Mister Car Wash, Inc. (NYSE:MCW) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Unidentified Analyst: Sorry guys, it’s Pete on for Justin. Thanks for taking the question. First, just around some of the top line stuff. Can you give us a sense for the average ticket assumption that’s underlying the comp plan this year, the zero to 3%, presumably lower than it was this year, but just curious about that. And with respect to the first half comps, I think you said flattish. Just given what you have seen so far, should we be thinking potentially the negative comps in the first quarter, then maybe a little better in 2Q? Just trying to better understand what you are seeing at this point.

Jed Gold: Yes, Pete. So, the average ticket, it works just a little bit differently in this business than what you would see in traditional retail. You have got an average ticket on the retail side and average ticket for the UWC side of the business. It’s not something that we disclose externally. But we do have just a little bit of pricing that we took last August that’s impacting that average ticket. We believe about 1.5 percentage points is the overall impact of the comp, and that’s having some impact, but we don’t have any other planned pricing increases built into the model for 2023. So, what we are seeing in Q4, relatively consistent, just knowing that we will anniversary that August increase here in August 2022, obviously.

And then how you laid out the kind of the first half, second half, it’s €“ like we said, it’s expected to be at the low end of the range. So, that’s 0% plus or minus in the first quarter in particular, first half, and then expect to be at the high end of the range during the second half of the year, largely driven by just how the lap plays out and then just the natural ramp as you think about the 28 greenfields that we brought online in 2022, as those start to pick up momentum and get picked up in the comp.

Unidentified Analyst: That makes sense. Thanks. And then just a follow-up, just on the marketing, I know there is a lot of initiatives out there. The member discounts or the new member discounts you guys have been testing kind of new locations, just curious how those have performed relative to your expectations, retention rates. Is that something you think you continue to do, or do you just try to tweak that going forward?

John Lai: Yes. So listen, surprisingly, we are still very early stage in that journey as well. And some of the offers that we have extended to try and accelerate the ramp of our member base have been pretty elementary to be honest with you. And part of it goes back to just our gun shy discount averse mindset, where we have done such an amazing job of building a really big member base on a per store basis without having to do any types of discounts that there is a whole chorus inside of our organization saying why, don’t give away the farm. At the same time, there is another voice that’s saying, well, perhaps we can get there quicker if we were to do some more clever tactics. And so to that end, we are similar to our retail promotions, doing A, B, C, D, E, F, G, testing.

And we will probably know a whole lot more a year from now in terms of which ones are really moving the needle and which ones aren’t. But it kind of speaks to just our conservative approach. So, we are €“ as old school as it sounds, it’s the slow and steady wins the race. And we have gotten there without having to put a whole lot of pressure on the customer or at store level. And we are very thankful that we haven’t had to get hyper-aggressive as others have with some of their discount strategies.

Unidentified Analyst: Understood. Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it.

Operator: And our next question will come from Chris O’Cull with Stifel. Please go ahead.

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