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Restaurant Brands International Inc
NYSE:QSR

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Restaurant Brands International Inc Logo
Restaurant Brands International Inc
NYSE:QSR
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Price: 73.82 USD 0.5% Market Closed
Updated: Apr 27, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2019-Q4

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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Restaurant Brands International Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s call, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Markus Sturm, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

M
Markus Sturm
Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on short notice. A live broadcast of this call may be accessed through the Investor Relations webpage at investor.rbi.com and a recording will be available for replay. Today’s call contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks set forth in the press release issued this morning and in our SEC filings. As a reminder, we are currently in our quiet period, so our Q&A today will be limited to the leadership transition and preliminary comparable sales and net restaurant growth results that we released this morning. Joining me on the call to discuss today’s announcements are Daniel Schwartz and José Cil, following which we will open up the call for Q&A. Josh Kobza and Matt Dunnigan will also join Daniel and José for the Q&A portion of the call. I’d now like to turn the call over to Daniel.

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Thanks, Markus, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I’m pleased to announce some very exciting leadership changes that we’ve made here at RBI. Each of the changes announced this morning represents a natural evolution of how we’ve already been operating our business day-to-day. Effective as of this morning, our Board has asked me to take on the role of Co-Chair of our Board of Directors alongside my longtime business partner, Alex Behring, who will continue his Co-Chair of our Board with me. For me, this is going to be a long-term role in which I’ll remain heavily involved in RBI, focusing most of my time on the same areas that I’ve already been focusing on over the past few years, including talent acquisition, key strategic decisions, capital allocation and the assessment of M&A opportunities. In addition to acting as Co-Chair of the Board, I will continue to play an active role on the management team for most of this year as Executive Chairman of RBI. As Executive Chairman and more permanently as Co-Chair of the Board, I will continue working closely with the leadership team I will remain deeply involved in the business, working with our management team, our franchise partners and our offices in Canada, in the U.S., in Europe, in Asia and all of our markets around the world where we operate. I have no plans to become the CEO of another company, but instead will continue focusing on RBI and will also take on some additional responsibilities as a partner at 3G Capital. My partners at 3G Capital and I all remain highly personally invested in the long-term success of RBI since each of us are major shareholders in the business and none of us have any plans to sell any of our equity. Our long-term commitments stem from the fact that we’re only eight years into operating the business and we still see tremendous amounts of long-term growth potential ahead. Based on our confidence in the company’s current leadership team and an outlook for the business, the Board and I realized that it was time to better position ourselves organizationally to deliver on our long-term growth potential. We operate a culture where we give opportunities to the best people to grow and this is yet another example of this taking place. For several months now, we’ve been organizing ourselves for the next chapter of growth at RBI, including refreshing our strategic plan. I’ve been increasingly relying on José to take on more and more responsibilities across the company. And at our regularly scheduled year-end Board meeting yesterday, we reviewed our 2018 results and we also discussed leadership changes that we believe will position us to deliver on our ambitious agenda. Based on those conversations, we thought it was important to provide you a high-level update in advance of our earnings call, which is scheduled to occur a few weeks from now on February 11. With my stepping in as the Board’s Co-Chairman, my fellow Board members and I have asked José Cil to lead us through our next leg of growth as the new CEO of RBI. For those who are less familiar with José allow me to highlight why the Board and I have so much confidence in him as a leader. José is a lifelong quick-service restaurant operator and executive, having spent 18 years with Burger King. In addition to building an incredible team over the years, José has been the driving force behind the substantial growth that we have delivered at Burger King since our acquisition of the brand in 2010. His leadership has allowed us to grow our Burger King system-wide sales to over $20 billion to accelerate our net restaurant growth from roughly 170 per year to over 1,000 per year, to increase our restaurant count to over 17,000 restaurants all around the world and to more than double our Burger King adjusted EBITDA from $454 million back in 2011 to roughly $950 million on a trailing 12-month basis as of Q3 2018. Simply said, José has built and led teams that had consistently delivered exceptional growth. In his new capacity as CEO, José will continue to focus on accelerating the global growth of our business at all three of our brands: Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes. Behind the scenes, over the last several months, José has already been supporting growth at all three of our brands, particularly since many of our Burger King franchise partners also own and operate Tim Hortons or Popeyes restaurants. In conversations with some of our larger franchisees this morning, they were not surprised by this change, as José was in many ways already acting in a CEO capacity. José is a remarkable leader and a business partner that I have always sought close guidance from. He also benefits from the support of a very strong and committed executive team that collectively holds a meaningful equity stake in our business. The Board and I have the utmost confidence that José and his team are well-positioned to take our business to the next level. In addition to announcing José as our new CEO, this morning we announced the appointment of Josh Kobza to the role of Chief Operating Officer. Josh was formerly our Chief Financial Officer and more recently our Chief Technology and Development Officer. In his new role, we’ve asked him to take on an even larger set of responsibilities, including overseeing our operational groups that support our restaurant brands. In his new capacity, he will continue to oversee our global development and technology efforts and will now also oversee our human resources supply chain and business service functions, each of which are critical in supporting our brand teams on a day-to-day basis. Josh is a proven leader, who has consistently delivered strong results in all of the roles that he has held in our company. In just a few short months of overseeing technology, Josh has built a very strong team that has made significant progress implementing key initiatives for each of our brands, including mobile apps, delivery, kiosks and POS solutions. The strong team, the increased pace of progress and the sense of urgency that Josh has built within the technology group is a great example of what we believe he can accomplish in the rest of our operational teams that he now also oversees. While José works with his team on accelerating the global growth of our brands all around the world, we’re counting on Josh to ensure that our operational groups are best positioned to support that growth and to provide the best-in-class service to our teams and our franchise partners all around the world. In addition to having confidence in both José and Josh as leaders of our business, I’m also very confident that our teams are focused on the right priorities. Over the past several months, José and Josh and the rest of the leadership team have built a detailed bottoms-up strategic plan that outlines our path to achieve significant long-term growth. This morning, we announced that we will host our first Investor Day in New York City in May, where we will introduce our leadership team and also share details of the strategic plan with the investment community. We intend to discuss our business and our growth plans in more detail with investors than we ever have before. We also thought it would be important to preannounce fourth quarter 2018 comparable sales and net restaurant growth this morning to demonstrate that these leadership promotions come at a time of continued growth in these important operational metrics. Under Alex Macedo’s leadership, Tim Hortons comparable sales in the fourth quarter improved to 1.9%, driven by strong performance in Canada of 2.2%. We ended the year with net restaurant growth at Tims of 2.1%, reflecting a more selective approach to development in Canada, offset by accelerated development in our international markets. Our teams are working very hard around the world with our franchise partners to accelerate this growth in years to come. José, Alex and I are very confident in the direction of the business at Tim Hortons, where we believe that we have the right team and the right plans in place. At Burger King, we achieved fourth quarter comparable sales of 1.7%, including U.S. comparable sales of 0.8%. Net restaurant growth at BK was 6.1% in the fourth quarter, representing over a 1,000 net openings in 20108. Looking ahead, we have several plans in place to further accelerate the pace of growth at BK over the long-term. At Popeyes, comparable sales were relatively flat in the quarter, driven by flat results in the U.S. and strong results internationally. We continue to accelerate the pace of restaurant growth at Popeyes in the fourth quarter, reaching 7.3% at year-end. Heading into 2019, we believe that we are well-positioned to continue accelerating the pace of growth at Popeyes based on our recent progress. We also announced this morning that based on our Board’s confidence in the long-term growth outlook for our company, the Board has declared an increased dividend of $0.50 per common share and partnership exchangeable unit for the first quarter of 2019, payable on April 3, 2019. In connection with the declared dividend, we also announced that we’re targeting a total of $2 in dividends per common share and partnership exchangeable unit in 2019. I’m very excited about the potential of each of these brands heading into 2019 and beyond, and I believe the leadership team changes announced today position us well to capitalize on that potential. I greatly appreciate the trust that you’ve placed in me as CEO over these last several years and that you’ll continue to place in me as Co-Chair of our Board. I’d now like to introduce you to José Cil, our CEO of Restaurant Brands International.

J
José Cil
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all again for joining us this morning. I’m very humbled and excited to assume the CEO role, especially given how much my predecessor was able to accomplish. In addition to creating what RBI is today, Dan has done a tremendous job delivering consistent growth at the company and now not surprisingly has been asked to take on a larger role as our Co-Chair of the Board. Dan and I have been working closely together as business partners for over eight years now, and I’m thrilled that he’ll continue to remain close to our business in his new role. Our complementary management styles and areas of expertise have served us well in the past and will continue to serve us well in the new organization structure. Over the course of my 18 years at Burger King and thanks to the support of my great teams and franchise partners, I have developed particular strengths in operations, marketing, restaurant development and franchise relations, each of which have served as key building blocks for our growth at Burger King. Stepping into the CEO role will allow me to more formally focus on these key areas to drive continued long-term growth at Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes. Importantly, it also allows Dan to focus even more on his particular strengths, including capital allocation and key strategic decisions, such as the assessment of potential M&A opportunities. While we’ve announced a number of leadership changes today, there are no changes in how our three brands are being run today. We’re confident we have the right people in the right roles with the right focus, which is why the regional presidents at Burger King will continue to report to me directly. There is no need to add change where it isn’t required. At RBI, we aspired to build the most loved restaurant brands in the world. We have three amazing brands, a talented team with an ownership mindset and passionate, dedicated franchisees that I believe will help us accelerate our growth all around the world. Profitable owners and happy guests are the bedrock of our business. And my team and I look forward to driving improved franchise profitability and a great experience for our guests. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call this morning and for your ongoing support. I look forward to working with you more closely in the coming months. Now Dan, Josh, Matt and I would like to open up the call for questions. Operator?

Operator

Yes. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And this morning’s first question comes from David Palmer with RBC Capital Markets.

D
David Palmer
RBC Capital Markets

Good morning. Daniel, just a question on this executive change. José just made some comments about how it sounds like you’ll be pretty active that you’ll be in a almost like an Executive Chairman role, where you’ll be involved more than the average Chairman we often see in terms of strategy and portfolio management, perhaps M&A. Is this about bandwidth? I’m just trying to understand or tease out why this is happening and what we should expect from you going forward? Thanks.

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes. Thanks, Dave. I think what we said, for us, this is a kind of a natural evolution of how we were already managing the business with José already beginning to manage more of the relationships with many of our multi-brand franchisees. José has led really all the major growth at Burger King, holds these key relationships, these management routines. Titles aside, I’m going to be way more active than the – than a typical chair. I’m already, as you know, deeply involved in the business. I’m going to continue to be deeply involved in the business. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, I’m not going to be the CEO of another company. I’m going to be continuing to work with José and the team with our franchisees and the management teams all around the world. And I’m still, I and the rest my partners at 3G are very excited about the long-term outlook for Restaurant Brands. And I’m going to still be deeply deeply involved in the business going forward.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Mark Petrie with CBC [sic] [CIBC].

M
Mark Petrie
CIBC World Markets

Hey, good morning. I’m wondering if you could just provide a little bit more commentary on the Tims Canada, same-store sales results and maybe the effect of your various programs that you have going on versus sort of the broader marketing efforts and benefits from improved franchisee relationships?

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes. Thanks. I’ll take that one. We’re pleased with the Tim Hortons Canada same-store sales progress that we made in the fourth quarter. We saw good continued growth in Breakfast Anytime. We saw strength in our beverages, specifically successful launches like the Hershey’s Hot Chocolate, the Candy Cane Hot Chocolate, our Holiday Lattes. And you also saw us begin to benefit some of the great – from some of the great advertising and communications work that our teams put in place, including the debut of our True Stories campaigns, which we plan to continue with. We also had a very successful hockey card program that we kicked off by a very successful Kenya Ice Lions social media campaign. So a lot of good things in the quarter across sales initiatives, marketing initiatives, renovations of restaurants. And as you mentioned, the relations with our franchisees are much better than they were this time a year ago. We had a great franchise convention in the fourth quarter, where we put together our plans and share them with our teams. We’ve got lots of positive feedback from our restaurant owners. So we’re very excited about the outlook for our Tim Hortons business around the world and in Canada. And José and I have the utmost confidence in Alex Macedo and his team to continue driving long-term positive results in our Tim Hortons business.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Dennis Geiger with UBS.

D
Dennis Geiger
UBS

Hi, thanks for the question and congrats to all on the promotions. I’m wondering if you could talk a bit more about the strong development trends that you saw in the fourth quarter, including whether or not global macro challenges have had any impact on the international development front for any of the brands? And then I think you’d mentioned talking about Popeyes acceleration in the 2019, just if you could highlight at all anything there, confidence there? And I think you mentioned some of the Tims international development offsetting some of the more selective development in Canada. Any kind of thoughts around the international across those two brands will be great? Thank you.

J
José Cil
Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Dennis, this is José. Thanks for the question. We saw a continued acceleration of growth from a development standpoint in international markets at Burger King. We saw good growth in North America for Popeyes and we saw accelerated growth as well in some of the new markets that we have that we’re developing with Tim Hortons. For Burger King, the folks that have done well, we continue to see progress and success in converting restaurants in France from Quick to Burger King. Spain has performed well. Russia has performed well. Brazil has continued to be a strong performer for us on a global scale. And in Asia, we continue to see progress in development there, and we have a positive outlook for the long-term growth of the business on Burger King’s front. In Popeyes, we’re seeing the progress this year or in Q4 of the development deals that we’ve signed in the recent quarters, they’re beginning to pay dividends and we’re beginning to see an acceleration of growth in the U.S. business from a developing standpoint. And Tims, we’ve had some good development wins in some of the new key markets internationally. So we’re excited about Q4, and we think that’s a good start to this transition that’s taking place.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Andrew Charles with Cowen and Company.

A
Andrew Charles
Cowen and Company

Great. First off, Dan, Josh and José, congrats to all three of you getting to new roles. Question a follow-up for me. So Dan, the simplest question is why now for the time of management changes, as you alluded to only getting started with global growth in all three brands, you also mentioned as well that you’ve no plans to be CEO elsewhere. And José, you mentioned the importance of accelerating long-term growth at all three of RBI’s existing brands, while part of Daniel’s new role is assessing M&A opportunities. As you begin your new role, is there anything that leads you to believe RBI does not have the capacity for fourth brand?

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes. So as far as the kind of the why now question, I think, the way we felt, we felt like from a business standpoint, our team was ready. We didn’t want to wait any longer to let our teams get started on executing on all these exciting plans that we had. And as I mentioned earlier, this was really a natural evolution how we were kind of managing the business on a day-to-day basis with Josh overseeing a lot of the development efforts and already getting more involved in our operations José working closely with our master franchises on Burger King and now more recently on Popeyes as well. And again, given that this was kind of how the business was being managed and José’s expertise in operations and marketing and the emphasis that our strategic plan places on those areas and where I was spending my time, we thought this was kind of a natural way to kind of more formalize how we are already running the business. We’re excited about the long-term growth outlook for our business. As we grow our business, we’ll continue to delever. We’re going to continue to build a strong team of talented people here, who we want to give opportunities to grow within our business. And as we’ve said before, we’re always exploring ways that we can use our capital in the most efficient way, and I’m going to continue to be spending time thinking about that. I think, we’ve proven historically. We’ve been very disciplined and balanced when it comes to capital allocation, whether it be increasing our dividend or repurchasing shares or acquiring additional brands that we’ve very successfully done in the past and we’ll continue to operate with this balanced approach of capital allocation. And I couldn’t be more excited about the outlook for our business for the years to come and today.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer & Co.

B
Brian Bittner
Oppenheimer & Co.

Thank you. Will somebody be taking over the position as President of Burger King from José? Obviously, very important role in the company or is Josh’s role as COO filling that void? And then also separately, if you can just give us a little color on maybe how we should be thinking about this first-ever Investor Day? I mean, will you be helping us understand the growth opportunity by committing any long-term unit count targets or any type of financial commitments? Anything you can say on that would be helpful? Thanks.

J
José Cil
Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Brian. Yes, coming back – a question at Burger King, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we will not be making any changes in Burger King. The regional presidents are going to continue to report directly to me. We have a great team. They’ve been working hard on their strategic plans for their regional growth and development opportunities and sales and marketing opportunities. And so we can – I continue to work with them and we’ll continue to work with them to drive the business forward. I’m excited about the progress we’re making and look forward to seeing positive news on the BK front.

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes. As it relates to the Investor Day, we do plan to provide more information on our growth algorithm, the key drivers of our business. And – but most importantly, what we’re planning on doing is we’re planning on giving a lot more detail on the underlying drivers of our business and talking about some of the key strategic priorities. So we can give you all that kind of – you all can understand why we have so much conviction in the positive long-term outlook for this.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Gregory Francfort with Bank of America.

G
Gregory Francfort
Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Hey, guys, thanks for the question. I had a question for José and Daniel. You guys made comments about the potential for M&A or acquisitions, and we’ve seen a greater focus on increased scale in the industry. And I’m wonder what your thoughts are on that, and whether or not that maybe increases the urgency and sort of what you would be looking for in a potential acquisition?

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes. We’re fortunate – it’s Dan. We’re fortunate that we get to operate these three iconic brands with such great global growth potential. And historically, that’s what we’ve liked in terms of thinking about brands that we’d have within our portfolio. We’ve always, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve always been opportunistic when it kind of comes to the M&A. We’ve been very disciplined with respect to our capital allocation, having a good balance of investing back in the business, returning capital to shareholders both through dividends and share repurchases. And there – there’s no set formula, but we like to be opportunistic and we’re always looking at valuable uses of our capital. We’ve proven in the past, we can do a number of things and it’s something that we’re going to continue to monitor into the future.

Operator

Thank you. And the next questions comes from Eric Gonzalez with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

E
Eric Gonzalez
KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Hey, thanks for the question. This question is perhaps for Josh, if he is on the call. Josh, hey, congratulations on the promotion. And as you look back your prior role as Chief Technology and Development Officer, can you speak to some of your accomplishments, specifically on the technology side that perhaps propelled this business forward? And it seems like you’ll be taking on a lot more responsibility, how do you think about splitting your time between tech operations and development?

J
Joshua Kobza
Chief Operating Officer

Hey, Eric. Yes, it’s Josh. Thank you for the question and good morning. Yes, it’s been a great year working on technology and development. But specifically on technology, I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress over the last year, particularly on building a great team and the plans that we want to develop going forward. I think if you look at some of the specific things that we’ve done over the last year, we’ve launched mobile apps across now, across all three of our brands in the U.S. and Canada. We now have kiosks that can be used in Burger King and Tims restaurants. We’ve also launched the ability to order delivery across all three of our brands in hundreds of thousands of restaurants all across North America and globally and so many of our restaurants with Burger King. And we started to make really important upgrades to our POS infrastructure across some of our brands that had a more fragmented or older infrastructure in North America as well. So I think, we started to make some important strides in technology, but I think we have really great plans for the next few years. And while I’m taking on a bit broader role going forward, I look forward to continuing to spend a lot of time with our team continuing to focus very closely on technology, as we very much think it’s a critical piece and a very important piece to driving sales growth going forward.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Will Slabaugh with Stephens Inc.

H
Hugh Gooding
Stephens Inc

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. This is actually Hugh on for Will this morning. On the Burger King comp, pretty impressive given you were lapping the toughest quarterly comp in 2017 on the U.S. side. I’m just curious what you would attribute to the business ability to successfully lap that difficult comparison and actually drive a solid acceleration to your trends?

J
José Cil
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. We said many times before that we’re at our best when we have a balanced offer and a balanced marketing plan that we share with our guests, and in Q4, we were well-positioned with the with a balanced offer first on value with the $1 for – 10 nuggets for $1 promotion and continued balance with strength in $2 for $6. Our core platform, which features the Whopper, the crispy chicken, the spicy chicken and some of our other great tasting core products. And we also had a great solid launch with premium in our Philly Cheese King, which drove some of our more check-driven growth during the quarter. And then finally, we saw some positive news and success with the launch of our mobile app in the U.S. We had a campaign that we called Whopper Detour, that allowed us to – allowed our guest to experience the new mobile app with order and pay features on the app by going to our main competitor. I don’t like to mention them by name. But you went to the main competitor, you downloaded the app and you were able to get a whopper at a discount at the nearby Burger King. It was a fun promotion that drove a lot of downloads and also allowed us to focus on our flame grilling heritage. So I think, we had a balanced approach in Q4, which led us to some solid results.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Jeremy Scott with Mizuho.

J
Jeremy Scott
Mizuho Securities

Hi, thank you and congrats everybody. Just another question on the leadership impact at Burger King and the new structure of the regional presidents in the reporting lines. Is this a temporary measure in transition, or do you envision this José as an evolution in the reporting hierarchy? And if that’s the case, how do you ensure everybody down the line has the necessary support? Maybe if you can give some color on the responsibilities that you will be relinquishing, whether it’s planning or marketing that will now be absorbed by the regional heads?

J
José Cil
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks for the question. Look, BK is the largest of RBI’s businesses and I’ve been working with this business for quite sometime. I’ve built a lot of the relationships with our global franchise partners across many of the markets and regions where we operate we have a really good team in each of the regions they have their marketing and development and operations team – teams that are local and regional that have the relationships as well. So I feel very confident, we feel confident that the structure that we announced today will allow us to continue the growth that we’ve seen at Burger King, both in terms of same-store sales, as well as development, also make progress on delivering great guest experience to – in each of our restaurants every day. And I’ll stay close to our regional presidents to ensure that we keep delivering day in and day out.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Jon Tower with Wells Fargo.

J
Jon Tower
Wells Fargo Securities, LLC.

Great. Thanks. I just got a few. Just quickly why did you not prerelease adjusted EBITDA this morning? And then just flip into BK, where do – was the – where does the business stand on delivery in the U.S. today? And maybe you can tell us where the app downloads are today? Then lastly, this one is for Daniel. In terms of – you talked about focusing more on M&A in the future or perhaps just having more time to look at it. How do you think about M&A going forward in terms of building out the business or building out the portfolio or perhaps adding business to the existing portfolio that own hands growth and profitability for the existing franchisees?

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes, thanks. On the first question, we’re still finalizing our year-end results and we’ll report the full or report the – our full results with our earnings release in a couple of weeks. So you’ll get the full release as typically would be the case in just a couple of weeks. As it relates to M&A, I think, look, in the past, you’ve seen us be opportunistic. We’ve acquired two incredible – three incredible brands that we think have great global growth potential. And what we said in the past is that we look at companies and brands that are iconic brands that we can grow significantly for the long run. And that’s kind of how we think about this. And maybe, Josh, I don’t know if you want to comment about the technology.

J
Joshua Kobza
Chief Operating Officer

Yes. So the Burger King team in the U.S., I think, has done a really great job embracing all of our digital initiatives this year. And I think you’ve cited a couple of the ones in particular that they’ve been very focused on. With delivery, the team has done a great job of rolling out delivery services across the U.S. with a couple of different partners, and we now have – we have delivery available in a few thousand restaurants across the U.S. With respect to the mobile app, I think, José spoke about the Whopper Detour campaign which, as he mentioned, was a big success and helped us to drive a lot of engagement on that platform. And it’s now led us to have over 6 million downloads, which was a big increase over where we were just a few months ago. So we’re really pleased with the progress that the Burger King team has made in the U.S. and we’ll look forward to updating you more on that on our earnings call and in May when we have our Investor Day.

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Matt McGinley with Evercore.

M
Matt McGinley
Evercore ISI

My question is on the dividend. You’ve always spoken about using a balanced approach to capital allocation, but the dividend clearly is the dominant form of capital return to shareholders and that is, I guess, grown over time. And I’m wondering how should we think about changes in the dividend going forward? Is that a payout ratio on earnings or free cash flow? And I understand that buybacks for you are opportunistic and acquisitions are hard to predict. But how should we think about that dividend and why did you feel the need to increase it this year? And I guess, the second question to that is, like how important is it for you to delever the balance sheet over time?

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes. Hi, it’s Daniel. I can take this. So I think directionally, you will see our dividend grow over the long run with our earnings. As our earnings grow, you’ll also see our dividend grow. We don’t have a specific formula or ratio. But one thing that’s nice about our business and as you’ve seen this historically is that, even with the growth in the dividend, this business still over the coming years, given its cash flow generative nature, will continue to delever. So we will continue to delever even with the growth in the dividend. In the long run, directionally, our dividend should grow with our earnings.

Operator

Thank you. And as there are no more questions at the present time, I’d like to return the call to management for any closing comments.

D
Daniel Schwartz
Executive Chairman and Co-Chairman

Yes, it’s Daniel. So thank you all again for joining today. We appreciate it. We’re very excited about the team changes that we announced today. We’re very excited about the long-term outlook for Restaurant Brands and the growth of our three iconic brands. And we think that today’s changes frankly position us very strongly to achieve that growth for the long run, and we look forward to updating all of you on our full-year results in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.