Driven Brands Holdings Inc. (DRVN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

November 30, 2021

NASDAQ US Consumer Discretionary Diversified Consumer Services conference_presentation 34 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#1

Good day, everyone. I hope you're doing good. I'm Simeon Gutman, Morgan Stanley's hardline, broadline and food retail analyst, and it's my pleasure to welcome Driven Brands to our virtual Global Consumer and Retail Conference. And welcome, this is Driven Brands' first time at this event. We hope you'll be a regular fixture here going forward. Driven is represented by President and CEO, Jonathan Fitzpatrick; and EVP and CFO, Tiffany Mason. Before we kick off, I have to read an important disclosure. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. One other housekeeping, there is a webcast link for Q&A. I have it open. I don't think I've seen anyone use it today in our sessions, but feel free, and I could relay those questions once we get through the session.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#2

So welcome, everyone. With that, I'll kick off with some Q&A and look forward to the session. Jonathan and Tiffany, the first question I have is on the competitive landscape. Can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of competition within each of the business segments that you operate in? Miles driven is recovering, it feels like it's a good moment, but are you seeing anybody ratcheted up in terms of pricing, in terms of promotion? Or is it a pretty good environment across the board?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#3

Thanks, Simeon, and happy to be here. We hope to be here every year. So thanks to you and the Morgan Stanley team for having us. Yes, look, the industry is in great shape. I think if you look at VMT, Q3 was down about 3% over prior year. I think the forecast is for 2022 to basically get back to flat. Current variant scare aside, I think that we're slowly making our way back to full VMT. The industry is in great shape. I think a couple of things, one is the industry is over $300 billion. It has been growing at sort of a really nice 2% to 3% CAGR for about a decade. Within our segments, the maintenance space is at almost a $60 billion industry. Our Quick Lube business, which is growing really, really well, is now over 600 stores. That's certainly an area from our company stores that we're putting a lot of capital to work in. The Car Wash segment, which is probably our next most important segment, it's a $9 billion industry. It's still quite nascent and growing quite rapidly. We've been deploying a lot of capital in there as well and look forward to doing that, both from an acquisition and a greenfield perspective. I think the industry has shown its resiliency over the last 18 months. I think everyone took a little bit of a dip when the pandemic first started back in sort of late Q1 or -- late Q1 of 2020. But this business is ultimately needs-based services, right? And people are still driving their cars. They still need to get them maintained and their oil changed and obviously, wash the car. So we feel really good about where the industry is in 2021, the bounce back from '20. And then we feel pretty good about what 2022 sets up as. So we feel like we're in great shape. Obviously, the other important factor about this industry is it's still highly fragmented. So about 80% of our competition is still sort of small chains and independents. And certainly, as Driven's scale continues to grow, I think that sort of widens the competitive advantage we have against a lot of the smaller players in the industry.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#4

Can I ask -- there has been this big decrease in new car sales, and as we think about how it relates to the automotive product distributors, the parts distributors, it should be positive. In your world, it's the service side and miles driven should be number one. But why shouldn't there be a tidal wave of service business that should come as a result of this big decrease or fall off in new car sales?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#5

Yes, I think it's certainly happening this year that -- I don't know what the latest estimates are, but it's going to be in the low teens in terms of new car sales. But remember, our customer, Simeon, is household income of about $70,000. They drive cars that are typically 10 years of age. They've got about 100,000 miles on it. So I think you'll see this little dip in new car sales in this year, I think it will recover as we head into 2022 once that supply chain sort of loosens up a little bit. So again, really our core customer drives older cars, cars typically in its second or third ownership cycle. So I don't think we're overly concerned about sort of a short-term hit to new car sales in 2021. Our customers generally have been driving and using their cars over the last 18 months, so not something we're overly concerned about. We are seeing like a lot of folks, some pressure in the supply chain, whether that's products, whether it's oil, we're not immune to that, but because of our size, because of our scale, because of our importance to many of our vendor partners, we're doing everything we can to ensure that we have adequate supply in our stores, both company and franchise. And we're not losing business because we don't have products. Now I can't say that for the 80% of the industry that are smaller and more fragmented, but it's been a difficult supply chain year. But certainly, the winners and the bigger players are probably doing better than many others.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#6

One more on the competitive landscape, it's not competitive, but it's more on reopening and I guess, the trajectory of miles driven is coronavirus scares. It felt like we were past the worst, and maybe we are. I don't -- I know you can't predict what happens with the virus and sentiment, but now we were hearing some people today talk about, hey, some people may not be driving back to work as soon as they think, et cetera. But the way you see the business, the trajectory in reopening, does it feel smooth enough where we are past the worst and it should continue to grow? And again, I know you can't predict the virus and people's sentiment. But it does feel like we should be on more of a predictable or better visibility path. I'm just curious how you think about that.

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#7

Yes, we certainly think about that. We launched a 5-year plan to get to $850 million. I'm sure we'll talk about it later. But we've not built in sort of lots of speed bumps along the way. There will be short-term disruption as we hit this latest variant that's out there. But look, our stores in Texas, Louisiana, the Carolinas, people are still driving and doing what they were doing last week. So we're still -- our view on 2022 is that VMT will return to pre-pandemic levels, and we haven't changed that view.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#8

Excellent. Okay. So I'd like to transition to talking about algorithm or the forecast for your -- for growth. And before we step into 2026, which I want to spend a lot of time on, I wanted to open it to talk about the core growth of the business. What should we expect? And I guess timing over the next couple of years, and then we'll use that to transition into the longer-term outlook.

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#9

Sure. Tiffany, do you want to take the organic growth algorithm?

Tiffany Mason

executive
#10

Yes. Love to, Jonathan. Thank you. So Simeon, thanks for having us again. So we shared a long-term organic growth algorithm ahead of the IPO in January of last -- January of this year, earlier this year, it's not been quite a year since our IPO, believe it or not. And what we suggested was that revenue would grow low double digits, EBITDA would grow low double digits, and you could expect mid-teens net income growth. And that's organic growth only. No M&A was assumed in that algorithm. That algorithm is very much intact. And so really, when we think about what's inherent in that long-term growth algorithm, it assumes there are modest assumptions. And the reason we built it that way was we wanted to show the power of the Driven Brands' model on very modest assumptions. We could be a double-digit grower, just executing our prudent playbook, right? So if you assume 2% same-store sales growth, knowing that our history shows we can grow at 4%, at least, right? 2% same-store sales growth, flat EBITDA margins, and coming out of 2020, those margins were 23% and no M&A, again, you could get double-digit growth from Driven Brands. And as I said, that's very much intact. So if you look at where we started, that model would have suggested at the start of 2021, $284 million of EBITDA growth. And if you look at our guide that we just updated on our Q3 call, back at the end of October, we actually updated our 2021 guidance to $350 million. Now some of that was M&A because we've done some acquisitions this year, but 70% of that is actually organic. So this model is really powerful, and then we layer on M&A, and it just gets that much more exciting. So I know you want to dovetail it into meaning what this could be in 2026, and we're excited to talk about it.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#11

Maybe one preface or one question before we dovetail is the forecast you laid out was interesting because it didn't imply the full potential of the historic growth of the business, whereas most companies, I would say, that are coming to the -- new to the market would give you history and potentially then some. You chose to be conservative. Can you just talk about the rationale of building a model in such a way? Why did you take that approach? And some people could interpret it as conservatism, some people said they see something. But can you just sort that out and then we'll move to the big question.

Tiffany Mason

executive
#12

Yes. I love that question. So listen, Jonathan and I think -- are of the same philosophy, and that is credibility matters and credibility matters, especially when you're a new public company, and you want to deliver on expectations, and you want to set up a cadence where you're delivering quarter in and quarter out, and making sure that you're doing exactly what you say you're going to do. And so we wanted to suggest to the market that there's a powerful model here and that, in any economic situation. And if you look back at the 12 years of same-store sales history that we share time in and time out in just about every investor presentation, no matter what economic cycle we're in, we can deliver positive comps and those comps can be anywhere from 1% to 6% or 7%. It's an average of 4% over that period. So if we just build our model based on 2% same-store sales, no matter what economic cycle we're in, we can deliver double-digit growth. So it was a very baseline view of our business so that investors could feel sound that this team can deliver and we could deliver pretty phenomenal results with plenty of upside that makes this valuation pretty exciting.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#13

Makes sense. I should have mentioned in the intro that we started Driven Brands earlier in 2021 with an equal weight. We really like the growth prospects, the reopening side of it, the economics, the franchise economics, and how you approach M&A. When the stock pulled back a little on the previous quarter, on the third quarter, we took that opportunity to upgrade it. And the profile was or is at least mid-teens growth for a mid-teens EBITDA multiple at current. And then we had this meeting, which was about 2 or 3 weeks ago, where you unveiled these or some inkling of this plan by 2026, which far surpassed anything that's in our model and think provides probably the full power or more fulsome power than the original guide. So we were excited by that. I'm sorry about the shameless plug for our view. But it is our favorite stock in our space for that reason because it trades at the biggest disconnect to the growth. So as that preface to the long-term plan, can you talk about the contours of that 2026 plan? And what sort of the Achilles heel to achieving those goals are?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#14

Yes, I'll start and Tiffany, I'm sure, will jump in. But I think it was really we wanted to make sure, Simeon, that people understood that the long-term double-digit growth organically is fully intact, and I think quite frankly, has upside to it. We talked about some of the data opportunity, the current unit store pipeline. So we think that, that is absolutely intact, but we didn't want to shy away from the M&A capabilities that we have shown over the last sort of 7 or 8 years. The last 3 years, we've averaged about $73 million of acquired EBITDA. We sort of took that and then sort of haircut-ed that again and said, let's sort of guide to or give outlook to sort of $50 million a year over the next 5 years, which obviously, cumulatively, is $250 million. And then that M&A itself will compound, right? So we wanted to make sure that people understood that essentially, we can build it, we can buy it, we can franchise it. Those are the 3 growth levers within our business. We won't guide annually to M&A, because we think that leads to bad practices internally. But we're very comfortable that over 5 years, we will acquire at least $250 million of EBITDA. And if you actually play out the model and put more aggressive assumptions even on the organic side, you'll see that we have very thoughtfully used the words at least $850 million by the end of 2026. We will be disappointed if we don't more than achieve that number. So really, it's highlighting again the low double-digit organic growth, layering on the M&A that we've been so successful with, that's how this engine will get to at least $850 million by 2026.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#15

If -- I'm sorry, Tiffany, if you were going to say something.

Tiffany Mason

executive
#16

No. Maybe, Simeon, I was just going to say, if I can follow your shameless plug with my shameless plug, I would just maybe share with the investing public that's listening, we actually posted the sell-side meeting slides on our website. So for folks that want to dive a little deeper into what we shared with the sell-side folks that follow us, feel free to take a look at the IR site and you'll see the details of the plan that we laid out.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#17

So the 2 big drivers would be the core growth, which Tiffany, you've made the case for why you've built a fair and reasonable plan. And Jonathan, you just made the case on the acquired piece that you've also left some probably, cushion there because you're not adding the compounding. If you were -- I don't know if this is a fair way to look at it, but which one do you feel more confident in that you'll -- that's more conservative? I was going to say that you'll surpass, but which one of those assumptions, more growth from M&A and the compounding of it or better core performance?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#18

I think it's pretty equal in terms of our conservatism, if that's the word, Simeon. Because I think if you look at history as our guide, take same-store sales as an example, right? We're saying that we're going to grow same-store sales at 2% in our long-term organic growth algorithm, although we've averaged 4%, right? So that sort of feels like there's upside there. We did talk a little bit at the analyst meeting about sort of the data and digital investments that we're making, and that obviously provides accelerant to that number. And then from an M&A perspective, 3-year average of almost $74 million, we're plugging in $50 million, and our M&A pipeline has never been more robust than we sit here today. So we think that there's incremental upsides in both sides of both the organic and the M&A levers.

Tiffany Mason

executive
#19

And remember, the M&A bucket that we shared is pre-synergy, right? So there is not only the compounding effect of M&A, but then the synergies that we can go on around on top of that.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#20

Yes. So maybe a natural extension to the $850 million then is your allocation of capital and your ability to make acquisitions. And so the market effectively isn't going to entrust you with cash to go buy deals and do them successfully and make it accretive to your business. So I thought when we met in Charlotte, you provided a helpful framework around your criteria as well as the size of deals to make us feel more confident that there is plenty out there, despite the competition for the deals seemingly increasing. The interest in the space from investors, private public seems to be increasing, and therefore, maybe the cost of deals go up. So can you bridge us to why you feel confident that these deals will be available and that your process will stay true and you'll be able to be a good steward of that capital for the next several years?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#21

Yes. So I think your comments, Simeon, are right and probably more focused on Car Wash specifically than other spaces, right? So if you look at Car Wash, since we acquired the asset, in August of last year, we've acquired about 100 units in the United States. Average deal size is 2.3 stores, 60% of those deals are sourced internally. So we're not using banks or brokers, so that generally means we're getting sort of better purchase terms, better purchase price. In all cases, we're able to leverage purchasing synergies because of the scale of our purchasing power within the car wash space. The pipeline is really robust. There is more competition. The competition tends to be at the bigger asset size, and you see bigger multiples in those bigger asset size. We have a team and a machine that's built to target the small independent entrepreneurs that have 1 or 2 or 3 car washes. We have a diligence process that's super tight, super efficient. Our documentation is made to work well with small entrepreneurs. We are all cash buyers. We do what we say we're going to do. We've got a great reputation. So I feel really good about what we've done in 2021, also what the pipeline looks for 2022. The other thing that's important to remember is we ran this playbook with Quick Lube business starting back in 2016. So we're running the same playbook. If you look at that Quick Lube business, we started with about 50 stores in 2016, we now have over 600 stores and through a combination of franchising, greenfield and M&A. We're still early in the Car Wash business. We're certainly -- we like the M&A, we like the multiples, we like the scale and speed that it brings us. But we're also going to be opening, I'd say, at least 50 greenfield Car Washes next year. We also still think that there's an opportunity to franchise this business in time. When you look at our Quick Lube business, it took us about 18 months to 24 months to really tighten up the operating playbook, get it ready for franchising. In Quick Lube, this year in 2021, we'll open almost double the amount of franchise locations than company locations. So we see, over time, the ability to build greenfield Car Washes, acquire Car Washes and maybe even franchise it. So that's sort of a triple threat in terms of unit growth as we look forward.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#22

And to clarify, the franchising potential for Car Wash, Tiffany, that's not in the $850 million? Because that would be a kicker to the economics, maybe not to the dollars, but at least to the margin?

Tiffany Mason

executive
#23

You're right, Simeon. It's not included. That's correct.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#24

Right. Okay. Good. Maybe to transition, Jonathan, I want to talk about the brand -- the brands across your portfolio because recently, you started to espouse this vision of tying them more together. I'm going to embellish a little bit because you have all these brands. And I think you've talked about it more around Car Wash and oil change. But the idea that you have Meineke and Maaco and CARSTAR, is there something -- is there value to be had by synergizing everything? And I think you're putting the pieces in place, you've hired someone to look at this. So anyway, I think it's a good chance to understand what the vision is and how you can create value across the brands over time.

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#25

Sure. So it starts really with data and customer data. So today, we have 20 million unique customers in our data ecosystem. We're growing that unique customer count by about 900,000 customers a quarter, so adding 3.5 million new customers a year. What we're really focused on, Simeon, is trying to understand where our customers are spending their dollars in automotive aftermarket, and really, sort of making sure that in the ecosystem of where they spend dollars that, first and foremost, they're spending them at a Driven Brands company, right? So if we've got a Quick Lube customer, let's make sure they're getting their car washed at one of our car washes and vice versa. In the event that they need like collision work, let's make sure those customers are calling on Maaco first before they look at any other competitor. So really, it's really about understanding and chasing wallet share of customers over a multiyear period, right? So know that customers on average are spending about $3,000 to $4,000 on their car over a 3- to 4-year period. So we want to make sure as we connect our brands together, connect this ecosystem both digitally and from a data perspective, that as customers spend money in this ecosystem, that they're spending it with one of the Driven Brands businesses. We hired Matt Meier about 2 months ago. I think you met Matt in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago. He's an amazing individual. He's going to manage our data and digital, and really trying to unlock sort of what we think is pretty big value with this customer data set and then obviously, the ability to tackle the wallet share opportunity. So that's kind of the vision. It's, I'd say, a multiyear vision. No one's done it in our space. We do actually think that there's an opportunity perhaps to wrap sort of a loyalty component around this. So we do think it's a multiyear journey. Again, we've got 2% same-store sales built into our long-term model. We really just see this as potential accelerant over and above that 2% model.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#26

Jonathan, connected to that, and maybe you'll see where this is going, are you best practice sharing in terms of service level and execution and customer experience across all of the businesses? And you have a real good understanding of what could be shared or not?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#27

Yes, 100%. So we've essentially got 5 operating CEOs that work on the executive team that run each of our businesses. We talk weekly, we share best practices, what's working, what's not working, what are some things from an employee basis, what are marketing programs that work. So again, this is the power of the platform. So at the shared service level, we talk all the time and make sure that if something is working on one brand, we're extending that to another. So very much trying to make sure that these businesses and operating models are as connected as possible. Now look, there's obviously some differences. A collision customer may have a need for collision in one of our collision businesses every 5 years, Car Wash could be once a month, Quick Lube could be 3x a year. So interval definitely plays a component part in that sharing of best practices.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#28

Great. So transitioning to -- somewhat it's cost of doing business type of question, talking about labor, supply chain, you don't have the same exposure that a lot of the companies at this conference I think, do as far as moving product in. But there still is a labor component, and there are some parts that you need to bring in to be able to create the service that you do. So can you talk about both of those, I guess, legs in the stool and how they're impacting your business? And which one is more of -- which one is more sensitive or a bigger piece of the puzzle?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#29

Yes. What I'd say is sort of we talk about people and product internally, so the 2 pieces. One is there's definitely some green shoots of things easing up a little bit, Simeon. So I think supply chain will rightsize itself. I think it may take a couple more quarters or maybe halfway through 2022, but I think we're starting to see that improve. From the labor perspective, I think a couple of things. One is outside of our car wash business, our lowest average check is about $80 in our Quick Lube business. So the ability to pass on, nominally, price increases to our consumers is something that we've done multiple times this year. We've seen no degradation to consumer traffic or to NPS scores. So we're able to pass on that price. We do it thoughtfully. You don't want to take price all at the same time. So we do it in multiple intervals over the course of the year. In terms of attracting employees to our businesses, first of all, our franchisees do an amazing job. They are embedded in their communities. They've had employees for a long time. Franchisees, in many cases, offer equity to their employees. So there's a real familial unit to the franchisee labor model. And I think our franchisees do an exceptional job of that. Within our corporate stores, we've got Quick Lube and Car Wash. Let's start with these are highly efficient labor models. So in our Quick Lube and Car Wash, you may have 4 people at peak periods. So they're not 20 people, 25 people. So it's a very efficient labor model. We're continuing to tweak that labor model to use technology where we can. Within our company stores, both of those companies or businesses are growing. So there's massive advancement opportunities. So literally, every manager of a new store comes from being an assistant manager of another store, which then creates headroom for the lead technician to become an assistant manager. A lot of our employees actually enjoy working in and around automobiles. So some of them have sort of that built-in passion for that, may not have that in some other sort of hourly level jobs. We're big believers in variable compensation. We've had variable compensation at all levels of our organization for many, many years. So someone making $12 or $13 an hour can make an incremental 15% or 20% in variable compensation. Our hours of operation are generally quite employee-friendly. We're typically sort of opening 8 to 6, Monday to Friday, half day Sunday and then Saturday, so people actually can have a life. They're not working graveyard shifts and stuff like that. So I would say we're not immune to sort of the people and product issues. Things are definitely improving, and we're seeing it. But I think we have -- because of our needs-based service and because of the size of our average check, we have the ability to pass on almost all of that inflationary pressure to our customers.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#30

That's helpful. And is the industry doing the same? Or are some trying to use this moment to take share?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#31

Yes. Look, I think most people who are running multiunit businesses today are dealing with pretty difficult employee issues. So I'm not sure. Again, 80% of our industry are small chains and independents. I think they're trying to figure out how to be open next week, right? But across all of our segments, for the last 12 months, we have been taking share, and we think that sort of speaks to just sort of the consolidation that's happening in this industry, and I expect to continue to happen.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#32

Great. Okay. Maybe to transition to the Car Wash business. Can you talk about Take 5? We've seen a couple of -- I forget if they're called dual or hybrid, some pictures of the combined Car Wash and oil change. And even the Car Wash branding looks nice, the different color, it's got a nice twist to it. So can you talk about what the Car Wash business looks like, how it interplays with Take 5, and just expansion and branding plans in the future?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#33

Well, there's 2 pieces to that. One is what we call co-development, where we'll take down a piece of real estate and build a Quick Lube and a car wash on the same piece of real estate. Their needs for real estate are very similar. You're looking for great access, egress, you're looking for traffic counts, you're looking for household income at the right levels around your stores. So the real estate we need for one is very much the same as the other. So I think in -- we've opened the first few co-development sites already. There's great synergies in doing that in terms of the soft cost of permitting the construction. I think we'll do somewhere around 15 of those co-development sites next year in 2022. So that just makes us really efficient when we find a nice piece of real estate that can fit both businesses. The other benefit there is now we've got about 350 customers on a daily basis going through those 2 assets, right? You've got about 300 customers going through the Car Wash, you've got high 40s going through the Quick Lube. You've got massive co-brand cross-promotion opportunities when Car Wash customers are seeing this great drive-through Quick Lube right next door. Both businesses are anchored in sort of fast, friendly and simple and that really works well when you've got both of them on the same site. The second element is the rebranding of the car wash to leverage the Take 5 brand name. When we bought the business about 15 months ago, the ICWG portfolio in the United States had about 4 or 5 different subregional brand names, Simeon. We think there's really interesting power to have one national brand, leveraging the really high brand equity and brand awareness that the Take 5 Quick Lube business has. So right now, we've got about 25 stores that we've rebranded to Take 5 Car Wash. Obviously, we're focusing on markets where there's Take 5 Quick Lubes to start with, so we can leverage that brand equity and brand awareness. We love what we're seeing so far and we're going to continue to lean into this in 2022. So I think we're very pleased with the initial results. And I would imagine that over time, all of our car washes will eventually transition to Take 5 Car Wash.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#34

Got it. And when you say over time, is there a specific time frame? Or it's just as fast as you can move?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#35

Yes. I -- look, I would say that 12 to 24 months is a really nice time frame to be thinking about.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#36

Okay. That's helpful. We do have two questions on the webcast, and I'll pose them actually both in one shot. We have about 4 minutes left. The first question is, is buying a new location/existing store included under organic growth? And as a sub question to that, isn't it really inorganic? And I'll pause on that question and then I'll wait for the next one.

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#37

No. When we acquire an asset, it's an M&A deal, right? So it's not included in organic growth. The only, I suppose, nuance to that is our collision business is a conversion business. So you've got existing independent collision operators that choose to convert to CARSTAR, that's on their own decision. So that is included in our organic growth. But really, people can get mixed up a little bit in terms of do you buy it, do you build it. Our job is to find the best street corners and the best markets that we want to be in. Sometimes you can't build it because you can't find that street corner that you want to be on. In that case, we'll buy it, right? And in some cases, you can find the street corner, we'll build it. But we sort of see them as almost interchangeable in terms of adding to unit count.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#38

Thank you. The second question is for same-store sales, do I add the 4% historical average in their deck to the 2% same-store sales base case? Or does the 4% include the 2%?

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#39

Tiffany, I'll let you take that one.

Tiffany Mason

executive
#40

So the 4% includes the 2%. So it's not additive. Easy answer.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#41

Easy answer. Okay. We have 3 minutes left. Maybe I'll just talk about the -- maybe I'll throw out one more question. We talked about franchising, and Tiffany, you mentioned it's not really baked into the long-term plan. But is there a certain goal that I don't think exists today for what percentage of the business should be franchised? And do you think it's prudent to have a goal at some point? And will this be part of the discussion of the story at some point in the future?

Tiffany Mason

executive
#42

Jonathan, I'm going to let you answer, but let me just clarify, Simeon. So Car Wash franchising is not built into the long-term plan, right? Franchising generally is, but not Car Wash franchising. Jonathan, I'll let you address the...

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#43

Yes. Simeon, I think we're somewhere like 82% today or 83% franchised. We love franchising. It's our core. It's part of our DNA. It's an amazing business model. But we've got 2 company-owned assets that are literally world-class unit level economics, right? The Quick Lube business is an amazing business. That industry is going to continue to grow well past 2035. And there's a ton of opportunity to grow that business, albeit we're franchising that business now. Over time, we'll open more franchise locations than company. But the company margins and returns are best-in-class from a company asset perspective. So we will continue to deploy capital there. The Car Wash business, very similarly, this is a pretty nascent industry. There's -- it's about a $9 billion industry today. It will grow. We want to continue to grow that business through both M&A and greenfield next year. And I think in time, we'll figure out whether we want to franchise it. But when you've got company assets generating mid- to high 30% four-wall EBITDA margins, that's a really attractive return on capital to be continuing to deploy capital against.

Simeon Gutman

analyst
#44

Great. So there's no more questions. We're about a minute under time. So I think we will leave it there. Jonathan, Tiffany, thank you very much for your time, for talking about the story with us. Good luck, end of '21 and into '22. And we appreciate you being here.

Jonathan Fitzpatrick

executive
#45

Awesome. Thanks, Simeon. Thanks, everyone.

Tiffany Mason

executive
#46

Thank you.

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