Jack in the Box Inc. (NASDAQ:JACK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Andrew Charles: Thank you.

Tim Mullany: Yeah.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Gregory Francfort with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is open.

Gregory Francfort: Hey. Thanks for the question. You just started RFPC last week, the appetite for development and maybe even more for 2024 among franchisees seems to be declining a lot just the credit environment and the margin environment, can you maybe talk about like, just update us on where the return profile looks like of a Jack unit or in terms of the development agreements are there Ts in those agreements that you can exercise. Just anything around that to kind of help us understand kind of the acceleration in unit growth? Thanks.

Darin Harris: Yeah. I think the way to think about it is, because development takes so much time, a lot of the units over the next two years are already in the pipeline. So the number of sites that we have had approved. We have a line of sight into the pipeline for the next couple of years. I think to your point, I think, there’s natural fear because of the margin challenges out there, and so, that’s just natural across all brands. But what you have to remember is, we still have a pipeline that’s already there and we will continue to focus on building that pipeline.

Tim Mullany: And on the ROI side, Jack in the Box especially this acquisition of Del Taco we have got meaningful knowledge sharing opportunities on the construction and development side. So we are really targeting to achieve is a four-year or less payback on invested cash to new builds, which we think would be top of class across our peer set.

Gregory Francfort: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Nick Setyan with Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Nick Setyan: Thank you. Will the tech investments continue beyond FY 2023?

Darin Harris: Yeah. It will not be as substantial, but we will continue to make tech investments and digital transformation investments that we think will either help us become more efficient in G&A or drive topline and our limit at the restaurant level. So just the POS we have to do at the restaurant level, because it’s the heart and soul of us being able to find ways to drive additional margin through things like automation or AI tools that can help us execute at the store level more profitably.

Tim Mullany: And year-over-year to underscore that, so we really leaned in on technology investments to modernize our systems and infrastructure, we are allocating roughly $10 million or so of incremental investment and 2023 versus 2022. And as Darin mentioned, it’s really to firm up our digital capabilities and web capabilities, online ordering. It’s also to modernize our antiquated POS systems, as Darin, mentioned, which had been in there for decades and are no longer supported, as well as corporate ERP systems that have been here and are also no longer supported. So we are leaning on this. It’s a one-time structural shift. We don’t expect it to increase significantly beyond that.

Nick Setyan: Is there any way to parse out the commodity and labor inflation between the two brands. And then on the Del Taco side, as 2014 to 2016, is that kind of think — the way we should think about that medium-term and beyond 2023 or do you expect margin to tick back up to the high-teens or beyond over sort of medium to longer term?