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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.'s Earnings Call for the First Quarter of 2022. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Alexander Sewrattan, Director of Finance. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.'s earnings call for the first quarter ended March 31, 2022. Joining me on the call today are Pizza Pizza Limited's Chief Executive Officer, Paul Goddard; and Chief Financial Officer, Christine D'Sylva. Our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements that may involve risks relating to future events. Actual events may differ materially from the projections discussed today. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary language in our earnings press release and the risk factors included in our annual information form. Please refer to our earnings press release and MD&A in the Investor Relations section of our website for a reconciliation and other disclosures related to our non-IFRS financial measures mentioned on this call. As a reminder, analysts are welcome to ask questions after the prepared remarks and portfolio managers and media can contact us after the call. Before turning the call over to Paul for the business update, I wanted to spend a few moments reviewing the structure of the Corp. for our new investors. Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp. indirectly owns the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 brands and trademarks through its subsidiary, Pizza Pizza Royalty Limited Partnership. This partnership has 2 partners: Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp., the public company, which owns 76.5% and the other partner, Pizza Pizza Limited, the private operating company, which owns the remaining 23.5%. The Royalty Corp. is a top line restaurant Royalty Corp. that earns a monthly royalty through a lease agreement with Pizza Pizza Limited. In exchange for the use of the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 trademarks in its restaurant operations, Pizza Pizza pays the partnership a monthly royalty calculated as a percentage of Royalty Pool sales. Growth in the Corp. is derived from increasing the same-store sales of the restaurants in the Royalty Pool and by adding new restaurants to the pool each year. The Royalty Pool is adjusted at the beginning of each year by adding new restaurants opened in the previous year less any restaurants that have been permanently closed. For the fiscal year 2022, the Royalty Pool was adjusted on January 1, 2022, to include 624 Pizza Pizza restaurants and 103 Pizza 73 restaurants. With that review, I'll turn the call over to Paul Goddard to provide a business update.
Thanks, Alex, and welcome, everyone, to Pizza Pizza's first quarter investor conference call. Today, I will discuss our first quarter results and then Christine, our CFO, will summarize our key financial highlights before the Q&A at the end. So today, we are pleased to present the financial results of the Royalty Corp. for the first quarter, which ended March 31, 2022. Results for the first quarter were driven by strong same-store sales. Pizza Pizza reported same-store sales growth of 16.0%, and Pizza 73 reported 2.1% growth for a combined 13.6% same-store sales growth. The positive results for the quarter were due to the increase in guest traffic from the easing of government restrictions and an increase in the average check. As a result, our Board was pleased to announce an 8.3% increase in the shareholder dividend effective February 2022. Turning to our quarterly results. We didn't expect that after nearly 2 years since the start of the pandemic, we would once again see government restrictions return in January and February due to the Omicron surge, of course, but that's exactly what happened, as you know. And however, the good news was that as those restrictions lifted, we experienced an increase in sales from walk-in traffic and saw the reopening of key nontraditional stores, especially sports venues. And in addition to increased sales through our already strong pickup and delivery business, growth across all channels was well supported by menu innovation, strong promotional campaigns and operational excellence. Now with almost all restrictions removed and the return of warmer weather as we enter the second quarter, we are optimistic that this momentum will continue as almost all government restrictions have been removed and customers are feeling more comfortable visiting our restaurants. We're still waiting for some nontraditional locations to reopen, such as some university and college locations that are waiting until the September and for a more robust return to office in our urban markets. But at the same time, we know that pandemic has affected consumer behavior and the importance of digital sales channels, including delivery, has grown. So we will continue to support ongoing enhancements to our digital assets and to our digital marketing capabilities, and we'll continue to focus on our core competitive advantages of convenience, innovation, high-quality menu offerings and restaurant network expansion. Speaking to our operations during the first quarter. First quarter is always an exciting one for us. In spite of the government restrictions we saw this year, as I said, in Jan and Feb, it's always the beginning of new year, with new food innovation, new marketing campaigns and a lot of excitement in our key nontraditional locations where the NHL and NBA teams make their playoff brands. Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 are the official pizza sponsors for almost all of the Canadian NHL teams and for Canada's only NBA team. While fans enjoy watching their teams, especially when they make it into the playoffs, they can also enjoy a hot and fresh slice from our many concession locations in the arenas or can order our game day specials to enjoy while watching from the comfort of their own homes. Additionally, as I mentioned on our last call, we reintroduced our Score a Slice! promotion. And during Raptors games and new in 2021 make the lease gains as well, fans were directed to a massive QR code, somebody may have seen it in some of the games in Toronto, shown on the Central Arena scoreboard, which loaded a free slice coupon into their digital wallet to use at their Pizza Pizza app. In addition to being a fun digital giveaway for existing customers, this is also a phenomenal program to drive app downloads for fans that didn't already have our app and introduced them to our array of fast and convenient organic ordering platforms. Seeing the success of this activation, we've also now rolled it out for the Toronto Football Club, TFC, home games at BMO Field in Toronto and are excited to see how fans is similarly engaged with the activation of the season. Turning to our marketing and food innovations. Pizza and Wings have gone hand in hand at Pizza Pizza for decades, and we've established a lead position on our quality wings, which are raised without antibiotics and fried at crispy perfection. So early in the quarter, we built on the success of our chicken sandwich launch and our overall chicken category with the introduction of 3 new wing sauces: Hot Honey, Nashville Hot and Mango Inferno. These new sauces capitalized on the hot wings trend we are seeing, and we're launched in time for all of those Super Bowl orders, a day when wing sales at the very highest. And just in time for New Year's resolutions at Pizza 73, we started the year off of the New Year New Crust campaign, where we introduced customers to our Keto Crust pizzas that were well received at Pizza Pizza back in 2021. Pizza Pizza has always been at the forefront of alternative crusts, and we took the opportunity to expand that category at the Pizza 73 brand as well. We're excited to be able to provide an offering that is relevant to consumers at that unique time of the year as well, where Google search trends show a spike and interest in keto diets not surprisingly. Continuously refreshing the pizza category with new crusts, recipes and toppings brings new life to our Pizza menu. Early in 2022, we introduced 2 new gourmet pizzas: the Chicken Shawarma and Halifax style Doner Pizza. Both of these pizza flavor profiles are emerging trends and the Doner Pizza has been on the menu in Halifax for several years and is very popular with customers. So cost innovation and focus on our core helps us stay top of mind and the first choice for pizza eaters. Sharing key moments with customers from Valentine's Day to Friday night game nights at home all translate into winning moments for us. In the latter part of the quarter, we once again partnered with the #1 card game in the world UNO by Mattel to offer our customers the ultimate pizza and game night experience, another opportunity to share moments with our customers. At both Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73, our marketing strategies are structured to support restaurant profitability, while also increasing customer orders and order frequency, whether you prefer to phone 967-1111, tap your Pizza Pizza app or simply walk into your local neighborhood Pizza Pizza. And all our campaigns are supported by our in-house marketing team to be designed a creative and deploy it on the rate of assets from radio, flyer, billboards and on our multiple social media and digital channels. So on the sales side, we are very pleased with our momentum. On the more sobering side of things though, and consistent with our comments on the last earnings call, we do continue to face significant inflationary cost increases across our supply chain and in labor markets. Our goal is to take modest selective price increases across our menu to offset often double-digit input cost increases we've seen. They do it in a balanced approach, a balanced way. So it's not to adversely impact overall customer traffic. Consumers are looking for value well as quality, so we have to find that proper balance of perceived value for money. And it's a fine line to walk certainly in our space, and we need to keep those happy and continuing to see the value to be honest, but we've also got a competent to do that while we ability those growth for us, our owner operators and our private operating company people. So I just want to going to be aware of that. But I do want to emphasize though that the Royalty Corp. investors are, of course, insulated from that operational risk since our key drivers for the Royalty Corp. investors are really the top line revenues and in turn the same-store sales growth and net restaurant network growth. So turning to network growth. During the quarter, PPL opened 2 and 5 nontraditional Pizza Pizza restaurants and 4 traditional Pizza Pizza restaurants were closed. The new restaurants were opened outside of our core markets as we continue to expand our footprint across Canada. This quarter, we opened in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba and Moncton, New Brunswick. Our nontraditional location development plan continues to be well executed with 3 of the 5 openings in high-volume service stations where we offer delivery as well. Pizza Pizza Limited management expects to accelerate its restaurant network expansion to 5% traditional restaurant growth and continue its renovation program throughout 2022 and beyond. To date, we're proud to say that 80% of our restaurants feature our hot and fresh new look as the warmer weather returns and walk-in sales increase, customers will experience the new look of style at these new locations across the country. We remain focused on growing our business across Canada, and it's safe to say we are known and respected as a major homegrown national brand and the leading pizza chain in the country. The past 2 years have taught us a lot about ourselves, our business and our customers. And we couldn't have emerged to the worst of this pandemic without the tireless dedication and resilience of our restaurant owner operators and our passionate employees as well. So a quick shutout and big thank you to all of them, and of course, to all of our loyal customers in both brands as well. We know trends continuously change, but our diverse high-quality menu, network penetration, digital assets, strong customer service reputation have all helped us stay stronger in these uncertain times and have been a real constant. Our restaurant network growth continues to be strong. And as we continue to sell effectively, we only become stronger. So we look forward to the rest of the year, the return to full operations and the sales that will come with it. Thanks for listening. And I'll now hand it over to Christine, our CFO, for a brief financial update.
Thanks, Paul. Before I go into the financial results for the quarter, I'd briefly like to impress the January 1 Royalty Pool adjustment. As Alex mentioned, on January 1 of each year, the Royalty Pool is adjusted by new restaurants opened in the past year, less any restaurants that are permanently closed. On January 1, 2020, the Royalty Pool increased by 2 net restaurants as a result of opening 37 new locations, while closing 35 restaurants permanently in 2021. In exchange for adding new restaurants to the Royalty Pool, Pizza Pizza Limited is compensated an equivalent company shares using an agreed-upon formula, which is designed to be accretive to the current shareholders. Generally, when additional restaurants are added to the pool, the forecasted increase in system sales and in turn, the company's royalty income would result in an increase in Pizza Pizza's interest in the company. In the case were resistant sales of the closed restaurants exceed those of the new restaurants as we saw in 2020 and 2021, a deficit or make-whole carryover amounts will be created. And royalties on this deficit will be paid by Pizza Pizza Limited to the partnership in that year. The make-whole carryover amount will be carried forward and royalty will continue to be paid for the self linear until on an adjustment date. System sale of new restaurants are sufficient to offset the system sales of the deficit. On January 1, 2022, the net sales from vended in is partially offset the make-whole carryover from 2020 and 2021. The remaining make-whole carryover amount will continue to be paid and a royalty will happen every year until on an adjustment date that vended in sales exceed the deficit. As noted earlier, for 2022, there will be 727 restaurants in the Royalty Pool, comprised of 624 Pizza Pizza locations and 103 Pizza 73 locations. Now turning to the results of the quarter. Same-store sales, the key driver of yield growth for shareholders of the company increased 13.6% for the quarter. Gross sales reported by the restaurants in the Royalty Pool for the quarter were $122.9 million, a 13.6% increase as compared to $108.2 million in the first quarter of 2021. By brand, sales from the 624 Pizza Pizza restaurants increased 13.2% to $104.8 million. And sales from the 103 Pizza 73 restaurants increased 0.7% to $18.1 million for the quarter. Royalty income for the quarter was $7.9 million compared to $7 million in 2021. As Paul mentioned earlier, the increase in Royalty Pool sales and royalty income for the quarter is largely due to the reopening of the economy and many of our nontraditional locations. Turning to the partnership expenses. Administrative expenses, which include director and legal and auditor fees as well as public company listing costs were $112,000 for the quarter. In addition to the administrative expenses, the partnership paid interest expense on a $47 million credit facility. Interest paid in the first quarter was $356,000. The partnership has maintained interest only payments on the nonrevolving credit facility. The interest rate swap agreements fixed the interest rate at a bank and acceptance rate of 1.81 plus a credit spread. This swap is locked in and matures in April 2025. The credit spread ranges based on the level of debt to EBITDA due to the impact of COVID-19 and the partnership, the credit spreads did increase by 25 basis points in April 2021 for a combined rate of 2.935. The debt-to-EBITDA ratio for the last 4 quarters is 1.46 and therefore, the credit spread has decreased to the lowest tier effective April of 2022. Please reference the company's MD&A for the full credit spread schedule. And after paying partnership expenses and administrative expenses, the resulting net cash is available for distribution to its 2 partners based on their advantage ownership. For shareholder dividend, the company declared shareholder dividends of $0.19 per share or $4.7 million for the quarter compared to $4.1 million or $0.165 per share for the prior year comparable quarter. The resulting payout ratio for the quarter was 108% and was 106% in the prior year's quarter. The company initially reduced the monthly dividend in April 2020 and had subsequent increases in November of 2020, August of 2021 and most recently February 2022. Any further changes will be implemented with a view to maintain the continuity and consistency of monthly distribution. The working capital decreased $350,000 in the quarter to $6.2 million as of March 31. System sales for the first quarter have generally been the softest, resulting in the utilization of some working capital during this period. However, government mandated restrictions predominantly lifted, the company will continue to closely monitor sales and royalty income to determine when additional dividend adjustments may be warranted. With that financial overview, I would like to turn the call back to our operator to ask the questions.
And if you would like to advise if there are any questions.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Derek Lessard with TD Securities.
I just wanted to -- maybe the first point is to maybe touch a little bit on inflation and pricing. I'm just curious on how much more that you think you might need to do? And secondly, I was just wondering how the consumer reception has been?
Yes. Christine might have a little more to add to that. But I think generally, we're just obviously keeping a very close eye on our input costs, and then we have seen increases across the board for all food and nonfood items that you can really think of consistent with just seeing the overall economy. So we're definitely not immune to that. And I think we've just been staying really close to it and trying to strike that balance. So we have seen traffic and check up. So we think we're finding the balance quite well. We know consumers are definitely value conscious, especially our core demographic. But we also feel that we do need to and can get away with some price increases that we do pass on. So we're trying to be quite systematic about that and to orchestrate when throughout the year, both brands is the best time to do that. Do we see an end to that? I don't think anyone can say that right now. I will just sort of put some increases through recently, and we'll see how it goes, I guess. Certainly, it would be nice to see some relief, but I don't think we're anticipating any in the short term. I don't know if Christine has anything to add to that or?
No, I think that covers it. I think customer reception of it, given the fact that traffic is up and ticket are both positive, moving in the right direction. I think we've got a good balance of communicating the changes as well as doing it modestly and slowly over periods of time.
Okay. And I guess -- I mean, you touched on sort of my follow-up to that in terms of the mechanism. So has it been price increases sort of across the board? Are you doing it through bundling? Maybe just maybe some color on sort of the mechanism?
Yes. I think it's been a combination of things that you don't want to go too much in detail just for proprietary reasons, but to give some transparency, I mean, definitely some key specials. As you can see they're pretty key price point for us. We will also in what we're doing. And we definitely try to be judicious about it, but we look at the mix of our different specials and create your own side items, things like that and just look for certain opportunities there as well. And also on the fuel side, we're conscious of drivers, also having that additional pressure they face economically would vastly increase fuel costs just as another example. So we're trying to sort of take all that into account with our pricing, our delivery, et cetera, in our -- so our overall supply chain.
Okay. I appreciate the color and also the sensitivity around it. I guess another question I do have is where are you guys in terms of the recovery for walk-ins? And I know you alluded to it a little bit in your prepared remarks, Paul. But how many nontraditionals are still closed in the network?
Yes, it's about 20%, 25%, I would say about 1/4 or still not. So mainly the college, university side, I think, is the piece that a lot of those institutions just said, look, we're just going to wait until the next school year in September rather than with all the different restrictions in different provinces. So that's a pretty big number for us. But we're very strong in that market, so about 1/4. But obviously, some of those are a bit lumpy, like the sports venues and things that we have turned back on. As soon as those were not restricted and we're open, we really sprung back. So things like walk-in just overall has actually been trending really nicely for us. And also pickup is also very, very strong for us, which we really like. In fact, we think we can capitalize on, pick up growth further at both brands as well.
And you're not fully recovered on the walk-in side just yet?
No, we're not yet, I would say when we look back at 2018, 2019, but we certainly like the trend line. And so it does seem that as the restrictions have lifted, we still have a little way to go, but it's definitely been showing some good trend there. So that -- with a bit of good execution, that should continue.
Okay. I guess another hot topic has been labor availability. I guess, how have you guys and your franchisees in particular, been managing through that? And I was just wondering if it -- has it impacted your pool of, call it, qualified potential franchisees?
I guess, just I'll answer the latter point first. On the pool of franchisees, we continue to see a really strong pipeline there, which I think is really encouraging. We're pretty excited about that, especially as we've really now become so known in places like Quebec and DC. And so we really do have a national profile now and we're getting fresh applications from all over the place to those new regions and of course, our popular core regions of Ontario and Alberta and things like that. So really good on the pipeline. I think people are seeing us as a really solid business with a great reputation and a good track record and good investment return for people. In terms of labor, it is tough. I mean we are definitely having to manage things, be very creative, there's definitely a tightness of labor for drivers, no question about it. We're competing with others, other feasibility companies. We're competing with third-party companies that are also, of course, large employers of drivers, and it's very difficult. So I think we certainly have to be creative, I guess, we've managed it, I think, quite well, but it has been a burden. I mean there's cases where we have owner-operators going out, delivering their own food during peak times if they have to get in their car and do it, they're happy to do it, and they're very dedicated to do that, but it's not ideal. And I think we do have a little bit of stickiness, I would say, in a good way with a lot of our family-operated businesses that perhaps some that are maybe all the drivers are independent contractors. But some of them, I think they like the environment and they have stayed with us for a long time as much as we also have a churn rate as well of some drivers. I think generally, we have a lot of long-time drivers, too, that tend to stick around where they may not if they're working for another company. So it is tough, it's the bottom line, and especially with wage increases and things all the time, availability and wage is definitely a pressure on us.
Okay. And maybe along the same lines, maybe just remind me of your -- the outlook for the -- for your restaurant growth this year? And has any -- have you experienced any things like construction delays and permit delays and what have you because of the labor issue?
We haven't had any issues, actually is surprising in a way with construction labor as much. That side has actually been pretty good. We've been really happy with our own team, which we've grown. We're very solid and our contractors and our quality of build and things like that. I would say, with some aspects, yes, it's more of the inflationary aspects with things like I'll just give an example, something like steel for our cabinets and our back of house operations. I mean just the cost of those items has gone up. So we're worried about that. We have actually tried to preempt some of those problems, supply chain issues we saw coming by ramping up on inventory a little more than we otherwise would. Just so we do tie up a bit of capital on the private company side to do that for be it others or construction materials, et cetera. So I think we've sort of managed to have a bit of a shock absorber in there rather than have massive delays that way. And we realize we're a little bit light this quarter for sure, but we're pretty on target for Q2, Q3 especially. So that's our plan is around about 5% again. We're really trying to say we should be able to grow 3 dozen-ish locations a year. And so that's our ambition. And with nontraditional, we're hoping to have circa 20. And there would be some closures in there as well with normal cleaning and just optimizing some of the laggards. So we would expect some closures, but we want to show more net growth. And I think we've really got a team that can execute on that. Although, yes, there are some supply chain things that keep coming up. And it's definitely, in some parts, you can get slowed down with waiting for certain items. But it's the inflationary part that probably worse us more than anything.
Yes. Okay. And maybe just one last one for me. I know in the MD&A, most stores have been opened just yet in Mexico. But just curious again about sort of the time frame there? And maybe just remind us about the opportunities that you see in those markets and maybe others?
Yes, we'll definitely give more detail, Derek, because I'm glad you mention that. Mexico, we're excited about it. It's -- we've been working with these folks for now well over 2.5 years, I guess. And they've been up here. We've been down there. We're certainly kicking into a higher gear. But it will still be in our estimation probably very late this year. I think before we see any locations light up there, it would be starting in the Guadalajara region with our partner base there and then scaling up over time. But we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes on, as you can imagine, supply chain, construction, planning, real estate, citing locations, procurement, branding, marketing strategies, all that stuff. There's a lot of ongoing work behind the scenes there. It's just right now, we don't have much to say on it, but excited in future quarters to start talking more about that.
This concludes the question session for today. Please proceed with closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for joining our call this afternoon. If you have any questions following the call, please feel free to contact us. Our information is on the earnings release. Have a good evening.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.