re 50 bps expansion is correct.

Simeon Gutman: Okay, and then one follow up on Car Wash, I want to ask about this premiumization. That’s happening, not everywhere. Obviously, one competitor is doing it, but there do seem to be higher price points out in the marketplace. Curious, does that help you in that your price points may be lower? Or are you are you creating new services to match that from a differentiation perspective, like how did that play into the Car Wash business in the next year or so?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick: Yeah, the pricing in the industry has been pretty consistent Simeon over the last number of years that we’ve been in the space. So we’ve not seen any major movement. Certainly in terms of lowering price, we’ve seen the addition of premium products in there. So you’ve seen at the top end of the range, higher price points, I think that it’s important that we have a solid barbell strategy when it comes to pricing so that we’ve got the right entry level pricing that will drive trial and acquisition, which is obviously the feeder for getting people to become members. So I think we are continuing to sort of focus on a barbell strategy there. And as Danny mentioned, we’re working on some tests right now, which we think could be interesting to leverage pricing in a accretive way to make sure that we have the right members in place in that car wash business.

So I would say we constantly look at it, but again, sort of this barbell approach is how we’re thinking about it.

Simeon Gutman: Okay, thanks, guys. Good luck.

Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Phillip Blee from William Blair. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, this is Sabrina on for Phillip. Thanks for taking my question. How do you view the health of the retail customer in the fourth quarter? And then what are some of the key growth drivers for improvement in 2024?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick: Thanks, Sabrina, I would say that we continue to be pleased with the overall health of our retail customer. Again, I think it’s important to remember the balance of the system wide sales and driven in that 50% of our customer base is, commercial or B2B. We’ve not seen anything that would tell us that we’ve got stress coming with the US consumer, the retail consumer. However, we watch it very closely. But at this point, we’re sort of not seeing any major signs, major movement in sort of the health of the US consumer at this point.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay, thank you. That’s helpful. And then a quick follow up your guide for the new Car Wash openings are only international. So can you talk to us about the performance and then growth drivers of that segment going forward?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick: Yeah, we don’t split out sort of the details on US versus International. All I will tell you is that, Tracy and the team in Europe have done an exceptional job over the last three years in terms of managing that business. And there is a lot of whitespace in Europe. And I think that we are putting some capital to work there to open. I think we guided to about 5 to 10 new store openings this year. So obviously that business continues to perform very strongly. And we are not going to put incremental capital into the US business until we feel that business is performing to the expectations we expect.

Unidentified Analyst: That is helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, our Q&A session has now ended. This concludes this conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

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