Americana Restaurants International PLC (AMR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. This is Henrik Herbst from Morgan Stanley. We are very happy to host the Americana Restaurants first conference call as a listed company today. With us on the line from the company, we have Amarpal Sandhu, CEO; Harsh Bansal, CFO and Chief Growth Officer; and Sonika Sahni, Head of IR and Strategy. We will start with a short presentation by the company, and then we'll have about 30 minutes or so for Q&A. Before I hand over to the company, please take note of the disclaimer statement that appears at the beginning of the earnings release. This disclosure reminds investors that certain information management may discuss today is forward-looking. Various factors could affect the company's results and cause those results to differ materially from the projections set forth in the forward-looking statements. With that done, I'm very pleased to hand it over to Amar.

Thank you, Henrik. Good day, everyone, and thanks for joining Americana Restaurants' first earnings call. We will be covering full year 2022 financial results today. Starting out, we'll do a performance overview on all accounts. 2022 was a historic year for Americana Restaurants. We made significant progress in advancing our vision to become the fastest-growing and most trusted food operator globally. Financial and operating results were very strong, and we closed the year with an IPO on ADX and the Saudi Exchange, the first ever concurrent dual listing in the region. To start, we'll cover key performance indicators, as you see in this slide, we ended 2022 with 2,183 operating restaurants, which is slightly below our ambitious target of 2,200. We opened a record 220 gross new restaurants. This includes 186 openings for our power brands, KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee's and Krispy Kreme. ASA led all countries with more than 80 openings. This is a buildup on 19 openings from 2021. And this reiterates our guidance both in terms of NSOs as well as over-indexing growth in Saudi Arabia in the medium term. Moving on to revenues. We increased revenues to $2.38 billion, which is a 15.9% increase over 2021. This is especially remarkable when you consider that 2021 was 8.5% better than 2019 than pre-COVID levels. So when you look at the 3-year stack from 2019 to 2022, which includes the COVID year of 2020, our revenue grew by an impressive 26%. LfL growth of 13.6% versus prior year demonstrates the health and strength of our business and brands. LfL transaction growth was close to 10%. Key drivers of LfL are strong operations, craveable products, omnichannel accessibility and the right mix of brand and traffic marketing. KFC, our flagship brand crossed 100 million transactions and eclipsed its previous record of $1 billion in sales in 2021. Hardee's transformation continued to build momentum in 2022 with double-digit sales and transaction growth. Moving on to profitability. The business generated adjusted EBITDA of $536 million, increasing by 15.4% versus the previous year with a healthy EBITDA margin of 22.5%. We saw a minor decline of 10 basis points in margin versus 2021. This was primarily due to the unprecedented commodity headwinds. Net profit grew to $250 million, up 27.1%, resulting in a net income margin of 10.9%, which is an expansion of 100 basis points versus the previous year. When it comes to NSO CapEx deployment, we remain disciplined, allowing us to maintain a very healthy balance sheet and strong overall financial position. Whilst portfolio level paybacks are 1.9 years currently, we expect them to normalize closer to the 3-year mark over the medium term. Our internal thresholds to approve new store CapEx will remain in place with the consideration of 3- to 4-year payback. However, we will always strive to beat our payback thresholds. In line with our earlier guidance, the Board has recommended $103.5 million in dividend payouts for H2 2022, which is 75% of the H2 2022 net profit. This is subject to shareholder approval during the AGM of course. With this in mind, we are well positioned to meet our growth and capital expenditure commitments as well as to support our dividend policy. Next, we will cover the 2022 key milestones, starting off with the signing of Pizza Hut franchise. In KSA, we increased the market penetration of our existing brands with the Pizza Hut agreement in KSA. We opened the first Pizza Hut in June and by year-end, we have scaled the brand up successfully to 30 stores. Next, in line with our commitment to enter the coffee segment in our core GCC markets. We signed an exclusive master franchise agreement with Peet's Coffee. Peet's is a leading coffee brand from California, United States, and we are pleased to report that Peet's Coffee has opened 2 flagship locations in the UAE, offering a unique experience with coffee enthusiast. Both these -- there's one location in Dubai Mall and the second one is in Dubai Hills Mall. We look forward to the continued brand building and scale-up of Peet's. In addition, we opened our first Krispy Kreme outlet in Jordan with 4 outlets in operation currently. The first hot light store in Jordan was a huge success with record-breaking sales in Krispy Kreme's global system. We also successfully launched our proprietary brand Wimpy in the UAE at Dubai Mall, showcasing the region's first of its kind robotics technology. And currently, we are operating 5 Wimpy restaurants in UAE. We pride ourselves in cultivating a performance-driven, values-led culture at Americana. To that end, we were recognized with the exceptional Workplace Award by Gallup in 2022 for fostering is supportive and empowering environment for our employees. Lastly, we partnered with a technology solution provider to co-develop and roll out a tech-powered Voice of the Customer platform across major brands and countries. This is custom developed for Americana with the ultimate objective, reduced customer friction points and conduct real-time interventions for immediate guest recovery. Moving on, I'm going to touch a little bit on the state-of-the-art new restaurants we are building and a big shout out to our development team at Americana as well as the design team. And what you see in this slide and the next one are some of the key new restaurant rollouts. We have continued to ramp up new store builds post-COVID and achieved 220 gross openings last year. While driving penetration with core brands, we have also built a pipeline for future growth, and our pipeline looks out 18 to 24 months. We will continue to invest in innovative restaurant designs and efficiency initiatives for new builds to ensure we minimize capital recovery periods and maintain cost discipline. Now I'm going to turn it over to Harsh to go through the detailed financial review.

Thank you, Amar. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining. So we have delivered strong financial performance with 220 openings, 15.9% revenue growth and largely maintaining our profitability margins. We have been able to maintain margins despite geopolitical uncertainties and significant commodity inflation impact seen in 2021. Now going into the detailed financials. So first, we will talk about the store portfolio. Since 2019, barring the COVID year of 2020, we have been consistently building our new store opening engine. In 2022, our net openings of 173 are 2.6x of what we opened in 2019 and 50% more than 2021 openings. On closures, we closed 2.2%, which is 47 stores of the overall portfolio. Power brand closures have been 1.2%. However, for growth in niche brands, we closed close to 7.6%. This was largely driven by store closures of Baskin Robbins and Costa Coffee in Egypt due to import restrictions as well as low average unit volumes. This had minimal impact on the total revenue, and in fact, positive impact on the profitability given low AUVs. We were also able to exit some long-term onerous leases by negotiating with landlords. Others include cleanup for other brands, which is Fish Market and an Grand Cafe largely in Egypt. As of 31st December 2022, we only have 6 stores left in the others category. Moving on from store portfolio to the revenue bridge. The LfL contributed $252 million of incremental growth on back of 13.6% LfL growth. NSOs contributed $163 million of incremental revenue. And if you look at closures, despite of 47 closures, the impact of revenue was limited to $23 million given low average net volumes for the closed stores. The gross impact of devaluation was $88 million, largely driven by Egypt and Lebanon. Whilst we have been proactive to increase prices largely in line with inflation, but given significant devaluation, dollar revenues have been impacted, and this has been more significant in Q4 2022 given the EGP devaluation in Q4. Though our 80% plus revenues come from peg currencies, given the ongoing devaluation pressures in Egypt and Lebanon, we expect this impact to continue in 2023 as well. Here, we talk about our revenue evolution of brand, country and channel. As far as brands are concerned, our power brand contribution has been consistent at 93-odd percent of the total revenue. On revenue from pegged currencies, we have increased it slightly from 80% to 81%. As far as channel is concerned, home delivery as a channel, as we highlighted earlier, has gone down from 42% to 39%. This has had a positive impact on the margin, which you will see in the EBITDA bridge. This has also been driven by our omnichannel strategy as well as post-COVID normalization. If you look at drive-throughs as well as other channels, which includes kiosks, our revenue has increased due to digital enablement, which has been an organizational focus. This demonstrates the resilience of our portfolio, which has a natural hedge given multiple brands and a regional presence. Here, we show the revenue split by power brands. KFC has maintained a strong momentum with 17.6% LfL growth on top of a very strong 2021 where we had a positive LfL growth versus 2019. 2020 has been a transformation year for Hardee's, and we have delivered more than 12% like-for-like growth with a very strong transaction growth. KK or Krispy Kreme as a brand has delivered the highest overall growth despite negative LfL. Our negative LfL has been driven by 2 factors. One is on the base of 2020, we opened 64 net new stores. This resulted in some cannibalization impact. However, we have seen cannibalization impact is negated in a period of 6 to 12 months post opening, after which the sales recover. Second is competition, which is more a factor in Saudi with international players like Starbucks, Tim Hortons and Dunkin rapidly expanding along with local players, Sweet treat segment has become hypercompetitive. We have refrained from discounting, which has had some impact on revenue. The focus for us is to add additional revenue channels by adding more occasions and focusing on CPG model via supermarkets, gas stations and others. Here we talk about our margin profile. We have maintained a very strong margin profile with 29-odd percent store level margins, 22.5% EBITDA margins and 10.9% of net income margins. Margins have been largely consistent with 2021, and we have been able to successfully navigate inflationary headwinds, especially driven by commodities. On this slide, we highlight the EBITDA bridge from 2021 to 2022. On the left, we see a 2.1% gross margin improvement, which has been driven by 4 major factors: one is operating leverage from the LfL growth; second is our ongoing synergies from the rental costs, given the focus on building hubs where we have multiple stores as well as uplift in revenue and our significant leases being fixed term leases; and the third is home delivery mix and efficiencies on other 4 wall cost. As far as the impact of -- in food inflation is concerned, we had a net impact of 1.6%. This has been contained by efforts include -- which includes smart pricing, tapping into new supply sources using muscle and strength of Americana Restaurants and various other initiatives. Whilst we are seeing softing of commodities, we expect to see positive impact of this only in H2 2023, given the stock carryover and the price commitments we have with the suppliers. Moving on from profitability to paybacks. We continue to deliver solid paybacks of less than 2 years ahead of our internal threshold of 3 to 4 years. Krispy Kreme is leading the pack with a payback of less than 1 year, especially driven by strong performance in Egypt and Jordan. Pizza Hut, on the other side has payback close to 4 years. This is driven by Pizza Hut Saudi openings, which have not reached a steady state margin given we expanded from 0 to 30 in a time frame of 6 months. We are carrying higher labor cost for training purposes, and we expect Pizza Hut Saudi margins to normalize in the next 12 to 18 months. Now on the cash and the working capital side, our net working capital is at minus 8%. This is lower than last year due to the inventory buildup, especially during Q3 and Q4, and this was triggered by the supply chain disruptions after Ukraine war where our lead times significantly went up. And to avoid out-of-stock situations, we built up inventory. Having said that, we expect the inventories to normalize by June 2023. We have -- on the CapEx side, we have maintained our CapEx at close to 6.4% of sales, which includes new stores, remodels, technology and other CapEx initiatives. So on an overall level, we have maintained a very strong and healthy balance sheet with a cash conversion of close to 50%. And as Amar highlighted, our Board of Directors have recommended dividends of $103.5 million, which is 75% of H2 net income, and it is subject to the shareholders' approval in the AGM. On this note, I will hand it over to Amar to walk us through way forward and guidance.

Thank you, Harsh. So looking ahead, we are very positive on the outlook for 2023 as we continue to implement our growth strategy. First and foremost, we will continue pursuing growth across our restaurant portfolio by expanding our presence with approximately 250 to 300 net new restaurants on an annual basis. As mentioned earlier, we will over-index in KSA through our power brands as well as introduction or launch of incubator brands in KSA, such as Peet's Coffee. In addition to KSA, we see Iraq as a greenfield opportunity. Now that we have rights to Baghdad and the South of Iraq and the first Pizza Hut and KFC is under construction. We want to get Iraq ready for future growth as well. We should also talk about Egypt. Everyone is aware of the challenging times in Egypt. And zooming in on the severe economic crisis, we are implementing several initiatives to mitigate the impact of currency-related issues as well as the reduced demand due to the hyperinflation that is going on in Egypt. So some of the initiatives that we are going after include smart pricing and disruptive value to mitigate transaction decline. Cost efficiencies, we are looking across the value chain to make sure that we look at every penny, every cost line item to ensure that there is extreme focus on cost. We are renegotiating contracts. We are localizing all supply sources, as well as we are speaking with our franchise in order to make sure that they are supporting us through these difficult times. And thirdly, prudential -- prudent capital deployment by limiting new store openings to Krispy Kreme and pulling back on all of the CapEx expenditures. We started that actually last year, and we will maintain the same position going into 2023. Like in any crisis, we at Americana are always looking for a silver lining, and we want to emerge stronger and leaner through continued focus on operational excellence, reducing costs as well as streamlining our processes in Egypt. When it comes to margin, we -- Harsh touched on this earlier. We expect commodity headwinds witnessed in 2022 to ease out. We will see a benefit from this only in H2 of 2023 as we deplete the existing inventory build. On technology front, really credit to the technology team at Americana, I want to highlight the fact that recently in Yum!'s global franchisor convention or franchisee convention mention in Singapore, Americana received the global award for digital disruptor from Yum!. So our investments to maintain leadership in our digital offering and optimizing our off-premise revenue channels will continue. And talking about scale-up of new brands, we will continue to scale up the new brands and strengthen the pipeline for future growth. This includes Pizza Hut in Saudi Arabia, Peet's Coffee in the core GCC markets as well Wimpy, and then, of course, we talked about Iraq earlier. It is important to mention, I know Harsh touched on this earlier as well that incubator brands and new launches can take 24 to 36 months to get to portfolio level margins as we invest in the initial stages of brand building and get the brands ready for scale-up -- successful scale-up. Next. So in conclusion, the strength of our business was clearly demonstrated in 2022 as we continue to pursue growth as one of the most profitable growth-oriented and diversified F&B operators. The guidance you see here highlights some of the key pillars that we had shared earlier. In the medium term, we are targeting 250 to 300 net new restaurants per year, mid-single-digit like-for-like growth, a 250 to 300 basis improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin in the medium term and annual dividend distribution post-2023 earnings with a target payout of at least 50% of net profit from 2023 onwards. Thank you again for joining us today, and we are happy to answer any questions you may have now.

[Operator Instructions] Okay. At this time, we have no questions via the telephone lines. So I'll hand back to Henrik for any questions via the webcast.

Right. So thanks very much Yes, we've got a few questions online. The first one is from [Rimal bari] at CECO, asking Pizza Hut's expansion into Saudi. Firstly, what is the targeted number of openings per annum? And did you meet the previously stated FY '22 target of 25 to 30 new locations in Saudi? Secondly, why did the previous franchisor shut shop in KSA?

So twofold question. The answer to the first one, yes, we met our targets of 30 openings in 2022. And we will aggressively scale up the Pizza Hut brand in 2023 in KSA to continue to build on the 30 openings. The previous franchisee, again, this is anecdotal. I cannot comment on the actual reasons. Our understanding is it was a mutual exit between Yum! brands and the franchisee, and they closed roughly 160 restaurants at the time of exit back in 2021, August or September. And given the credibility of Americana Restaurants with Yum! and the work that we have done over the last 5 years post acquisition, the franchise was awarded to Americana, with the exception of Jeddah City, which is a second franchisee, a legacy franchisee who continues to operate there.

Great. Unless we have any questions on the line, we continue to read another question. With respect to the aggregators, can you guide us as to how your system guides deliveries to Americana's fleet versus the fleet of aggregators? Is the royalty standardized across aggregators? Or does it vary based on agreement?

Thank you, Henrik. So first, as far as the order delivery is concerned, we do not differentiate the order based on the source, so the delivery is prioritized based on the first in, first out. So there is no differentiation in terms of where it's coming from our channels or aggregators. As far as commissions are concerned, as we highlighted earlier, we have a very strong partnership with aggregators, and we have signed longer term contracts, which span up to 5 years, and we have favorable commissions given we only use aggregators for a marketplace, which is customer acquisition and largely, we have our own platform, our delivery platform, where we do our own fulfillment, given the strong fleet of 7,000-plus -- 500-plus riders we have across different countries.

That's great. And if I understand it correct, we do have a question online. So back to Alex.

We have a question from Marco Spinar from Neuberger Berman.

Just wanted to ask if you could go into a little detail on the fourth quarter itself. I mean it looks like revenue growth decelerated a fair set in the fourth quarter. Can you comment if that's accurate and what drove that?

Sure, Marco. Thank you for your question. So there are two aspects to it. One is the LfL growth, we still had a double-digit LfL growth in Q4. It is slightly softer than the previous quarters, but still a strong momentum with double-digit LfL growth. In Q4, specifically, we were impacted by the EGP valuation. So in October, there was a significant devaluation in EGP. And we took a strategic choice of not to take a significant price increase because we wanted to make sure we build the momentum of our transaction growth in Egypt and that also had an impact, but from an LfL standpoint, we still maintained a double-digit LfL in Q4 of 2022.

There were no factor. How would you characterize, for example, Saudi and the UAE in the fourth quarter?

So Saudi and UAE had a strong LfL growth in Q4 as well. We, especially UAE given that there was Qatar world cup which was happening, and we saw some positive tailwinds driven by that. But overall, UAE and Saudi LfL were in line with the portfolio LfL, which were double digit.

We currently have no further questions from the telephone lines. So I'll hand back to Henrik for any further written questions.

Yes, we do have quite a few questions online. Let's do the next one from Bulent Yurdagul from HSBC. He's got three questions. Firstly, how much of price increase was during Q4 '22? And what more could we expect in 2023? Secondly, why revenue per average restaurant for Pizza Hut is flattish year-over-year? Is there any pricing-related challenges there? And then the third question, what is the target for Pizza Hut, Saudi Arabia ex Jeddah expansion in 2023 can we see an addition of another 50 to 60 stores in 2023?

So there are 3 [indiscernible] on price increase. The price increase in the second half of last year was in the mid-single digits. That's the impact. Outside of Egypt, we don't see huge opportunities for price increases this year. The second question is on Pizza Hut.

Saudi.

On Saudi, the -- or Pizza Hut flattish growth, Pizza Hut before Saudi, Pizza Hut's main portfolio with [indiscernible] main footprint is in UAE and Egypt. So the impact of the Egypt devaluation brings the growth down for Pizza Hut. However, in UAE, it's been quite solid. And then thirdly, we opened 30 new restaurants in Saudi last year in the 6 months, and our plan is to continue to build on that. So definitely, we are targeting more than what we opened in the 6 months leading up to this year.

All right. And we got another -- we got a question from an Aaron Armstrong from Ashmore Group. Can you explain your comment that store paybacks will normalize is 3 years from current 1.9 years? What is causing that? What caused the gross profit margin to decline in Q4 '22, given that input costs were decreasing during the year -- the quarter sorry, what caused miss on store additions, more closures or fewer openings than expected?

So I'll answer the first one and then Harsh can answer the one on gross margins. On the normalizing -- so the 1.9-year payback is best in the industry, best-in-class, and of course, a lot of that was driven because the openings were limited over the last couple of years as we continue to scale up and we have to move into trade areas that are still maturing over time, we want to make sure that we are able to take those decisions without compromising the overall health of the portfolio. So our thresholds for paybacks, we use anywhere between 20% to 25% IRRs or between 3 to 4 years, which is normal for the industry, which is best-in-class, even if you look across these segments globally. Now having said that, we just don't want to create an expectation that 1.9 years can continue in perpetuity. So even 3 years is very strong paybacks. And as we open more stores, we are moving into trade areas because of the urbanization and new developments, whether it's Saudi, whether it's in Iraq or other countries, as well as accelerating the growth on the incubator brands, Pizza Hut and Saudi, Peet's launch, Wimpy launch so that is why we want to take that into account. So we strike the right balance between growth and paybacks, and we don't inhibit ourselves on the growth side to opening 250 to 300 net new restaurants by aiming for paybacks that may not be best for the overall health of the Americana.

Thank you, Amar. So on the gross margin side, while the global commodity prices started softening in Q4, but in our markets, we largely operate in import-driven markets. So there is a lag in terms of price realization what you see in our region. And in fact, the Q4 margins or the gross margins were similar to Q3. And even going into 2023, we expect gross margins in H1 of 2023 to be similar to Q4 just because we are carrying inventory, and we have some volume and price commitments with the suppliers. And we will see a meaningful improvement in margins only going into H2 of 2023 once we have depleted our stock. And also, we will be comping against H1 2022, where we had opposite effect and we had tailwinds given that we were carrying stocks from 2021, which were at the lower price, and that's why we had a better margin profile. There was another questions?

Right. I just want to check, Alex, if we've got any questions on line because we do have a whole bunch online.

At this time, we have no registered questions from the telephone lines.

Okay. Right. So regarding someone who hasn't given their name. On the subject of net income contribution in different regions, why does Kuwait region contribute so much to the bottom line?

So Kuwait -- we also discussed it earlier, Kuwait as a country used to be -- the parent company used to be in Kuwait, so we have some specific contracts in place, which are central contracts and the exclusivity fees for these contracts are actually being booked in Kuwait, which, to an extent, inflates a profitability, but that is linked to the exclusivity contracts across markets.

Right. And the next question is from Sarah Muati from [Derya] Financial. How many out of the net 250 to 300 net store openings will be in Saudi and emerging markets, respectively?

So as we mentioned earlier, Saudi will definitely over-index. We opened 80-plus stores last year out of the 220 gross. So we will maintain similar proportion this year as well of the 250 to 300.

Got it. And then we have another question on the payback periods, but I think you've already touched on that. Next question is from [indiscernible] from Bridge Advisors. CapEx is $152 per outlet. Does it include lease payments? How will closing outlets in Egypt affect growth?

So the CapEx of $152 million is actually a total CapEx, which is $152 million. It's not by store, and this includes new store openings, remodels, technology and other CapEx investments. Now as far as Egypt is concerned, as Amar mentioned, we would be selective in terms of our expansion in Egypt. The focus is on cost as well as operating excellence and organically gain market share, but we will be selectively opening Krispy Kreme, given the strong payback as well as the profitability of the brand in Egypt.

Okay. And next question is from Vijay Atal from Somerset Capital Management. How do you think about capital allocation? Are KPIs management incentives linked to return on capital invested or return on capital?

And absolutely, one of the key areas or elements we are focused on is on capital deployment. That's why if you see, we very quickly pivoted from Egypt to other countries in Q3 last year when we started seeing challenges in Egypt. Our KPIs are linked to long term -- our long-term incentive plans are linked to return on capital employed, and that ensures that we look at a slightly longer-term view in terms of capital deployment.

Okay. And then from Mohammed Al-Galbi from Al-Nahdi Holding Company. From a health perspective, do you see any shift in customer behavior towards healthy food options, especially in Saudi Arabia? And what is your plan to mitigate this impact?

So yes, the answer is yes. The awareness in the region on healthier options is increasing. So there are 2 ways that we want to address that. One is obviously continued innovation to make sure that even within the existing brands, we have offerings that cater to the changing consumer needs within the region. That doesn't mean that we're going to stop selling fried chicken at KFC. It's just -- but we would introduce complementing products in addition to the fried chicken. The RAS is a great example for KFC, which is one of the big sellers at KFC. In addition to that, we are also exploring onboarding a brand or entering a segment in the healthy area. So conversations are underway in terms of -- or considerations are underway on how to enter that segment where we can have an offering of healthier options for our consumers in the region. We view ourselves as a food platform, not a pure-play restaurant operator. So that's a segment we are looking at seriously.

Next question is from Sultan Al-Salem from Jadwa Investments. Why the sequential decline in sales growth quarterly and what type of like-for-like growth should we expect? I presume that means in 2023. Also, how will the management address the tax introduction in the UAE this year? And what will the impact be if you can quantify it?

So on the sales, we had a very strong year, as mentioned earlier, 13.6% LfL. And again, Harsh answered the question on some of the reasons for the softness in Q4. Our guidance remains in place for mid-single-digit LfL growth in 2023 or in the medium term.

And as far as the UAE corporate income tax is concerned, that would be effective on us from the 1st of January 2024. And we -- our tax guidance is largely in line with what we gave earlier, which is approximately 8%, which factors in the introduction of UAE corporate income tax.

And then we got a question from an unknown person. Dear Americana team, could you give a bit of detail around labor availability in each of your 4 largest markets. How much could this be a bottleneck for rolling out new stores?

So as it relates to labor availability, we've been able to keep up to support the rollout of our new stores. This is something that we are looking at very closely as we ramp up. So obviously, in 2022, we were able to open 220 new stores, and this year, we are targeting between 250 to 300. So plans are in place. We monitor this very closely. It's a mix of expat labor in Saudi. There's a lot of focus on Saudiazation and hiring local talent as well as training and developing them for continued progression within our brands. So yes, we have multiple levers on labor across the 4 major GCC markets to keep up with the openings of 250 to 300 restaurants.

Okay. So we got a question from Shadab Ashfaq from Al Ramz. Does Jeddah region also include Makkah and Madina, where legacy players still operates? Is the company working on cloud kitchen, operating all power brands on a delivered basis from a single location.

So the Jeddah region does not include Makkah and Madina. It is limited to Jeddah City. We have some cloud kitchens and operations currently, but they are more brand specific. We do not have a multi-brand cloud kitchen at this point, and that is more strategic. That doesn't mean that we won't enter that segment in the future.

And the next question is from Tom Kight from Sarasin & Partners. Two questions. Firstly, what constraints, if any, do you foresee with regard to unit growth to labor availability, more concerned in white space? Secondly, can you expand on lease costs? Are these lengthening? Or do you anticipate keeping about 3 years to maintain flexibility?

So the labor question we already mentioned. Our constraints can vary from country to country depending on regulation, laws, municipalities, permitting processes. But we have enough experience and feet on the ground in order to navigate through those constraints and having opened 220 restaurants last year, we feel quite confident that we can achieve the 250 to 300 this year. As far as leases go, yes, we are moving into longer term leases, especially when we are building freestanding drive-thrus, we want to make sure that we have control of those locations for a longer term. However, when we move into a longer-term lease beyond 3 years, we typically have an exit clause at the 3-year time frame. So that is the only -- that's when we enter into a long-term lease. Most of our leases are fixed rent. We avoid turnover rent so as not to share the upside with the landlords.

Okay. And then we've got a question from Jagadishwar Pasunoori from NBK Capital. Are you planning to increase prices further in 2023 due to higher feedstock prices and by how much? What are the advantages of having multiple restaurants in one location? And then are you planning to acquire a few more QSR brands? What is your criteria for acquisition plans for QSR brands?

As far as price increases in 2023 is concerned, as Amar mentioned earlier, except some high inflation countries like Egypt, Lebanon or Kazakhstan. We don't expect significant price increases, especially in GCC, especially given that we are seeing commodity cooling off. So that's on the pricing. Now in terms of multiple locations, yes, we are building more and more hubs where we open multiple restaurants next to each other. That has a positive impact both on the sales as well as on the cost base because it becomes a food destination and typically, revenue per store is also higher. Second is, it gives us synergies on the rentals, on the supply chain as well as on -- sometimes you also share dry areas -- dry storage areas, it also gives us efficiencies on the storage basis. Then on -- as far as acquisition of brands is concerned, one category we are focused on is healthy. As Amar mentioned, we are in discussions to potentially onboard a healthy brand. Outside of that, within the QSR, we are already into chicken burger as well as pizza category within our region. So we already have brands. So if we enter into QSR categories specifically, it would be more likely outside the geographies, and that would be through acquisitions, which we continue to explore opportunistically but there is nothing significant on the table as we speak.

And then there's a question from Tahir [Saviuddin] from JPMorgan. How should we think about rent synergies with a new multi-brand premise? I think you touched on this in this question. But can you share some data? What room for growth do you have for power brands in UAE and Kuwait?

So we would say, UAE, Kuwait, there is still potential for further growth. UAE, actually until last year was over-indexing in growth and the market continues to grow. So there is still more potential. Steady-state is how I would define UAE. In Kuwait, we are underpenetrated. We have -- our restaurants have extremely high AUVs and we have capacity constraints in many cases. But real estate is also difficult to secure in Kuwait. So as and when we find the right real estate, we will continue to add more outlets in Kuwait.

And on the rent synergies, we expect the rent as a percentage of sales will help us or will continue to build in terms of margin improvement. It's difficult to quantify just because of hubs, but given the fixed leases, positive LfL growth as well as the hub strategy, we expect it to be part of positive margin expansion going into medium term.

Got it. And then we got a question from Pratik Khandelwal from GIB Capital. Do you intend to increase EBITDA margin in near term? Will it come from input costs coming down or price hike? Can you give the like-for-like growth of KFC stores in Saudi particularly?

So Henrik, can you repeat the question, please, on the first one?

Yes, it is -- sorry.

As far as EBITDA margin is concerned, we expect we would be on track as per our guidance in the medium term, which is to improve our EBITDA margins by 250 to 300 basis points. In terms of the contribution of that margin expansion, yes, we expect gross margin or the commodity, or the cooldown at commodities to be part of it. Having said that, we expect that to only realize in H2 or starting H2 2023, given we have the stock carryovers as well as price commitments, and we expect it to build depending on the commodity situation. As far as pricing is concerned, we continuously look at pricing opportunities. But in H1, we are not looking at any significant pricing, but that is an ongoing lever we look at to make sure we can increase check as well as improve margins.

I think the first part was more specifically on, if you thought you could increase EBITDA margins near term, does that -- I mean you've been on track for your medium term target. Does that mean should we think about that as a linear function, I guess, is the question?

So the -- in terms of commodities, there's a lot of uncertainty, at this point, we don't have visibility what the second half is going to look like. So we are not in a position to comment on what expansion or that could look like. So we would be in a much better position as we move closer to June in order to offer that guidance for the balance of the year. The second part of that question was on KFC LfL growth in KSA. We have not disclosed the specific brand country LfLs, and we don't intend to do that going forward either.

Okay. Then we got a question from Usman Siddiqi from SICO Bank. As per Slide 15, 109 new restaurants were opened until September 2022. The company ended the year with 220 new openings. Can you explain which brands in which geographies the remaining 110 restaurants were opening.

So just to be clear, this slide is on the payback. So this only includes the stores which have opened in September of 2022. As far as full year is concerned, we have opened 220 gross units, and this is because, typically, it takes 3 to 6 months for the store to get to the stable revenues, and that's why we have looked at the payback performance for all the openings until year to date September. And as far as new openings is concerned, we have given the split of openings in the appendix and once the deck is shared, you will be able to see the openings as well as closing balances of brand country stores.

Right. So the next question is from Sarah Alotaibi from SNB Capital. Can you kind of give color on the profitability breakdown between UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Egypt and other markets? How much were the rebates from the top line in FY '22?

Well, UAE, I guess, Kuwait and another market.

So as far as profitability is concerned, as we mentioned earlier, GCC largely has similar profitability and we have been building on our profitability in the GCC, especially in Saudi Arabia. If you look at as per our prospectus, Saudi is slightly lower than the portfolio margin, but we have been building on that during 2022 as well. Egypt profitability is lower than GCC driven by various factors, including what's going on in the country, significant devaluation as well as the pricing power. But in 2023, focus for us is to also look at Egypt profitability, at least to sustain it, given the significant headwinds. Having said that, we are not disclosing detailed country-wise profitabilities but that's the summary at a high level. Now in terms of rebates, I'm not sure if I follow what exactly you mean from rebates?

Well, I don't know either really. It's -- Sarah, if you want to clarify, you can sort of type it in and I'll pass it on. I don't know either, really. Should we move on to the next one while we wait for Sarah to clarify?

Next question.

Next question, okay. So this is from Sultan Arslan from Jaguar Investments. We're hearing some softness in demand in the first 2 months of the year in Saudi. Can you address the reasons behind that?

So we haven't seen any softness in demand in Saudi, whatever sensitivities that we were expecting are built into our plans. And in Saudi, certainly, we've had a really good first couple of months. We are ahead of plan in Saudi.

In Q1, there will be more seasonality due to Ramadan, but outside that, at least till February, we have not seen any seasonality or slowdown in demand in Saudi specifically?

Yes. Ramadan will -- of course, is the first time in the last 6 years or where Ramadan is going to fall in the first quarter. So we have to take that into account. And -- but all of that is built into our operating plan for this year.

Okay. We've got another question from Bulent from HSBC. Efficiency gains have been strong on OpEx in 2022. Where do you see scope for margin gains in 2023? What is the outlook on advertisement and business development costs and provisions for tax and legal claims?

So as far as efficiencies is concerned, we continue to look at -- we again did zero-based budgeting as we have done for the last couple of years. Now the contribution of efficiencies, home delivery will continue to have a positive impact on the margin as well as the rental and other operating costs, we expect to have some positive impact. Now in terms of provisions and taxes and legal cases, we don't expect at least any significant impact coming in from taxes or legal cases. There was a significant tax segment, which we have already done in 2022 last year, which has been disclosed in the financials as well as in the prospectus.

Okay. And we've got another question from Mohammed Al-Galbi from Al-Nahdi Hold Co. On average, what is the take rate percent from delivery apps? And is there any plan to launch an app? And what is better to outsource or use the internal drivers for delivery?

So we are not in a position to give exact take rates, but our take rates, given that we use the delivery partners or the aggregators mostly for marketplace, our take rates are, I would say, significantly favorable. And we have longer-term contracts in place, and our relationship has been win with the aggregators, and we have relationships across the board. In terms of building our own app, we already have Super Apps. For example, we have a KFC Super App, which is the same app which we use for UAE, Saudi and other countries. We discuss whether we need to have an Americana app. But given the strength of KFC or Pizza Hut or Hardee's as brands, we have not built Americana app as such. Having said that, we have common back-end infrastructure which gives us the synergies of customer data of cost synergies of posting the apps as well as driving productivity. On the driver front, that has been a strategic choice that we wanted to make sure we retain control over fulfillment and that helps us to get access to customer data and also stay closer to the customers and also helps to build brand equity because when our orders are delivered, it is a KFC rider which delivers order or the Hardee's rider rather than any other rider from the aggregator. And that has helped us, in fact, to give a better customer service as well as in terms of cost efficiencies because our utilization is very much in line with the aggregators because we use driver pooling where we use drivers across brands to drive productivity.

That's great. Thanks very much. I think we're running out of time. So I'll hand it back to Sonika at this point.

Sure. Thanks, Henrik. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. As we are at the end of the 1-hour mark, if you still have questions, please write to us at the Investor Relations ID, and we'll be happy to address any questions which still remain unanswered. Thank you.