Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Red Sue from CMBI. Please, go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi. Hello. Can you hear me?
Joey Wat: Yes.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi. Hello, Joey and Andy. Thank you so much for the details sharing and resiliency at last year. So the question I would like to ask is about your new store target. And I’m just wondering, if you guys think your new target is a bit too conservative, because, obviously, you guys have done really well last year on opening more than 1,100 stores last year with COVID. And without COVID, do you think the numbers could be a bit more higher this year? And also, since your CapEx spend last year is much lower than your previous expectations, and then perhaps the per store CapEx, it’s much lower now. And also the level of rent is still lower than the pre-COVID level. And why should we take more advantage of that? And also, do you mind breaking down the number of store openings for the smaller brands like Lavazza and Taco Bell as well. Yes. Thank you.
Andy Yeung: Hi, Rob. Thank you for your questions about our new store opening target. So I just want to echo a little bit about our previous comments, which is, for last year, we opened more than 1,800 stores. The more than 1,100 store is the net new store that was increased. As Joey mentioned, obviously, we’re very disciplined, and our new store performance are very good. So we have been opening new stores quite aggressively, even during the pandemic period. We also aggressively optimize and improve our portfolio of brand and also our store network. And so, that’s why you see the net number is 1,100 plus for last year. Now this year — and as we have mentioned before, obviously, the target that we set out is 1,100 to 1,300 new stores this year.
But I would emphasize that for our company, the quality of growth is more important than the quantity of growth. And when — so we generally do not give like a quantitative, like, big pay or number to our staff and say, hey, this year, you’re going to open x thousands of stores. That’s not the way we do it. We do it in a very disciplined way, right? What we look at is like what’s a reasonable sort of range of new store. And then — but ultimately, how many stores will be open is really depend on the market conditions, right, the unit economics. As I mentioned, when the store economics, they perform really well, the market is booming, be sure our market manager, they will be promoting store opening and propose more stores for opening. And the unit economic is good, more store will be approved.
And so there will be acceleration of matter that build our process. But our process is not based on a person’s or a particular point of view, it is really based on a consistent, disciplined approach that reflects both the market conditions and also the business economics. So, we feel confident that if things are doing really, really well, I’m sure like we are confident that our store manager and they will make a right decision and we’ll see very healthy, very strong our network expansion. As we mentioned before, and this year, our focus is on driving sales growth. This is really important because the sales, not only in kind of topline, but also in the margin. The biggest driver for margin is really sales. And then when we talk about other cost factors.
So, the reason will be our focus, and I’m good confident that if we have — you look at the number for the last few years, I think we have to outperform the overall market in terms of the restaurant industry, and we’re confident that we will be able to do it in the long haul.
