Jack in the Box Inc. (JACK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good day, everyone, and welcome to the JACK on Track Business Update and Conference Call. Just a reminder that this call may be recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Chris Brandon. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining today's conference call, highlighting our JACK on Track business updates as well as preannounced second quarter 2025 results. With me today are Chief Executive Officer, Lance Tucker; our Interim Chief Financial Officer, Dawn Hooper; and our Chief Customer and Digital Officer, Ryan Ostrom. Following prepared remarks, we will be happy to take some questions from our covering sell-side analysts. Note that during both our discussion and Q&A, we may refer to certain non-GAAP items. We will also be making forward-looking statements based on current information and judgments that reflect management's outlook for the future. However, actual results may differ materially from these expectations because of business risks. We, therefore, consider the safe harbor statement in today's 8-K and the cautionary statements in our most recent 10-K to be part of our discussion. Material risk factors as well as information relating to company operations are detailed in our most recent 10-K, 10-Q and other public documents filed with the SEC and are available on our Investor Relations website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Lance Tucker.

Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon. I appreciate everyone joining today to hear more about the transformational JACK on Track actions we announced earlier this afternoon. Before we begin, I'd like to say a big thank you to our investors and coverage analysts for their continued support and patience as I've taken on the CEO role and gotten my hands around the actions we need to take. Over the past several weeks, I've taken a fresh look at the business and have worked with our teams to answer one fundamental question, how do we unlock the future of Jack in the Box, including our brand, our business and our investor proposition. There are amazing strengths within Jack. This is a tremendous brand with strong, dedicated and well-capitalized franchisees, loyal and supportive suppliers, talented team members who foster a great company culture and an accomplished management team that is committed to giving 100% to help the company succeed. With that said, Jack in the Box has gotten away from some of the core characteristics that have made it a successful driver of shareholder value in the past, and it's time we return to those basics. We're taking decisive actions to strengthen our balance sheet, improve the long-term economics of our restaurants and overall business model and simplify our strategy and our investor story. I'd like to spend a minute on each of those items, and then Dawn will briefly walk you through our guidance updates and preannounced second quarter 2025 results before we take a few of your questions. First, we will strengthen the balance sheet by taking several actions that we expect will collectively allow us to reduce our debt by at least $300 million over the next 12 to 18 months. Specifically, the company owns the land and building at roughly 170 franchise restaurant sites, which it leases to its franchisees. Over the next several quarters, we intend to sell a select number of these holdings, the proceeds from which will be used to pay down debt. Where it makes sense, we will endeavor to sell these sites to our franchisees, which will have the added benefit of improving their respective unit economics. As the program gets up and running, we will update you on both timing and proceeds from these sales as well as the related impact on the company's debt and EBITDA. In addition, the company will discontinue its dividend immediately. This action will generate savings of approximately $35 million annually, which will be directed primarily to debt reduction. However, we will also allocate a portion of these savings to share repurchases given the very attractive prices at which we can currently repurchase Jack stock. We will update you on the amounts allocated to debt reduction and to share repurchases quarterly. Finally, we will also make strategic adjustments to our capital investments. It is important for us to continue to invest in our evolving technologies and digital capabilities that benefit both our restaurants and our customers, and we will do so with minimal changes to our current course. However, we will make meaningful reductions to our company-owned restaurant development capital beginning next year and return to our approach of building a limited number of new company-owned units each year. We will have more specifics when we provide our future outlook measures. Next, I'd like to discuss the actions we are taking to ensure the long-term success of the Jack in the Box system. As announced earlier today, we are implementing a block closure program, which will remove 150 to 200 underperforming restaurants from our base. We expect closing these restaurants to strengthen the overall long-term unit economics of our franchisees, free up dollars for reinvestment and allow the system to focus on maximizing the performance of our stronger restaurants, which will drive the cash-on-cash returns that fuel sustainable growth. In short, we anticipate this program will better position Jack in the Box for more reliable, consistent positive net unit growth in the future. We plan to execute this plan over a limited amount of time, though for some restaurants, it may make more financial sense for franchisees to operate through the termination dates of their respective franchise agreements and leases. As such, we currently anticipate closing 80 to 120 restaurants before the end of calendar 2025 with the remaining units set to close in the next several years. This program does not include the previously expected 35 to 40 closures for fiscal year 2025 and an ongoing annual closure rate thereafter of approximately 1% of system units beginning in fiscal year 2026. We will provide updates and projections over the coming quarters as the program is finalized. We are confident in the growth fundamentals that exist for Jack in the Box and believe that the strong performance of new markets and tremendous white space opportunities continue to represent significant growth potential. We are confident in our ability to achieve asset-light positive net unit growth much sooner with these closures behind us. We will continue to drive our technology and digital improvements to support the long-term success of the brand and our franchisees, highlighted recently by the aggressive implementation of our new POS system, which we expect to be fully rolled out by Q1 of fiscal 2026. And as we have previously discussed, we have recently upgraded our iOS and Android apps and we'll be releasing an upgraded mobile web experience in June. Each of these actions is designed to strengthen the Jack brand and its four-wall economics moving forward. And we will continue to work with our franchisees on ways to improve the business and drive financial performance across the system. Finally, as one of our several efforts to simplify the business and refocus solely on the core brand, the company has also engaged BofA Securities to explore strategic alternatives for the Del Taco brand, including its potential divestiture. By operating in a simplified asset-light structure, we will be able to direct our full focus and resources towards the core Jack in the Box business, enabling us to unlock the tremendous value embedded within this brand. To wrap up this part of the call, there will be many more details to follow in the coming quarters with additional color on several of these initiatives to be provided on our third quarter 2025 conference call in August, if not before. But to reiterate, my focus will be on addressing areas where we can rapidly create financial flexibility and discipline while taking immediate steps to simplify the business and our investor story. I'll now turn it over to Dawn, who will provide updated 2025 guidance and preannounce select key metrics from our fiscal second quarter 2025. Dawn?

Thanks, Lance, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin with our updated 2025 guidance measures. The following guidance and underlying assumptions reflect the company's current expectations for the fiscal year ending September 28, 2025. Jack in the Box guidance measures not listed in this afternoon's release are postponed until we provide future updates related to JACK on Track initiatives on the third quarter earnings call and all Del Taco-specific guidance measures will be suspended indefinitely. Our company-wide items include capital expenditures of $100 million to $105 million, share repurchases of approximately $5 million to $15 million, adjusted operating EPS tax rate of approximately 26% adjusted EBITDA of $282 million to $292 million, which excludes the impact of future JACK on Track actions that may take place in late fiscal year 2025 and operating EPS of $5.05 to $5.40, which also excludes the impact of these same actions. Our Jack in the Box segment guidance includes same-store sales of negative low to mid-single digits versus fiscal year 2024, 35 to 40 gross restaurant openings and company-owned restaurant level margin of 19% to 21%, which includes the impact of a full year of AB1228 wage increases, higher utility costs and low to mid-single-digit commodity inflation. We expect to debut new long-term guidance measures after progress is made on implementing the JACK on Track initiatives we have discussed today. Lastly, I'd like to walk through our second quarter 2025 preannounced performance metrics that were noted in this afternoon's release. Jack in the Box same-store sales of down 4.4% Del Taco same-store sales of down 3.6%, adjusted EBITDA of $66 million to $68 million, 5 restaurant openings and 12 restaurant closures for Jack in the Box and 6 restaurant openings and 4 restaurant closures for Del Taco. And with that, I'll turn the call back over to Lance.

Thanks, Dawn. In closing, I'd like to thank you again for taking the time to hear our commentary around the actions we announced this afternoon, and we will continue to update you as we progress against each initiative. We appreciate you joining this call and for your interest in our story as we work hard to get JACK on Track. With that, I'm happy to take a few questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take the first question from Gregory Francfort, Guggenheim.

I guess just maybe first your thoughts on where CapEx might go. I mean, I know you put the $100 million to $105 million out there. But do you think that there's a chance that, that goes to $70 million to $80 million in the next couple of years kind of as you maybe dial back some of the contributions and things like that? I'm just curious, you've been spending a lot on tech, and I'm curious where that might be in 18 to 24 months.

Sure, Greg. We haven't given our official guidance yet, but what I can tell you is you know where we are now. If we potentially dispose of Del Taco, that's obviously going to be a fairly significant chunk of CapEx as are the new restaurant openings. So something well under $100 million is going to make sense. So I think you're probably in the ballpark, although let us firm the number up a little bit before we give you anything firm.

And then maybe just one more. The stores that you're closing, do you have a sense for what the either margin or -- I guess the franchise stores, that's less relevant, but the sales performance might be for those?

Yes. So when we do our call in August, our plan is going to be to give you kind of a number of key metrics and stats. So I'm not going to give you the exact numbers right now. But what I can share, obviously, these are underperforming restaurants. And so they're going to be well below our system averages and the AUVs are pretty low, as you would imagine.

The next question is Alex Slagle, Jefferies.

I wanted to see if you could kind of talk to the evolution of the strategy just with regards to Del Taco. Obviously, it's been more of a challenging lift than anticipated, but perhaps some thoughts on how having the 2 brands has added more complexity and sort of weighed on the team's ability to execute and these dynamics have been going on for a while or if there's something more recently has changed?

Sure, Alex. I think when Del Taco was originally acquired, and of course, I wasn't here, almost immediately thereafter, we had some things happen like AB1228, which is the California minimum wage law. like inflation. So you kind of took an immediate P&L hit, so to speak, from what you thought was going to be the case. And then in addition, there have been some implementation challenges. Really, I think Holiday is the Del Taco brand, I think it can thrive. I just think it needs to be in a situation that's probably not in situation with Jack in the Box where we need to focus on our own core business. So I think when you think about the reason we would do this at this point, it just makes a lot more sense for us to simplify our model. I think they can move ahead. And then in addition to that, I don't know that the results over the next several years are going to meaningfully contribute to Jack's bottom line. So I think it makes sense to move them on to another owner.

Okay. And following up from a previous question on the block closure program. Are those all franchise stores? Or are there a certain number of company stores in that number?

There would be only a small handful of company stores. It's almost nearly 100% franchise.

We'll take the next question today from Andrew Charles, TD Cowen.

Lance, last call, you talked about open-mindedness around monetizing real estate. I just wanted to revisit that. Is that still something that's on the table? Or do you view that as kind of another form of, in essence, debt as you convert those owned stores more to leases?

So I want to make sure I'm understanding your question correctly, but we certainly have said we're going to sell some of the underlying real estate that we lease to our franchisees. That's part of the release. And so we are open to selling some of that real estate to franchisees and then taking those proceeds and paying down debt. We're certainly not going to liquidate all of it. What I should probably specify is we do not intend to refranchise Jack in the Box restaurants right now. This is strictly selling some of the underlying land and sites that franchisees are leasing from us and operating.

Very good. And then is there a way to tease out -- if you look at the stores slated to be closed, is there a way to tease out the impact that would have to same-store sales had you not have those stores in the comp base?

Again, I'm going to give some of this detail in August when we have exactly the number of stores and exactly which stores they are identified. So I believe we will be able to give you a pretty good feel for what that looks like at that point, but I'm not prepared to do so today.

John Tower from Citi has the next question.

Maybe just to start, can you perhaps give us an idea of what EBITDA was or EBIT was for the Del Taco brand, say, on a TTM basis? Hard to parse out of your data the way it's published.

No, I don't think that's something we're going to disclose at this time. You'll be able to see segment information in the 10-Q when it gets filed here in a couple of weeks or 3 weeks. But I don't even have that number handy.

Okay. And then just on the -- I think, Lance, you had mentioned the idea of paying down maybe $300 million of debt in the next 12 to 18 months. Do you have enough cash to be able to do that? Or maybe what steps are necessary to get the cash to reach that level of debt paydown? Are you contemplating -- or better said, do you need to sell Del Taco in order to fund that debt paydown?

John, it's choices. Certainly, I laid out several things in the release that would include the sale of Del Taco, the funds that would otherwise have gone to the dividend, the real estate sales. We could pull some levers. And as an example, decide to hold on to Del Taco and sell more real estate if we wanted to, as an example. There are other ways we could get to that number. We just feel like the moves that we've outlined in balance make the most sense for getting to that $300 million number and the best way of looking at it in the long term for Jack.

Okay. I appreciate that. And just to clarify, your comment earlier, I think I meant -- I want to make sure I heard it correctly. You're not planning to sell the underlying real estate underneath the company stores. It's just the franchise system.

That's correct. That's correct. There are a select number of sites that we lease to the franchisees where we own the property. That's the land I'm speaking of.

Next, we'll take a question from Christine Cho, Goldman Sachs.

I know you mentioned some of your underlying assumptions are suspended for now, but could you kind of highlight some of the areas in the P&L at a high level that could help support the unchanged operating EPS of $5.05 to $5.4 despite kind of the lower same-store sales growth and a more tougher operating backdrop? And just a quick one. Any one-off costs or benefits that we -- you can give us in terms of the restructuring of the store closures at this point?

So I'll take the second question first. There's nothing we can share yet. But again, in August, when we give a little more detail, you'll be able to understand kind of what those onetime either benefits or charges may look like. I think I understood your first question. I'm going to start, and then I'm going to let Dawn jump in, in case I missed the mark here. But generally speaking, obviously, there's some flow-through with the lower sales that we're seeing that are impacting our numbers, but then there's some G&A and some other costs that are coming in a little better than we expected or originally guided to anyway. So the way I would really think about it is you've got your normal flow-through on both franchise level margin and restaurant level margin where the numbers are going to be a little bit below where they would have been in our original guidance, and then we're seeing some pickup on the G&A line. That's offsetting a portion of that. Dawn, am I missing anything major?

No, I think the only other thing I'd say is on the commodity inflation front. You'll notice we did change that to up low to mid-single digits. So we are seeing an uptick on the commodity side, but most of it is coming through on the lower sales guidance.

And we'll take the next question from Jake Bartlett, Truist.

Mine was just on your approach to marketing and menu and really the same-store sales trends that you've seen. And I think that you're looking to improve the balance sheet here. What are you doing in terms of trying to improve how you're coming to market, how you can be more relevant and really maybe compete better in this environment?

Sure, Jack. I'll start, and then Ryan Ostrom is in the room with us and Ryan heads our marketing and ops. Q2 was difficult. As you can see from the numbers, obviously, it's a difficult operating environment out there for all restaurant companies. In addition, a couple of things that were specific to Jack in the Box. One, we had a difficult rollover because we were rolling over our Smash Jack which is the best product launch that we have had in a number of years, 3, 4, 5 years. So that made it a little tougher on us than we may normally see. And then frankly, we're in the middle of a very aggressive POS rollout, as I have already mentioned. And we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit. We've got some kind of the inevitable bugs and some connectivity impacts, particularly as it relates to digital sales that we think cost us 1% or 2%, probably 1% to 2% same-store sales during the quarter. So when you look at it, I would argue that the minus 4.4%, the IT issues are going to be fixed rather quickly, and they'll come back, not having to lap Smashed Jack will certainly help us. And then I'll jump off and let Ryan jump on relative to some of the other ways we're going to market. But I think the number looks a little worse than in reality, we think it is.

Yes. And we're going to continue our creative marketing strategy, which is all about being more cultural, relevant, authentic, visible, easy and distinctive, but also balancing out between innovation and value. And I think that's where we may have seen some of the opportunity in the last window. We didn't have enough value to balance with the innovation. So as you start looking at our future calendars for the rest of the year, you'll see a stronger balance of that innovation with some of our partnerships like a launch of our key pay Munchie Meal that's coming up shortly, but balancing that with some value offers as well to drive in that value guest and transactions.

Got it. And just as I look at guidance, the low to mid-single digits for Jack in the Box in '25, I think that implies fairly negative results in the back half, not much of an improvement from current levels. Is that right? Or I guess, how should we think of that with the idea that maybe the POS drag might go away and that you're going to be a little more aggressive with this balanced menu approach?

Yes. Jake, what I would tell you there is we would be disappointed if we weren't towards the low single-digit kind of negative as opposed to the mid. But given that some of these POS things do need to be worked through and given the difficult operating environment, we wanted to make sure that we put numbers out there that we would be sure we hit. So I feel good about what we're doing. I would hope to see some improvement and expect to see some improvement. But we do have enough uncertainty that we thought it was prudent to make the guidance low to mid-single-digit negative.

We'll take the next question today from Chris O'Cull, Stifel.

Lance, I had a follow-up question about selling real estate. Can you explain potential ways you could structure these transactions, so it would be favorable to franchisees, but not dilutive to the company since I know you guys collect rental income from a lot of them.

Chris, first of all, one of the reasons that you would consider selling the real estate, obviously, that with cap rates, we're going to get a very good price on these is what I would say. It's one of the more lucrative ways that we can raise cash. So from a standpoint of how we would structure it for franchisees, I mean, truth be told, we're going to be looking for fair market value from the franchisees. We understand there is going to be an EBITDA impact, and you're exactly right. We do collect rent from some of these. But frankly, we just -- we need to get good prices for this real estate. So we're not going to give the "friends and family discount", and we'll apply that to debt, and we'll make sure in our projections that we're covering all the EBITDA implications of that.

What are some of the cap rates you guys have seen for sale leasebacks you've done recently?

Cap rates for restaurant properties are in the low 5s.

The next question is Jeffrey Bernstein, Barclays.

Great. Two questions. The first one, just, Lance, as you think about the historical strategy of kind of accelerating unit growth for the brand with Jack in the Box having so much of an opportunity across the country, a lot of that was being fed by company-operated kind of starting the markets and working with franchisees, but it seems like you're saying now you're going to significantly reduce the company-operated new unit development starting next year. So I'm just wondering how you think about the next few years, at least in theory, your ability to accelerate the unit growth if it's being driven primarily by franchisees. Is that demand there in this environment? Or do you think that maybe the accelerating unit growth might be tougher to achieve in the next few years?

Here's what I would tell you. The closure program should leave our franchisees much better positioned to be able to open new units. We need to be operating or I think we operate best anyway in an asset-light model where whether we're opening 4, 5, 6, whatever the number is, that's a more responsible number for us to be opening. But the whole reason we went to this asset-light model was for that growth to be driven by the franchisees. I think the key difference with maybe the path we were on versus the path we're on now is let's get some of these drags on franchisees that probably are never even with significant investment going to reach brand standards and AUV averages and let's get those kind of knocked out so that we can then grow from a healthier, more consistent base. So honestly, we're going to give long-term guidance. Obviously, we haven't done that in this release. I would expect on the unit side, it may push some of the numbers you've seen back a year or 2. But beyond that, I think it actually would have the potential to really be able to be driven by the franchisees given that the franchisees are going to be coming from, frankly, a more solid base to do so.

Understood. And then just the $300 million in debt paydown that you referred to, I get the sense this is a newfound priority. I know you've talked about it since you've returned at first into the CFO role and then quickly into the CEO role. I'm just wondering why exactly is that? I mean, clearly, yourself and your peers with the franchise model have been able to balance the more elevated leverage. Just wondering whether there's more liquidity concerns or other reasons why now is the time to make some of these moves to make the pretty significant debt paydown that you're talking about?

Yes. I think, first of all, we don't -- and in my mind, we don't have any issues actually addressing the debt. I mean we have very significant cushions before we would hit any covenants. That's one of the nice things about a securitization structure like the one we have. With that said, frankly, I think you can understand the reaction to The Street and our stock price and the perception of our debt as a reason to bring it down somewhat. And I've always been a little more comfortable in the 4 to 5 range. That's been our long-term guidance. We're closer to 5.5 really. And I think bringing it down back under 5 at a minimum. I don't think it has to be in a rush. If it takes 12 to 18 months, great. If it takes a little longer, that's okay, too. But I just think it's a more prudent place for us to operate for our business. And I think it's a change that's prudent, particularly in the environment we're in right now.

And our last question today comes from Logan Reich, RBC Capital Markets.

I just had a quick question on sort of consumer trends and any divergence in income cohorts. Have you guys noticed a change in sort of underlying demand pre and post the sort of escalation in tariffs at the beginning of the month? And then any sort of divergence that you've seen in different demographic cohorts, whether that's high or low income or geographically? Just any sort of color you'd be able to give us there would be helpful.

Logan, honestly, we don't have -- or at least I don't have in front of me exactly what's happened pre and post tariffs. I think you continue to see consumers across most income bands concerned about what's going on out there from a spending standpoint. But as far as trying to make any kind of comparison between high or low or whatever other breakout you may want to make, I don't have the data in front of me to support whatever I would say. So I'm going to refrain from going any further than that.

And that was our last question, everyone, that does conclude our conference for today. We would like to thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.