Yum China Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YUMC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Joey Wat: Sure. Hi, Michelle. For the competitive landscape, I’m happy to report that I think we have been doing quite all right. I mean, from 2019 to 2022, the overall market in our business has dropped by mid-single-digits. But Yum China, ourselves, we hold up there. So, that means our market share has increased a little bit. So, I think we have done something right. Going forward, regarding your question of promotion and sales momentum, we always look at the promotion, product, operation all in a holistic view. How to drive sales? Well, the focus of driving sales, we always prioritize traffic and then ticket average, and we want kind of both. So, how to get both? We will have the — a series of initiatives that form the promotion and sales strategy.

We always have fantastic product because it’s really not very healthy just to only focus on promotion without amazing products. So, product comes first. Therefore, even during the three years, pandemic, every year, we are still able to launch about 500 new products with or without the help of traditional marketing because we have now over 430 million members. We can always market the new products to our members. And then with the new product, we have really effective promotions. And that’s now becoming more effective over time because we have less promotion campaign, but more effective promotion campaign. And for example, as I mentioned earlier, in the first part of the call, Crazy Thursday, amazing. But it took four years to make — to produce — or to come to amazing Crazy Thursday promotion.

And that worked really well for work days. But for weekend, our business has been quite challenging because reduced selectivity in the last three years. So, for 2022, we pushed Buy More Save More for KFC. And then for Pizza Hut, that is like the value promotion for the two pizza for RMB59. So, fewer but more effective promotion that drives sales, but that also protect margin for our shareholders. Now, you think about — you probably have the hidden question here is about price increase. It is also within our plan, but we do it, hopefully, in a clever way. We expand the range of price. We have lower entry price point product, and we also have some very high-end products to please the customer who will want to treat themselves. Our favorite example is the wagyu beef burger for KFC, which is always a very interesting idea for traditional KFC lovers.

So, with the combination of multiple initiatives, we hopefully can both drive traffic, maintain the margin and also produce the sales for our shareholders. Thank you.

Michelle Cheng: Yes. Thank you Joey and thank you for the comment on the pricing.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Anne Ling from Jefferies. Please, go ahead.

Anne Ling: Thank you. Hi, Joey. Hi, Andy. A couple of questions here. First now, regarding the company’s exposure, that 5% same-store sales growth — sorry, mid-single-digit same-store sales growth during Chinese New Year. Would you share with us, like, how — is it, like, more or less similar for both KFC and Pizza Hut? And how does it differ in terms of the pace of recovery? What we should be expecting? And then also, if we take a look at, like, both brands, we have an increase of the delivery business versus year 2019. So how would it change when we have the reopening? Will we see more stabilization on this part? Yes. Thank you.

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