Westlife Foodworld Limited ($505533)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Westlife Foodworld Limited Q4 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] We would like to remind you that certain statements made by the management in today's call may be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect management's best judgment and analysis as of today. The actual results may differ materially from the current expectations based on a number of factors affecting the business. Please refer to the safe harbor disclosure in the earnings presentation. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chintan Jajal. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you, Rutuja. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Westlife Foodworld earnings conference call for the fourth quarter and full year ended 31st March 2026. I am Chintan Jajal, Head of Investor Relations at Westlife Foodworld. From the management team, I have with me Mr. Akshay Jatia, President and CEO; Mr. Saurabh Kalra, Managing Director; and Mr. Sadu Doshi, Chief Financial Officer. As always, we will begin today's session with Akshay sharing his perspective on company's overall strategy and outlook. This will be followed by Saurabh taking us through the key operational and financial highlights. Post that, we will then open the forum for questions and answers. Throughout the call, we will be referring to earnings presentation and financial releases, which are available on the NSE/BSE as well as Investors page of our website. With that, I now request Akshay to commence the session. Thank you, and over to you, Akshay.

Hello, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you've had the opportunity to review our Q4 and full year FY '27 -- FY '26, sorry, results. This quarter, our performance was anchored in strengthening our Everyday Value platform and on-ground execution. Our focus was primarily on driving guest count growth by making Everyday Value accessible to everyone. Despite the challenges, we delivered a steady performance, underpinned by improving guest count trends and sustained profitability. For the quarter, same-store sales growth stood at 1.5%, while overall top line grew 9% year-on-year. What is particularly reassuring is the underlying improvement in footfall trends with positive growth across footfalls across all 3 months of the quarter. Similar momentum is continuing into April as well, setting the base for a good start to the new fiscal year. That said, these are still early days, and we would refrain from calling this a sustained revival until we see a few more quarters and months of consistent momentum. Our consumer proposition is very clear. Accessible Everyday Value combined with iconic McDonald's experiences delivered with consistency and backed by strong economic discipline. We are encouraged by the early evidence of this strategy translating into sustained guest count traction. At the heart of this performance is our unwavering focus on Everyday Value. Value at McDonald's is trusted, predictable and habit forming. Our 99 Everyday value meal continues to witness strong traction and has driven encouraging dine-in footfall growth across all our regions. Building on this proposition, we are leveraging McCafe as well to drive a daily habit of coffee consumption in India. Our coffee is already loved by millions of people. And to further amplify this last quarter, we launched a monthly coffee subscription program to drive repeat visits and strengthen McCafe loyalty. We continue to focus on deepening consumer engagement to keep the brand contemporary and culturally relevant. During the quarter, we rolled out 2 merchandise-led campaigns featuring a shipper and a tote bag aimed at driving Gen Z engagement and sustaining brand buzz within the cohort. These engagements were driven primarily through leveraging digital media, and we are encouraged by the strong response and brand affinity that we generated. I'm also delighted to share that last quarter we achieved a major milestone in our sustainability journey. We were ranked sixth globally in the restaurants and leisure facility sector according to the S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment and were included in the Sustainability Yearbook for 2026. This recognition was awarded to only 6 companies out of 126 in our industry globally, reflecting our continued commitment to embedding sustainability to be at the core of our long-term growth strategy. Looking ahead, we remain focused on disciplined and prudent network expansion aligned with improving demand trends and strong capital efficiency. We opened a record 48 restaurants this year, taking our footprint meaningfully higher across both existing and newer markets. Going forward, we plan to further accelerate our expansion by opening 60-plus restaurants annually with all new stores fully equipped with digital modern design and McCafes, reflecting our confidence in the strength of our industry and the opportunities that lie ahead. Before I hand it over, I'd like to reiterate that our philosophy remains rooted in profitable and sustainable growth with a clear focus on stakeholder value creation. We are building Westlife for the long term through cycles with discipline and with our consumer proposition firmly at the center of every decision we make. With that, I'll now pass it to Saurabh to take you through the operational and financial highlights for the quarter.

Thank you, Akshay. Good evening, everyone. I hope all of you are doing well. Coming back to the results, the fourth quarter reflected steady execution amid challenges with our performance driven by improving guest count momentum, our disciplined execution and sustained profitability margin. Throughout the quarter, we remained firmly focused on sharpening our value -- consumer value proposition, which Akshay also spoke about, while consistently delivering the great customer experience McDonald's famous for across both dine-in and delivery channels. For the quarter, consolidated revenues stood at INR 6.6 billion, growing 9% year-on-year. For the full year of FY '26, revenue stood at INR 26.3 billion, translating into 5% year-on-year growth. The quarter ended with a positive same-store sales growth of 1.5% at the system level, driven by mid-single-digit guest count growth, which is the real heartening part. While the West continued to outperform, I'm especially encouraged by the progress in the South, where same-store sales growth also ended the quarter nearly flattish and a meaningful improvement versus the previous quarters and that too on the back of GC momentum, which was marginally positive. From a channel standpoint, on-premise sales grew 9% year-on-year, while off-premise sales increased 6% year-on-year. Growth across both channels was supported by positive comparable guest count, primarily driven by everyday value means and sharper digital engagements. Importantly, the McDelivery platform continued to gain scale and salience, witnessing strong growth across dayparts and demonstrating early evidence of a robust and sustainable growth engine. Now moving to profitability. Our continued focus on execution discipline and cost optimization helped anchor our margin performance. Gross margin for the quarter remained near historic high levels of 68.1%, improving by around 60 bps sequentially. Restaurant operating margins improved by approximately 70 bps year-on-year. Our operating EBITDA remains broadly stable year-on-year despite higher advertising and promotion spend and continued growth investments. Cash profit after tax stood at INR 487 million, representing 7.4% of sales. FY '26 witnessed continued inflationary pressures across key commodities, notably cocoa and coffee. However, the impact was mitigated through supply chain efficiencies and our full year like-for-like gross margin stood at 67.7%, improving by around 140 bps year-on-year. Restaurant operating margin grew approximately 100 basis points year-on-year to 20.3%, while operating EBITDA remained stable at 13.2%. For the full year, cash PAT was at INR 2.4 billion, representing 9% of sales. Our digital sales contribution stood at 76%, increasing over 100 basis points year-on-year, primarily driven by higher engagement across McDonald's app, McDelivery platform and self-ordering kiosks. These continue to enhance frequency, personalization and operation throughput at scale. Cumulative app downloads have now crossed 52 million with approximately 3.5 million monthly active users, growing at a healthy double-digit rate year-on-year. Our network expansion -- on the network expansion, we continue to follow disciplined and a prudent approach. We opened 21 new restaurants in quarter 4, taking our total tally to 478 restaurants across 78 cities. New store performance remains encouraging, supported by improved site selection and a stronger execution rigor. On the operations front, we continue to closely monitor LPG situations and have taken proactive measures to mitigate operational risk as much as possible. Prior investment in store modernization and capability upgrades have translated into greater resilience in this current environment. All our restaurants are operational with less than 10% of the restaurants operating on limited menu. To conclude, Q4 reflects the strength and resilience of our core business fundamentals, our continued focus on Everyday Value, disciplined execution and structured profitability. This positions us well as demand trends improve gradually. As we move forward, our priorities remain clear: driving guest count-led growth, strengthening our consumer value proposition, building brand affinity, scaling digital capabilities and expanding our network responsibly. With that, thank you very much for your time, and we are very happy to take whatever questions you have.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global.

Congrats on good store openings as well as good margin performance. Sir, Q4 was impacted by supply…

Devanshu, can you be little louder?

Yes. Am I audible now?

Yes, better.

Yes. I was saying Q4 was impacted by supply side disruptions. There was some preponement of Navratri as well. So wanted to check if you could help us better understand the normalized SSD during the quarter. This would help us better project the underlying consumption trends.

So as I spoke when I was giving you the review of quarter 4, we had high mid -- we had mid-single-digit guest count comps. Needless to say, there were other pressures beyond Navratri also like LPG not being available in a few restaurants. 10% of our stores were impacted pretty much from 10th of March onwards. So I think -- but all of this in the big picture is all fair because last year also something would have happened. So what we would like to believe is if we take the same-store bucket, what has it done this year? It is -- this is the number which comes. So I would not like to break it further and be able to say we will remove Navratri. Something or the other keeps happening in an Indian environment. And it's -- a real performance is what comes out. So for us, that's how I would put it as 1.5% is what we have delivered with a mid-single-digit guest count comps, which is the number of invoices. So -- and we are pleased that after a long time now, we started hitting a momentum, which is 8% to 10% on growth. And we believe we are well poised to continue this momentum.

Got it. Saurabh, I also wanted to check across regions, you indicated that South has turned positive. And despite that, we are at 1.5%. I wanted to check, has there been a dip in F&B in the West region? If you could throw some light there?

So what I talked about South has made a significant amount of improvement on the sales side, while the guest count turned positive. And that is something which was a problem which we have pointed out in the previous call. So we wanted to let you know about that. Like I said, there were multiple disruptions even in West like LPG, et cetera. So we are happy with what we have been able to achieve in terms of 1.5%. West remains strong. Obviously, most of you are based out of West, you can go to the restaurants and see West remains a very strong driver of growth for us. And what we are seeing is green shoots in West definitely, South also coming in as I'm talking to you.

Understood. So you're saying that guest count has turned positive for the South for the quarter, right, on a same-store basis? Sir, last question from my end. We have taken conscious efforts to ramp up our delivery channel. Plus last quarter, we indicated improved relationship with aggregators also. And in your commentary, you mentioned that the monthly active users are growing at double digit, right? But if we see overall growth, it is around 5%, 6%. So when do you expect these initiatives to reflect into better growth for us?

So on total growth, I think there was a fundamental change we made and we spoke about it last year starting second half onwards, but what we do need is volume growth, which means guest towns need to start come. Value is not difficult in the current environment to get, but we wanted to really, really focus on volume. So that's what we did. And we got good volume growth on our own channel, 3PO and our dine-in. While it grew, there was a 2%, 3% difference, and we are happy that dine-in grew faster. But normally, if I look at an overall -- and I reflect back our reflect forward, I think we would -- I would like to believe we would actually grow at a similar level in both dine-in and deliveries. That's how we are looking at the business going forward. So 2%, 3% here and there keeps happening quarter-by-quarter. But on the longer-term outlook, what I would like to believe is while delivery has grown 6%, the guest count was far higher. While dine-in has grown 9%, the guest count was far, far higher. So we would like to balance equal amount of growth coming from both dine-in and delivery channels and all of them led by both more volume than value.

Fair enough. Just a small follow-up. For your own delivery channel, is this monthly active user double-digit growth also reflecting into transacting users for you?

That's correct for our own channel. We see the highest amount of growth coming on our own channel. Obviously, the base of our own channel is smaller relatively speaking. So it does not really come into the result directly as of now, but we believe it should start reflecting over a period of time.

The next question is from the line of Kaivalya Baing from IIFL Capital.

This is Percy Panthaki here. I just wanted to get some insight into your gross margin. What is the reason for the very healthy expansion that you have seen there?

Percy, we have been able to always make that there are 3, 4 levers in gross margin. And when all of them play together, we are always able to maintain and improve margins. I think last year, inflation was a little bit in our favor versus what we normally get. It might not repeat this year. In addition to that, if I look at it, we have got supply chain initiatives, and we did a first project internally, which has worked out quite well for us, and we have been able to save some amount of gross margin, which was able to not only mitigate inflation, but also we were saving beyond that, which is what you see.

Okay. And any price increases that you have recently taken? I believe Domino's has taken some price increases already, and there are some inflationary pressures building up. So what are your thoughts on FY '27? What kind of contribution of pricing can we assume from the growth?

We have always maintained that year-on-year, we pass on 2% to 4% of price increase year-on-year. We generally don't talk about when do we do it, how do we do it. Normally, we do it in 3, 4 tranches. It's a very small increase, which will not even be able to identify. For now, we have not been able to take any price increase in the last 4, 5 months. For immediate future, we don't have a plan as of now. We will come back to you. We believe all the inflation which is hitting, we should be able to manage. If there is a small price increase here and there, it might happen, it might happen. So for the year, the outlook remains constant, 2% to 4% is what we take so that we are able to manage inflation.

And on South India, what exactly were the initiatives or the actions that you have put in the interventions that you have put in, which has worked. Can you just explain it a little bit in detail?

So South really, we were doing a lot of things. We put a stop to everything, and we went back to what we are really famous for, which is Everyday Value platform. And what we've done in West, we tried in South first, and we have then started to roll out, except Chennai pretty much everywhere we are doing everyday value platform. And in Chennai, we are experimenting in the restaurant, which are giving great results. So this quarter, we plan to roll Everyday Value platform, including in Chennai. But other than Chennai, the entire South, we have done Everyday Value platform, which has started giving us good traction.

And when you say that you are doing a lot of things earlier, which you have put a stop to, what exactly does that mean?

I'll just clarify for Saurabh as well that I think everyday value platform and what McDonald's is known for, which is delivering quality, service and cleanliness in every one of our restaurants is what we really focused on. So we went back to the basics. And I think in the South, while we continue to leverage our different menu categories, we focus primarily on our core, which is ensuring that customers get Everyday Value, and we offer them the best possible experience in our restaurants.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Krishnan Sambamoorthy from Ashika Institutional Equities.

Two questions from me. One is on the store openings front. You've guided for 60-plus openings in FY '27, which is higher than the usual 40 to 50 stores that you've been guiding for. Can you take us through the rationale and your confidence, how you have up to this number?

So I think we always committed to this larger number of 580 to 630 restaurants in our Vision 2027. And as we've been deploying all our initiatives to further grow our average unit volume, we've seen great momentum. And we do feel that in our region, there's a lot of opportunity for penetration. And I've always -- and we've always maintained that we will continue to penetrate as we feel is logical. And we feel now from 45 to 50 restaurants, 60-plus is the number that our market can handle in order to grow sales profitably. So I think that's how we came to give out this guidance, and we're quite confident that it will further add to our growth aspirations.

The second question is on store closures. While McDonald's has typically done a great job in terms of store openings, over the last couple of years, you had between 7 to 8 store closures, which is not a very significant number, the overall number, but still higher than the longer-term average. My question is, what are the reasons for store closures and particularly the store closures for the current year? And would this be a feature in subsequent years as well?

So in a retail environment, actually to operate most optimally, you do have to keep reevaluating your portfolio. We call it portfolio management. And across 500-odd locations, there will be locations that either become redundant or are no longer commercially viable. And actually, it's best for the network that you optimize. It's one of the most effective ways to run a network. So I think in the past, we've been very prudent. We will continue to be. But as our network keeps expanding, you will see store closures to optimize our portfolio. And I think the current number would probably be a fair representation of the guidance that we would give. And I think that it's only for the benefit of our portfolio.

Yes. Just a follow-up to that. Because of the relook at the South India business, where more of the store closures skewed towards the southern market?

No, nothing like that. So like Akshay said, and you also know that we don't like to close too many stores. We would like to do it for portfolio management. But if you look at from a portfolio standpoint, we would have closed 2, 3 stores -- 2, 3 malls shut down. Some of the places, there is a new highway which comes up and all of a sudden accessibility is block. So it's not that we are keen on opening -- closing more stores. As a portfolio, like you said, we will continue to close 6, 7 stores because 3, 4 stores automatically comes as some of the other problem occurs in this kind of a network, 1% stores have an issue which occurs. And there's 1 or 2 more closures, which can happen due to tenure, et cetera, et cetera. So it's nothing major, which we would like to call it. So it's a part of our portfolio management and ways of working.

The next question is from the line of Rishi Mody from RDM Advisory LLP.

Firstly, I just wanted to understand the 80 bps Y-o-Y improvement in OpEx…

Your voice is not clear. It's a little wobbly you can be closer and can be louder.

Is this better?

Little better.

All right. So I wanted to understand, firstly, the 80 bps Y-o-Y improvement that you have shown on the OpEx front in your slides. What has that led to? Like what's led to that improvement, if you could help me understand that.

So I think that we'll just take a look at what you're referring to. which number are you talking about?

Just a second, I have the PPT.

Rishi, I think this question we can take offline. You can reach out to Chintan. And I think he can explain that to you along with our CFO because we like to limit the discussion to more strategic points.

Okay. Fine. Second, you mentioned in the Q3 call that the toys issue is a BIS issue, but I was just reading up on it online, it seems that there's a structural move by McDonald's globally away from toys to books for some sustainability reasons. So just wanted to understand, are toys going to come back for your Happy Meals or if you could just give some clarity on that, please?

So like you rightly said, there was a BIS issue, and government has also opened up a few countries now. We are working very hard with the supply chain team to make sure the toys come as soon as possible, including getting the BIS certified factories supplying us toys. We were also working parallelly for Indian vendors to get BIS approved. That's -- or Indian vendors to be both McDonald's and BIS approved. So that is happening in the background. We foresee that by next year, it will still take almost 9 months to 1 year in our judgment to be able to bring toys back. But books are already there. We have been -- since the time toys were banned, we have been using books as a Happy Meal giveaway in our restaurants. So that's what an update on that is.

Okay. Got it. Finally, just one structural piece on consumer behavior, right? You launched this Protein Slice. So just wanted to understand is -- there are consumers justifying coming in to have McDonald's Protein Plus Slice as a healthier version or people are moving away from QSR, QSR citing -- what's your read on the consumer behavior? Is there a consumption wave that is structural in nature or it's people revert back to QSR.

So let me come back to you on this point in 2 parts, right? The first part is, as I talked about that there was a mid-single-digit consumer -- the guest count growth, which means the number of consumer came were 5% extra, and we are seeing the momentum grow even higher. So I don't think that there is an issue when you talk about health. In fact, as McDonald's, I've always maintained and I always maintain this to everybody that if there could be absolute transparent norms where people choose what they eat, McDonald's would be better than most things people eat, sometimes even better than what you eat at home would be my argument. But having said that, I think as McDonald's, we charted a path in 2016 on real food, real good. The first thing which we did was made Aloo Tikki Burger, which is our highest selling product into a balanced meal that broadly it confines to all the parameters, which are salaries coming out of card fat and protein are balanced basis the National Institute of Nutrition guidelines. So we did this in the background. Now obviously, you don't sell by saying healthy Aloo Tikki, right? So it's -- you say don't nutritious Alo Tikki. This is what we did in the background. Then we kept working on saying, can we reduce sodium on French fries. Then when we went out about reducing fat in our mayonnaise, right? So that's something which has been happening from last 10 years in the background. Last year was protein slice. For people who want to have excess protein in their diet, they know that you can always add 5 gram of protein. So it's a journey which McDonald is taking not because there is health eventually, we would like our consumers to choose what they eat. And in that spirit, millet bun was a choice. This is a choice. We want to provide as many choices to our consumers as possible.

Just a quick follow-up. Let me just check that with management. When you said 5% customer growth, you meant 5% unique customer growth or you meant like 5% growth?

So obviously, we don't give breakups. Needless to say, any business is a Pareto, a lot of people, customers come new, some are regular. Now on this call, we do not give and share that information. But when you see 5% growth, in any company, there will be a lot of new customers which have come in the fold and a lot who would have continued to transact with us.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Gaurav Jogani from JM Financial.

I have 2 sets of questions, largely related to margins. So first one is with regards to the -- your guidance on the gross margin front. You have mentioned that in the near term, the gross margins could be that 67% plus. So is it largely in caution with the inflation that we are seeing on multiple accounts? And if yes, that is approximately 100 bps lower versus the current levels. So any guidance on the same would be helpful.

Yes, it is in line with the inflation which we are seeing currently in the market. There is, of course, a lot of pressure which is there on the supplies too with the geopolitical situation. So there will be some inflation. But there are also some cost optimization programs, which we done. And hence, we have given you the indicative number of -- in terms of the 67% COGS going forward -- sorry, the gross margin going forward.

Okay. And just a leading question to this is with regards to the guidance for the Vision 2027 margins. Now for this year, if we look at the pre-Ind AS EBITDA margin, they are roughly in the range of around 7.5%. Now for that Vision '27 number, we are hardly 1.5 years away from that number. So is there any change to the guidance or we're still confident that we'll be able to achieve that guidance? Any change in the outlook, if you can highlight?

So just to answer that, firstly, from an Ind AS to Ind AS comparison, I think we're talking about roughly this 7.5% or 7.8% that you mentioned going to around 13% to 15% I think a lot of the improvement is going to come through operating leverage. And when we're seeing such momentum in terms of same-store sales growth and guest counts, we're quite confident that we will move closer towards what we've committed. In terms of Vision 2027, the journey is for us to balance comp sales as well as new store additions over the next year and first cross, say, INR 3,000-odd crores in sales. I think that's how we are looking at it. And then we will talk about the breakup for the next 2 years sometime closer to the start of the next financial year to give more color on Vision 2027.

The next question is from the line of Tejash Shah from Avendus Spark Institutional Equities.

My first question pertains to the interplay between [ SSSG ] gross margin and footfall that you have called out. So clearly, the fact that footfall has been higher than SSSG, I'm assuming that a lot of recruitment of mix would have gone on the value format side. But still, we delivered very good gross margin. So I was just trying to deconstruct that what worked on raw material side that you -- which worked in our favor this quarter.

See, luckily for us, supply chain is managed on an annual basis. We've got contracts. Sometimes those contracts, we are able to deliver higher volumes. So cost comes down and then the next protocol starts, et cetera, et cetera. So to me, that's why we gave a guidance saying this quarter, we have been able to achieve this, which is true for the year. Our goal -- internal goal is to be able to as close of the yearly number as possible for the next year. But realistic guidance is what Sharvil gave you, that that's what we see is sustainable.

Got it. Second, the acceleration on store expansion target, restaurant expansion target that we have. Now you called out that it's a very volatile environment as we are entering this year. Just wanted to know, have we budgeted in this guidance that, let's say, if this situation has to persist for first 6 months, this guidance will stay intact kind of factoring for this scenario to prolong?

Which scenario?

The current raw material scenario of the LPG and the other crisis that you called out, which was just hurting up one part of the demand. I'm saying in this guidance, have we built a scenario that if this persists for, let's say, for 6 months, we remain committed to this store expansion target?

We will because I think these are things which are not new to India. I think something or the other always comes up in a country like as dynamic as India. And I believe this volatility is also a friend of businesses. If you are able to use it effectively, these are all opportunities. So I don't look at changing that. There are levers in our hand. For example, if it goes up dramatically, it will go up for the entire industry and everybody takes up a little bit of price increase because of that. So I think we've got more than enough to manage at least on the cost side of it, I'm not too worried. Our key goal, like Akshay said, remains how do we make sure that we deliver more comp sales and more growth with new store opening. And as long as that happens, the rest will fall in place.

The next question is from the line of Saurabh Kundan from Goldman Sachs.

Your value platform initiatives have obviously given you encouraging results with guest count being in mid-single digit. Going forward, do you plan to accelerate these initiatives? Related question is this the 99 value meal, maybe other value initiatives that you have, have they been completely rolled out? Or you expect to sort of roll them out further into your network?

I think like I said, value is something which is intrinsic to the industry, especially McDonald's globally. We do the highest guest count and sales numbers across the globe because we are a strong value player in an omnichannel environment, right? So there are players which have not yet played out. You will see us having a lot of exciting stuff coming in the next 1 to 2 years and value is the work has just started in our opinion.

Okay. Just trying to ask it another way. There's a gap between the SSSG that you've reported and guest count. So can we expect this gap to further widen or contract or remain the same is what I meant to ask basically?

Yes. No, no. So obviously, we are working hard because in most cases, value platform should not mean dilution of so much. But we were very clear we wanted to get volume first. We have been volume starved a little bit in the last 2 years. And we have to reimagine our strategy. I think value, we have got multiple levers in place to pick it up whenever. So we will remain disciplined around whatever we have done and not giving up any further margin than this as far as the product mix is concerned.

The next question is from the line of Sidharth from NAFA.

So my question is around that in the recent quarters, we have seen some slowdown in the QSR space as a whole. So considering the recent Middle East tensions and the LPG crisis going on, what's your forward-looking outlook in terms of the SSSG in terms of existing operations? I would just like to have a view on that.

I think we have been repetitive on this one. We read what we show. I think we did not shy away even when we had negative growth that these are things of our making and some decisions which we made did not play out the way we anticipated it to play out. We have gone back, like Akshay said, back to our basics to be able to go back to a model which works globally also and replicate that playbook in India, back to basics, back to EVM. And we do not see with that strong platform, us not having enough to increase the momentum on the same-store sales growth front.

Okay. Understood. So is there any revenue guidance, if you may possibly give me an idea on...

So we don't give any forward-based margins -- guidance for sure. But like we would -- as Akshay just spoke, we would like to go to INR 3,000 crores as early as possible, right? So we would like to grow our same-store sales growth as early as possible towards mid-single digits.

The next question is from the line of Vishal Punmiya from YES Securities.

Question is on the McCafé performance. McCafé will be inside your [indiscernible]

Sorry, we are unable to hear you, Mr. Vishal.

Vishal, voice is little fumbly.

Yeah. Is it better now?

Yes.

Sorry, we have lost the line from Mr. Vishal. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global.

I just wanted to sort of check on this partnership, which we've entered with Jio-bp. Is that also leading to this improvement in store outlook that we're sharing?

Actually, we've got partnerships with HPCL, BPCL and now Jio-bp. Those partnerships are meant to expand our footprint on the highways. We've done a good job as far as Mumbai-Pune highway is concerned, and we see a lot of access control highway coming in, and we want to make sure that we have strong partnerships so that we can put the network in. All this was already baked in when we had given the guidance of going to 45-50 and then now 60+. It'll not be basis one partner or one place. It is holistic. We do want to have more restaurants in airports. We want to have more restaurants in infrastructure-led growth, including malls and highways. That's one part of the portfolio. The second part of it is we want to continue penetrating markets, the six key markets like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai. That's not going out of flavor. If we do stores there So it's a balanced portfolio which we want to drive, and Jio-bp is one such partnership in that direction.

Understood. Sir, just wanted to check on this new beverages that have been launched globally under the McCafé platform. Any chances to bring those products to India as well? There's a lot of noise around that.

I think global has done a fantastic job. They will also come as a part of global core. We will make that choice when we need to. For now, we think we have got work to be done as far as the coffee category is concerned in the McCafé. It will play out at some point in time. Like I said, we've got multiple things up our sleeves. Without giving you directly saying this is a global beverage platform build up in India also, I would rather give you a guidance that we are very closely focusing towards the consumer, and we are taking cognizance of this beverage trends amongst Gen Z too. The first play we see is strengthening McCafé and coffee credential as the most important play as we go and solidify our beverage credentials.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Vishal Punmiya from YES SECURITIES.

Yeah. Am I audible now?

Yes, Vishal, loud and clear.

Okay. My question was on McCafé. If you could help with McCafé's performance in FY 2026, in terms of maybe revenue contribution or how revenue per store for McCafé has improved in FY 2026, that would be helpful. Secondly, in terms of strategy for McCafé going forward, while there are many smaller cafes opening up every nook and corner, we also have a big QSR now entering the cafe space. Any change in thought process or strategy for McCafé going forward or in terms of aggression?

I think the more the merrier. As far as coffee is concerned, coffee is a category which I think is underplaying right now in India, and it's got a huge potential to grow. The more people who can work on creating daily habits, the better for us and better for coffee business. I think our job we have cut out, if you look at it, our proposition is differentiated. Probably we do the best coffee in the country at a price which is unbelievable. That we do because we want to create a daily coffee consuming habit in the country and democratize the coffee experience. We want it to continue grow. We see it as a growth lever even for the next two to three years to come. I'm not, we don't really worry about who's coming, who's not coming, because coffee scene has been hot pretty much with coffee shops, et cetera, from the last five years, and we've still been able to do a substantial job. I would argue that in most places we sell more coffees than any coffee shop in the trade area, so, in most locations. I am quite confident of our McCafé proposition, and I think our job is to democratize and make more people habituated to drink everyday coffee in McDonald's.

Yes, agreed on the quality part. The product is obviously one of the better coffee in the, in the market. In terms of any marketing initiatives, do we need to scale up that part? Also if you could just update on the performance in FY 2026 in terms of revenue or mix within the overall business.

On the overall business, obviously we don't break it out, but all I can tell you is, the biggest marketing work which we have done is look at it only from a standpoint of how do we make McDonald's the destination to drink their everyday cup of coffee. In that spirit, we rolled out the subscription in which a McCafé beverage is available if you come 10 times in a month only for INR 55, which is you don't have to think twice from a monetary standpoint. I think if we are able to get the success we want to in that, we don't have to worry about anybody else.

Understood. Lastly on pies as a platform. Globally, pies does really well in terms of contributing to the meal. Any plans to basically add that to our India portfolio in a bigger way? We obviously have tried in the past, but any plans for future?

On the menu, like I said, there'll be exciting stuff coming in. Typically we've got Pizza McPuff, which is our savory pie, which we sell right now. Whether we want to do sweet pie or not, I think in the priorities we have, we need to ruthlessly prioritize what will really give us results. That's something which we are, which we are working towards and then working with consumers to be able to say what will work and you will see that happening in the marketplace, and you will see exciting news even on menu from us.

Okay. Understood. Just lastly, appreciated the recent marketing initiatives regarding the sippers and the tote bags. I think it did really well. It was out of stock across all stores. I couldn't find it anywhere. Kudos to the team for that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Vishal.

The next question is from the line of Tejash Shah from Avendus Spark Institutional Equities.

This is one at industry level and one at our level. At a very broader level, QSR industry actually started massification or focus on value segment post COVID revival phase. Do you believe that from competitive landscape we have set the price point in terms of where it doesn't make sense to go further below so that mix at industry levels should not deteriorate from here? That's one. This could be conjecture answer also. Second is, actually in our mix also, from price point perspective, do you think that we have reached to a stage where further democratization won't happen, at least on the pricing part? On, and on, and on, in terms of rollout also, do you believe or do you read that it has actually reached an optimum mix in terms of where you would like it to settle down at?

I would like to believe that India is growing. Per capita income in India is growing. What we have currently is a great value proposition for the consumers. The first question will be for how long should we hold this to make sure that we keep unlocking the consumer base of India to which we want to? To me, that's the bigger question rather than us being able to say this is optimum, not optimum. See, what value means keeps changing. Immediately after COVID, when we created even the Vision 2027, a large amount of assumption was big burgers will play a big role. It's not exactly played out. It did a great job. There's a base which we have set up, and the base has remained pretty much consistent. When I look at value, I think it's these are cycles. These are pro-mix play. I think I am very sure that after value will at some point in time will go to core, then we'll go to premium, then come back to value. These are all cycles which will play out as they have played out in the past.

Sure. From your past read-through, usually, what are the, like, approx number also, what are the tenure of that cycles?

Cycles?

Yes.

It depends on activity. That cycle I can't predict because when there is a lot of information flowing through, cycles last one year, sometimes cycles last seven years also. When we did branded affordability, a cycle was seven years. We became premiumization, that lasted for almost four, five years. It shortened just before COVID. It was almost two to three-year cycles. What will it now be depends on what people are feeling, and therefore we need to keep very close watch on what the consumer is thinking, what the consumer is going through. You know, there could be fatigue in when every day everybody's screaming new things. There could be a fatigue and people might go back to classics. For that, we need to always be listening to the consumer and create strategy accordingly. I will not predict the tenure of thing, but all I'm saying is nothing goes out of fashion. It always comes back.

Thank you. Participants to ask a question may press star and one. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments.

Thank you so much, everyone, and we look forward to seeing you next quarter.

Thank you.

Thank you. On behalf of Westlife Foodworld Limited, that concludes the conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.