Restaurant Brands International Inc. (NYSE:QSR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, Dennis, thank you so much for the question. I’d say on — particularly on BK U.S., that’s been the most focus on this front. Like I said, we — I think what’s really encouraging that we’re seeing some good momentum on the sales side. Reclaim the Flame looks like it’s working, some of the new advertising and focus on the Whoppers is working and that’s helped both sales and as I mentioned, profitability, which was up about 40% in the fourth quarter. So we’re hoping to build on that momentum. That said, as I also mentioned, there are some franchisees who are going through some difficulties, whether it’s operational or capital structures, and we solve one of those situations with an insolvency that happened here recently. And I think our goal, as we look through those situations, will be to make sure that we’re thoughtful about all the different stakeholders and make sure we get to the right outcomes through those processes to make sure that all of those businesses are set up to be operationally and financially successful for the long run.

Part of that may be closures, and we’ll work through each of those individually and make sure we get to the right outcomes for the long run, and we’ll keep you updated on any of those outcomes as we go in the coming quarters.

Operator: Our next question is from Chris Carril from RBC Capital Markets.

Chris Carril: Patrick, great to hear from you again, and congrats to Josh, and I would also like to say thank you and best wishes Jose as well. So encouraging results out of BK U.S. and it seems like there are positive early results from an reception to Reclaim the Flame. So Patrick, you highlighted the opportunity to expand 4-wall EBITDA over the next couple of years. And Josh, we heard you highlight the acceleration of some of the investment spend in the plan. But given early results you’re seeing and given your new roles, Patrick and Josh, it would be great to hear any additional thoughts on the plan here going forward and whether you see opportunity to kind of rethink investment levels just given the early momentum you’re seeing?

Patrick Doyle: So I’ll start. Look, we are excited by the momentum in the business. I think we’re getting a lot of things right. We’ve got real progress that we need to make to continue to drive that success in the BK system. Very different situation, and I’ll loop back to the previous question a little bit, then with Tim’s, which you’ve got a lot of franchisees in Canada, debt levels are low, the general health of the franchisee base is good overall. There are certainly exceptions. But the level of profitability in Canada overall is strong. We want to get it back to the highs where it was and even higher than that and making great progress on that. But in the U.S. system, BK, I think the highest level of profits in the history of the brand was something like $184,000 in EBITDA.

The $175,000 million gets us close to that. But we’ve really got to get it higher than that. So we’ve got to generate ongoing growth in the top line and in the bottom line for that business. We’ve got to work through some situations, as you talked about, with some of the franchisees. But ultimately, if we’ve got the averages move in the right direction, the health of the system is continuing to get better. It certainly makes it easier to work through with some that have got capital structures that are not what you want them to be and kind of work through those situations. But from a level of investment, the Reclaim the Flame, I think what it did for us is give us an opportunity to prove that investing in this business is going to generate good returns for the franchisees and for the company in growing the overall health of the business and the guest experience, and you can see that it is working.