Wingstop Inc. (NASDAQ:WING) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Wingstop Inc. (NASDAQ:WING) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 1, 2024

Wingstop Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.975, expectations were $0.76. WING isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Wingstop Fiscal First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, May 1, 2024. On the call today are Michael Skipworth, President and Chief Executive Officer and Alex Kaleida, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex. Please go ahead.

Alex Kaleida: Thank you. And welcome to the Fiscal First quarter 2024 earnings conference call for Wingstop. Our results were published earlier this morning and are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.wingstop.com. Our discussion today includes forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from what we currently expect. Our SEC filings describe various risks that could affect our future operating results and financial condition. We use certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. Presentation of such information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are contained in our earnings release. Lastly, for the Q&A session, we ask that you please each keep the one question and a follow-up to allow as many participants as possible to ask a question. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Michael.

Michael Skipworth: Thank you, Alex. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. Our first quarter results showcase the continued strength and staying power of the strategies we are executing against and further solidify Wingstop’s category of one positioning. Coming off of an industry leading year in 2023, the momentum in our business continued into our first quarter as we delivered 21.6% same-store sales growth, which was almost entirely driven by transaction growth. We opened 65 net new restaurants, a 14% growth rate. Company owned restaurant margins were 25.5%, highlighting the effectiveness of our supply chain strategy and our best-in-class unit economics. And we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $50.3 million, representing a 45% growth rate over the prior year.

As a result of the strength in our business and the strong start to the year, we are increasing our 2024 comp guidance from mid-single-digits to low-double-digit same-store sales growth. I am extremely proud of our team members, brand partners and supplier partners for delivering these results and truly humbled to be part of a brand that is experiencing such unprecedented growth. And yet we believe we have so much more growth in front of us. It’s hard to believe that just a little over two years ago, we hosted an Investor Day and outlined our path to grow average unit volumes to $2 million from roughly $1.5 million at the time. At that Investor Day, we shared our multiyear sales driving strategies of scaling brand awareness, expanding our delivery channel, menu innovation, leveraging our digital guest database to fuel data-driven marketing and digital transformation.

Fast forward to today, two years later, and our AUVs are now over $1.9 million and quickly approaching our $2 million target. And while our execution against these strategies has delivered two year stacked same-store sales growth in Q1 alone in excess of 40%, we believe we have meaningful growth in each of these strategies as we look ahead. It’s an incredibly exciting time at Wingstop. As we scale toward our vision of becoming a top 10 global restaurant brand, we remain anchored in the foundation of our strategy, our people and our culture, what we refer to as the Wingstop way. The pillars of our strategy have not changed over the years. Sustaining same-store sales growth, maintaining best-in-class returns and accelerating growth. We are very pleased with our first quarter results and excited to be measuring record levels within our brand health metrics.

Importantly, we continue to measure record levels in value and quality scores as our brand partners and team members are focused on operational excellence and delivering a great guest experience. And our disciplined approach to menu pricing is paying dividends. The consumer continues to prioritize quality and value when deciding how to spend their discretionary dollars. We believe that indulgent Wingstop occasion delivers upon both quality and value and has us uniquely positioned, which you can see in our first quarter results where our 21.6% comp was almost entirely driven by transaction growth. We are making great progress in closing the gap in awareness to top QSRs, but our opportunity remains meaningful. During the quarter, system wide sales grew by 37%, which delivers additional firepower in our advertising fund to invest meaningful dollars behind our opportunity to expand brand awareness.

Our increased media investment is providing new opportunities such as advertising in the NFL playoffs and becoming the presenting sponsor for the NBA’s Wednesday primetime match up, just to highlight a couple of examples. Our highly effective media strategy focused on live sports combined with a breakthrough creative is driving brand awareness. We are making Wingstop more top of mind and filling the top of the funnel with new guests. It’s especially evident with the expansion of our digital database, which has surged to more than 40 million users. In fact, Q1 marked our highest level of new guest acquisition on record. While we are seeing growth across all cohorts and income levels, these new guests we’re bringing into the brand are demonstrating a higher frequency than our traditional guests.

But yet, I believe we are just scratching the surface on the opportunity to leverage our digital database. As our restaurant AUVs expand, digital sales also continue to increase, now accounting for 68% of sales in Q1. This record level of digital sales comes at a time when we are rolling out our proprietary tech stack, My Wingstock, which we believe is an enabler to our aspirational goal of digitizing every transaction. My Wingstop has created a great deal of excitement with our brand partners and restaurant team members. I’m excited to report our rollout is on track to be completed by the end of the second quarter and early results are encouraging. The investments we are making in technology allows us to leverage our growing database and create an entirely new level of personalization with our guests, one that we believe over time will drive conversion, retention rates and frequency.

We believe the brands that will win drive the most relevant and personalized message as well as create ease of accessibility for the consumer. The database we have amassed, combined with the investments we have made in technology provide an incredible advantage for Wingstop. Our top line sales growth and AUV expansion has strengthened the Wingstop unit economics. Brand partner returns have also been bolstered by the progress we have made against our supply chain strategy, a strategy that is designed to minimize volatility in food costs and create greater predictability within restaurant margins. With an AUV of $1.9 million and a low upfront investment of around $500,000 on average, our brand partners are enjoying industry leading unlevered cash-on-cash returns of more than 70%, which has fueled significant demand for growth.

Our brand partners recognize how unique these returns are and our focus on accelerating growth, which is showing up in our development pipeline. We had a record 1,400 restaurant commitments under development agreements at the start of 2024. Brand partners are eager to put more restaurants in the ground and reinvest back into Wingstop. Our vision is to scale Wingstop into a global brand. And I’ve shared in prior calls how we believe our international business is supercharged for growth. There is tremendous excitement across the globe as consumers have the opportunity to experience our flavor for the first time. Same-store sales trends resemble that of the U.S. business, double digit growth stacked on top of double digit growth in the prior year and primarily driven by transactions.

Averaging across all markets outside of the U.S., we have nearly doubled our AUV since the start of 2022. In the U.K., AUVs now exceed $2.5 million, leading our U.K. brand partner to accelerate growth and expand to more than 40 units. Our newest markets, Canada, Puerto Rico, Korea are executing that U.K. playbook and achieving record sales weeks. We believe our new markets are scaling awareness on a curve that draws parallel to the success we are experiencing in the U.K. The strength we’re having in our global development and visibility into our pipeline gives us the confidence to increase our 2024 outlook to a range of 275 to 295 net new restaurants. This implies a unit growth rate well above our three to five year target of 10% plus. The strength of the Wingstop business and our execution against our strategy that has proven power continued to position us on a path to achieve our vision of becoming a top 10 global restaurant brand.

I truly believe at Wingstop, we have the most talented team in the industry. I want to thank the entire Wingstop team. All of our team members in the restaurants and in our global support center, our supplier partners and our brand partners for their dedication to serving the world’s flavor. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Alex.

Alex Kaleida: Thank you, Michael. As you just heard, our first quarter results showcase the incredible momentum of the Wingstop brand and the continued strength and focus we have in executing our strategy. We delivered 36.8% growth in system wide sales in the first quarter, resulting in our first $1 billion quarter. Our AUV is now above $1.9 million and we have clear line of sight to moving past our target of $2 million. System wide sales growth is providing us with incredible fuel in our advertising fund to invest behind our proven strategy to sustain same-store sales growth. Total revenue increased 34.1% to $145.8 million versus the prior year. Royalty revenues, franchise fees and other revenue increased by $18.9 million in Q1, driven primarily by 276 net franchise openings since the prior year comparable period and a 21.6% increase in domestic same-store sales, primarily driven by transaction growth.

Company owned restaurant sales totaled $28.5 million in Q1, an increase of $5.5 million, primarily due to a 6.2% increase in company owned same-store sales, driven primarily by transaction growth and seven net new restaurants versus the prior year comparable period. Included in our company owned restaurant portfolio is the original Wingstop, an almost 30 year old restaurant that is one of the highest owned restaurants in the system and is comping similar to the rest of our company owned portfolio. A testament to the fact we haven’t found a ceiling yet. Central to our strategy is maintaining our best-in-class returns. We are encouraged by the progress we have made in our supply chain strategy. As you have heard us say over the past few calls, creating predictability and minimizing volatility in our core commodity, bone and wings, we believe this can create a flywheel for development.

Working with our strategic supplier partners, we have been able to move the majority of our buy away from the spot market to provide our brand partners with more predictable food costs. Our target remains in the mid 30% food cost range, which translates to those industry leading unlevered cash-on-cash returns of more than 70% that Michael referenced earlier. Q1 results in company owned restaurants showcase the effectiveness of our strategy. In an environment where the bone and wing spot market increased 92% versus the prior year comparable period. Company owned restaurant fuel costs were in line with our targets. Now moving on to SG&A. In the first quarter, SG&A increased by $1.5 million versus the prior year comparable period to a total of $25.2 million, driven by investments to support the long-term growth of the business and an increase in performance based stock compensation and were partially offset by non-recurring consulting fees in the prior year.

Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure was $50.3 million during the quarter, an increase of 45.3% versus the prior year. This was on top of the quarter in 2023 that grew by nearly 60% in the prior year. Adjusting for non-recurring items, we delivered adjusted earnings per diluted share, a non-GAAP measure of $0.98, a 66% increase versus the prior year. Another core tenet in our strategy is to enhance shareholder returns. Our highly franchised asset light model continues to deliver strong free cash flows. We are maintaining a strong cash balance that stands at over $100 million. And since our IPO, we have delivered a total shareholder return of nearly 2,500%, which clearly demonstrates our commitment to our strategy and our category one position.

Following the completion of our $125 million accelerated share repurchase program in the second half of 2023, we remain committed to enhancing shareholder returns through a combination of our remaining $125 million share repurchase authorization and our regular quarterly dividend program. On April 30, our Board of Directors approved a dividend of $0.22 per share of common stock, a demonstration of the strength of our model. This dividend totaling approximately $6.5 million will be paid on June 7, 2024 to stockholders of record as of May 17, 2024. Now shifting to our outlook for 2024. Based on the strong start to the year, we are providing the following updates to our outlook. Domestic same-store sales growth of low double digits for fiscal year 2024, previously mid-single-digit same-store sales growth.

Net new restaurants between 275 and 295, previously approximately 270 net new restaurants. For modeling purposes, we also want to highlight that we anticipate our pace of openings to be weighted more towards the second half of the year based on the visibility into our pipeline at this point in the year. SG&A guidance is estimated to be approximately $111 million, previously $108 million including an approximately $20 million of stock based compensation expense, which was previously $19 million. Our Q1 results are a testament to the resiliency of our strategies and focus we have to execute against our long-term vision. These results would not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts by our global support center team members, restaurant team members, brand partners and supplier partners.

We are excited by the start to the year and results that demonstrate the category of one we believe we operate in. With that, I’d like to now turn to Q&A. Operator, please open the line for questions

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Q&A Session

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from David Tarantino with Baird. Please go ahead.

David Tarantino: Hi. Good morning. And congratulations on such a strong start to the year. My question is on the brand adoption curve that you’re seeing. It seems like you’re attracting a very new audience to the brand with all the things that you’re doing in advertising and otherwise. I just wanted to ask, Michael, if you could share some metrics on what types of new customers you are attracting, where the brand awareness is with that cohort versus maybe where it was when you began this journey? And how much room for improvement on the brand awareness do you still have relative to the top QSR brands you might have referenced earlier? Thanks.

Michael Skipworth: Hey, David, good morning. Thank you for the question. I think this is one of those really exciting components to our growth story and really what frames up the runway we have in front of us. This is a group we’ve talked about over the past few years when we started on this journey. This group represented roughly, call it 60% of all QSR occasions and they had never heard of or tried Wingstop. And so we’ve made a lot of exciting progress with that group. And this group is they’re a little bit higher income. They tend to be Gen Z millennial. They’re less likely to have kids at home. They over index to or prefer to engage with brands digitally. They actually over index to boneless, which we really like and they are demonstrating a higher level of frequency.

And so we’re pretty excited about, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, Q1 marked yet another record quarter of new guest acquisition. And so we’re making great progress there. But yet we have a huge runway in front of us. When we look at just over the last year, the progress we’ve made in brand awareness, we’re talking about moving it a couple of percentage points, David. And we look at ourselves compared to other more mature QSR brands that are out there and our runway or the gap or opportunity we have in front of us is double digits, high double digits. So a pretty meaningful opportunity that we have to continue to execute against. And we’re excited about the progress we’ve made, the growth that we’re seeing in system sales that’s fueling growth in our ad fund, allowing us to invest those dollars.

And we are seeing the frequency uptick a little bit, but yet Wingstop still remains a pretty low frequency brand where we are still averaging about three times a quarter once a month. So we see a big opportunity to impact frequency over time.

David Tarantino: Great. Thank you very much.

Michael Skipworth: Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Bernstein: Great. Thank you very much. You guys raised your full year ’24 guidance for the comp from mid-single to low-double-digit. It seems like a big increase into what many have noted is a slowing macro. So I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your level of confidence. I’m assuming, first and foremost, that’s acknowledging that you’ve sustained momentum into April and you haven’t really seen a change in trajectory. But as long as that’s the case, I’m just wondering within your business and the metrics you track, I mean, what are you looking for as a leading indicator of any kind of slowdown, whether it’s mix shift changes, frequency of visitation, just trying to assess how you would anticipate a potential slowdown. And then I had one follow-up. Thank you.

Michael Skipworth: Hey, Jeff. Good morning. We have a lot of confidence in the strength of the business and I think we have a lot of unique, very brand specific growth drivers that we’re executing against. I mentioned the one around brand awareness, but there’s several other elements to that strategy that we called out in our prepared remarks where we have meaningful runway against those opportunities in front of us. And so we feel confident in our ability to continue to execute our strategy and drive outsized growth. And I think it really — Q1 really is a testament to that where you saw us deliver a pretty outsized comp to the rest of the industry that’s talking about consumer pullback and a lot of concern. And we delivered a 21.6% same-store sales growth that was almost entirely driven by transaction growth, which I think just speaks to the underlying health of the brand and the effectiveness of the strategy.

As it relates to our outlook for the balance of the year, we’re confident in our ability to deliver on that. Obviously, we have considered in that guide the macro backdrop , what you’ve heard a lot of other brands talk about around a cautious consumer. And so we have contemplated that in our guide.

Jeffrey Bernstein: Understood. And then just as a follow-up, in terms of investing in the business, obviously, with 20% plus comp growth and a lot of that flowing through earnings and cash flow, it would seem like now is the time to double down on investments to strengthen the system for many years to come. And it seems like you guys are all about technology and whatnot? I’m just wondering if you could maybe prioritize what you think are the best returning investment priorities and whether it’s the tech stack still or further supply chain investments or AI or whatnot, again, what would you say are the top priorities in terms of incremental investments you should be making when the cash flow is so strong? Thank you.

Michael Skipworth: Yes. No, thank you. And Jeff, I would say it’s a little bit of yes, yes and yes. We think those are all areas that we have a meaningful opportunity to invest technology, one, we feel like we’re quite a bit ahead of a lot of others and it’s more than just the investments we’ve made in our proprietary tech stack, My Wingstop that we’re in the middle of rolling out. But we’ve invested over the years in our data in enriching our data that we believe really gives us a competitive advantage for how we place media, how we market and lean into hyper personalization, which my Wingstop will be an enabler of that. And so you’ll see us continue to invest there. And then I think as it relates to the rest of the business, I think that’s a little bit of the beauty of our model.

We’ve been a brand when we see an opportunity to invest, we’ll put our foot on the gas and position this brand for the long-term and for growth, but the reality is we’re an asset light model that’s generating a lot of cash flow that puts us in a position to what we believe is deliver outsized shareholder returns.

Operator: The next question comes from Jim Salera with Stephens. Please go ahead.