Zamp S.A. (ZAMP3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Zamp Meeting. We have with us Ariel Grunkraut, Gabriel Guimaraes and the International Relations team. We inform you that this event is being recorded and that all participants will only be listening to the teleconference. Afterwards, we'll start the Q&A session when more instructions will be provided. [Operator Instructions] This event is also being transmitted via webcast and accessible at www.ri.zamp.com.br, where you will find the presentation. The presentation of the slides will be controlled by us. The replay of this event will be available right after its closing. We would like to inform that this teleconference is being simultaneously translated to English in order to assist our foreign investors. Prior to advancing, we'd like to clarify that any declarations that may be made during this teleconference related to the business perspectives of Zamp, forecasts, operating targets are beliefs and premises of the company just like information currently available. Future forecasts are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances, which may or may not happen. Investors and analysts must understand that general conditions, sector conditions and other operating factors could affect the future results of Zamp and could lead to results which differ materially from those expressed in these disclosures. I would like to now pass the word to Ariel Grunkraut, President of Zamp, who will start the presentation. Please, Ariel.

Thank you for the introduction, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your interest in our company and for your participation in this teleconference to present the Zamp results for the fourth quarter of '22. After 2 years of many challenges for our operation being directly affected by the pandemic, we concluded what we believe has been an excellent quarter and year. The numbers we present today represent the dedication of our entire team and a scenario of traffic below the pre-pandemic levels in an economic environment, which is still recovering. In this quarter, we delivered a strong sales growth and a good gain in market share and operating leverage increase with structural efficiency gains, and we have taken back our strong expansion plan for both brands, BURGER KING and POPEYES. We closed 2022 with the certainties that we were able to leave the crisis stronger and we are going down the right path on all fronts and excited about what we are about to build. Going into the second slide, let's share the main highlights of the fourth quarter of '22. As far as the net revenues, we have gone over BRL 1 billion in one quarter, totaling BRL 1.1 billion for the period, a new historical quarter record. And we have also registered our best annual performance with the invoicing in BRL 3.6 billion. The gross margin of 66% reached in the quarter is also a historic high, showing that our initiatives of strategic sourcing, revenue management and data management have been bringing positive results and making us grow sales with an expansion in the gross margin. 41% of all Zamp sales are already identifiable and identified. We have made our data lake stronger, and we have taken larger steps in the hyper personalization. Besides that, our digital channels already take care of 35% of the company's sales. Strong sales boosted by innovative campaigns have created a high array of operating leverage in our fixed costs, showing the strength of both our brands, continuing. The operating cash flow registered in the fourth quarter of '22 was BRL 222 million, another historic high for Zamp. This result puts us in a comfortable confident position to finance a big piece of our expansion plan with our own cash, within an adequate capital structure, we concentrated a big part of our expansion plan in the fourth quarter, where we opened 35 new stores, 26 for BURGER KING and 9 of the POPEYES brand. Besides that, we have closed 3 assets as part of our portfolio management strategy. We have disclosed our first sustainability report ensured by independent auditors and built upon the international methodology, GRI and SASB. This is one of the main transparency tools and commitment to the disclosure and governance of our sustainability data. And finally, allied to our dream of positively impacting people's lives in our first year assessed by the GPTW methodology, we got the GPTW certification, which reinforced the feeling of pride showing that we do love the environment and the quality of work of all of our employees. Going into the third slide, we see the highlights for performance in the fourth quarter. Zamp reached a net operating revenue of BRL 1.1 billion, a growth of 15% year-over-year. and the best quarter in the company's history. Besides that, the digital sales continue being developed, growing 23% compared to the same period of last year, presenting a higher significant quarter-over-quarter. The gross margin of Zamp was 66%, the best level already recorded by the company, showing you that the revenue management strategies, strategic sourcing and company digitalization have been proven to be a success. And through the sales recovery and the expense control management and the advance of our digitalization efforts, we reached in the fourth quarter of '22, a historical high for adjusted EBITDA in the amount of BRL 215 million with a margin of 20.4%. And this year, the same-store sales for BK was 13% and for POPEYES 8%. With these numbers, I would like to pass the word to my partner and CFO, Gabriel Guimaraes, so that he may cover important aspects of the financial performance of the company.

Thank you, Ariel, and Good morning, everyone. On Slide 4, we present the development of our restaurant portfolio in the fourth quarter of 2022. We concentrated a large part of our expansion plan for the year, and we concluded the opening of 35 new restaurants and 3 closings, which led us to an opening of 49 and no operations in the year with the closing of 4 stores. For the BURGER KING stores, the openings recorded in this quarter were 12 stores in the freestanding format, 2 in the Ghost Kitchen co-branded format and the opening of 1 store in a Food Court besides new franchisee operations. Besides that, we opened up 9 POPEYES restaurants all in the Food Court format. This way, we closed the year of 2022 with a total of 990 restaurants in the system in the network. Going into Slide 5, we present the development of the net operating revenue of the company same-store sales for both brands as well. As we said in this quarter, we reached the highest net operating revenue in our company history in the amount of BRL 1.1 billion, a growth of 15% compared to the fourth quarter of '21 with same-store sales of 13% for BURGER KING and 8% for POPEYES. As you can see in the chart to the right, the net operating revenue recorded in 2022 was BRL 3.6 billion, 32% above 2021 and the best performance here in the company's history. Going into Slide 6. We now present the sales net revenues, which reached BRL 992 million, a growth of 15% compared to the same period last year. And the BURGER KING brand has a total revenue of BRL 3.4 billion for the year. And this was possible due to very effective campaigns and a calendar of innovations, which allowed us to reach the highest market share record for the brand according to local surveys or national surveys. With our brand strength in our iconic products, our continuous advance in digital channels and the use of data for us to accelerate frequency and average ticket, we have been able to reach a good performance, increasing performance of same-store sales, even with traffic still below pre-pandemic levels. On Slide 7, we see the POPEYES performance who in the fourth quarter celebrated its fourth year of operation in Brazil, reaching new markets with the opening of stores outside of Rio and Sao Paulo in the states of Minas Gerais, Bahia, Parana, Goias and the Federal District. In this quarter, we reached a net sales revenue of BRL 49 million and in the year of 2022, BRL 163 million, a growth of 48% compared to the year of 2021. With such results, still in its baby steps, all those still in its baby steps, POPEYES is one of the best QSR brands when looking at the average ticket per asset. Under this context, our operation in the year of 2022 has already become positive at the restaurant level, which reinforces our confidence that the chicken market represents a strong avenue for growth for the company, and we shall build this business based on our main attribute, the quality of our products. As we grow, we continue to leverage our investments and our brand building and trials, which will be fundamental so that POPEYES can be ever more present in Brazilians' consumption habits. Going into the next slide, we can see the constant evolution of our digital channels represented by delivery, self-service kiosks and our app. In the fourth quarter of '22, the realized sales through these channels totaled BRL 367 million, a growth of 23% compared to the same period last year, which represented over 35% of participation of share in the company's total sales, an increase of 41%. On Slide 9, we present our digital ecosystem and its constant evolution. We closed the year of 2022 with 15.9 million users recorded in our CRM and 41% of total sales have been identified with the evolution and the enrichment of our database, we get to know our consumers more and more, executing in a more precise manner, individualized actions and personalized actions as well. As we saw on the previous slide, our app basically doubled its share in sales, and it continues to be a huge opportunity for us to leverage efficiency and experience from our restaurant sales. Our self-service totems or kiosks, which have brought us an important growth in average ticket, higher gross margin and a better customer experience represented 17% of Zamp revenues for this quarter. We continue developing our rollout plan for this functionality to all of our restaurants almost because we have seen excellent returns, including 23 restaurants, which today service their customers 100% digitally, which could be an important lever in the near future. Delivery continues to be an important revenue driver for the company, representing 14.1% of the sales. And the nominal comparison against the third quarter of 2022, the total delivery sales grew 29%. And when compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, there was a growth of 11%, which shows that there is still lots of room for us to seek out incremental revenues through that channel. Our efficiency priorities have developed well. And today, delivery IMP and the hybrid model, which didn't represent anything, and our revenues already represents 72.4% of the share of the channel, which improves profitability and which allows us to cover a higher geographic area. Finally, we have our loyalty program data [Technical Difficulty], we reached 11 million users recorded, which makes the BK Club the biggest loyalty club in Latin America in the restaurant segment. The program has contributed directly to the average sales growth per user, making the customer loyal through the personalization of their consumption habits and increasing, therefore, in a material manner their average spend. Going into Slide 10, we see our CMV and SG&A. On the left, you can see that the cost of goods sold maintained its development trajectory and represented 34% in the fourth quarter of 2022, a drop of 80 basis points compared to the fourth quarter of 2021, which led us to the best historical record for gross margin. This result was obtained based on 3 fundamental pillars: revenue management, sourcing and data. In the center chart, you can see that the sales expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization and preoperating expenses represented 41.3% of the net revenue at Zamp, a drop of 40 basis points compared to the fourth quarter of '21. coming from the operating leverage and important efficiency projects carried out partially minimized by the union renegotiation, giving us a nonrecurring event of BRL 6 million of a loss. To the right, we see our SG&A, and you can see that we've had a slight increase here against 2021, especially due to the recomposition of the bonus of the company in an environment of better results. In the variation of other expenses, we had basically the noncash effect, a provision for impairment. As we have said, we've made important investments and our corporate structure is organized to reach the company objectives. Therefore, we will continue to follow an operating leverage strategy throughout the next few years. Going into the next slide, our adjusted EBITDA was BRL 215 million in the fourth quarter of '22, with a margin of 20.4%. This result means a growth of 21.3% and a growth of 100 basis points in margin comparing to the same period in the previous year. After taking back the strong sales pace and through our operating efficiency initiatives, we can see in the center chart that the adjusted EBITDA for '22 totaled BRL 573 million, the best yearly performance in the company's history with a margin of 15.7%. In comparison to 2021, the growth was 137% with a nominal advance of over BRL 330 million in the adjusted EBITDA. To the right chart, you can see that Zamp reported a net loss in the amount of BRL 42 million, and advances of 78%, the best result in the company since 2019. Going into Slide 12, we can see that the operating cash flow reported in the fourth quarter of 2022 was BRL 222 million, an increment of BRL 72 million compared to the same period of the previous year. For the year of 2022, the operating cash flow for the company totaled BRL 459 million, this year. the cash conversion, given by the reasons by the operating cash flow and the accounting EBITDA was above 90%, which shows the strong cash generating potential of our business through these operating cash flow results we can see, and we were able to obtain as a company to support our growth strategy and our investments. Going into Slide 13, the reported CapEx in the fourth quarter of 2022 was BRL 153 million, which supported the retaking our expansion plan during that time, plus the opening of 35 new businesses in the quarter and various other projects, which are ongoing. Besides that, we have maintained our investments in technology, which represents an important contribution for the operating results of the company with excellent returns in the investments in the maintenance of our restaurant portfolio. For the year of 2022, the CapEx was BRL 356 million. Our free cash flow dynamic allowed us to go back to rebuying shares of the company with the acquisition of 3 million shares in the fourth quarter of '22, that way, Zamp repurchased approximately 9 million shares in the year of 2022. On the following slide, we can see the strong capital structure. At the end of 2022, our total gross debt reached the level of BRL 1.014 billion, which summed up to an available cash of BRL 519 million resulted in a net debt of BRL 494 million. After strong operating results presented previously, the company followed its deleveraging strategy, closing the year with a net debt-EBITDA level in 1.5x, which puts us in a great position to support the strategic plan. In the below chart, we can see the aging of our debt and the principal dues in the year of 2023. At this way, we closed the financial session and I will share the word with Ariel so that he can share with you our priorities for the next quarter and the year of 2023, Ariel?

Thank you, Gabriel. What's around the corner guys? Well, in first place, sales growth with the development of gross margin. We will continue to invest in our campaign calendar and our innovation calendar as well to boost traffic and sales at our restaurants in a consistent manner. With the procuring of the POPEYES brand, we believe that we will reach revenue levels, which are ever more positive and sustainable for POPEYES as well. Besides that, we believe that there is still space for the expansion of gross margin supported on the pillars of sourcing, revenue management, digitalization of the user experience and hyperpersonalization through data. Two, operating efficiency boosted by technology and portfolio management. Our commitment of capital allotment or allocation is continuous, and we're constantly analyzing our costs and margin improvement possibilities, leading to higher profitability of the assets and the management of our portfolio in a more efficient manner, gaining us the best results. The technology that we develop at Zamp will have a fundamental role in seeking out of more efficiency in all the company departments. Three, strong expansion of restaurants for both brands. After 2 years of COVID and having 2022 as a transition year, we are now ready to take back our strong expansion plan to execute and grow our restaurants, BURGER KING and POPEYES. With the mapping of new opportunities and the spaces locales identified, we are now ready to capture the best opportunities, allocating our capital in a diligent manner. Four, growth of the digital channels and technology projects. A growth of the entire digital ecosystem last year allowed us to better identify our customers, executing in a more precise manner, individualized and personalized offers. We will reinforce our digital strategies to be able to provide the best experience to innovate in the products in an ever more right way and assertive way to provide better experiences for our customers and to continue consistently evolving our market share and our profitability levels. Five, continuous evolution of the ESG commitments with the delivery of sustainability commitments. We would like to tell you that we have anticipated another delivery of an ESG promise, which was forecast for 2024 to reach 100% of the packaging with a sourcing certification, a source or an origin certification. This helps us to be transparent in showing you the tracking of our packages. And this is a sustainable tool for us to fight this deforesting which allows us to monitor the ecosystem. We can also monitor water supply, the reforesting of forest, which have been deforested, our commitment with the local community, with indigenous peoples and it adds more value to these certified products. The anticipation of this commitment reinforces the advance in our ESG agenda of providing transparent management of the sustainability initiatives at the company. Thank you, guys. Operator, please start the Q&A session.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now start the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Eduardo watching via the webcast. What's the EBITDA margin level that the company considers normalized in the long term? Which measures do you plan to adopt to reduce the ASG-8 impact?

Good morning, Eduardo. Thank you for the question. Gabriel here. When you look at the numbers of 2022, I think that there are a few key messages about everything. When we see that with the traffic levels below, we had an average of 20% there at the BURGER KING level. Below 20%, we can close with the same unit economics for BURGER KING. And then obviously, with a little flexibility from our initiatives, which generated efficiency, leverage the gross margin. And this, even with the makeup of take rate and a few expenses which are new in our cost structure, we ended up being able to close the year with the same profitability levels. When we look ahead, we see essentially a revenue growth above costs and expenses in the next few years, especially coming from the growth of same-store sales above the nominal GDP for the existing assets outside of the growth of new restaurant sales, which actually and the overhead structure should generate some operating leverage. We continue to see technology as an important tool for our business for basically all the digital channels. So we have a unit economics, which is better in the transactions through these channels. in terms of delivery, there is a question of incrementality, which you know well, based on the take rate for all the channels, we see normally a transaction with a higher ticket and less expenses because you don't have somebody at the balcony because we can be more efficiency, we can be more efficient sometimes. And we're going to have important initiatives in the next cycle of the company, which will be a portfolio management initiative. This has always been part of our DNA. We've always closed something around 10 to 15 restaurants per year. But at this time, with this change in consumption dynamics where if we are on average at this level of traffic, if there are assets where we are well below where there's some challenges in negotiating the cost and expenses, that combination leads us to close assets that are not making sense for the company. So starting in the fourth quarter, we saw 3 store closings, 21 kiosk closings, and this will continue to happen, especially in this first quarter of 2023 for the assets that we consider that there is no expectation of a recovery, and we see their performance negatively in the future. We have a maturing of the POPEYES brand, and we're super excited about what we are building. We said during the call that for the fourth year of operation, this is basically the second year in a normalized scenario without COVID. This is a brand which is already in a positive EBITDA level, which positions this brand as one of the main QSR companies in Brazil. Therefore, we have great expectations that this revenue per store can convert to something that is closer to BRL 4 million to BRL 4.5 million, which are a few other players in Brazil in this platform with those numbers and then we should converge to unit economics similar to BURGER KING, this should take something around 2 to 3 years. And finally, we talked a little bit about the fact that in the last 2 years, we prioritized investment in the company's governance structure, in the new projects like POPEYES and technology. And in terms of G&A, we set up a structure to support a higher level of sales, which will happen in the next cycle, and we should start to convert to an operating leverage level that's better kind of reducing these expenses and costs as time goes by. So we do have the aspiration of improving the profitability of the company in a few years vis-a-vis what has been delivered in 2022.

Our next question also comes from Fred Edrico from the webcast. Is there any visibility of the company in terms of M&As.

We have been having a strategic perspective, a midterm strategic perspective, very focused on, I would say, on the execution of strong brands and full expansion with huge avenues of growth, lots of avenues for growth. I think the results of the last quarter of the year closing, while still on the recovery, that shows the capability of our business to generate cash to have a company with a capital structure and to seek out these, to trail these avenues of growth, and we have a plan for openings. We're talking about something around 80 to 100 restaurants in the next 2 years. So that will be an important growth lever for the company in an environment where we start to have a free cash flow structure, capital structure, which in the future will allow us to look at other growth avenues. We will be looking at those, but this is not a priority for the management at this time because we're very focused on our execution plan and the challenges that we have with BURGER KING and POPEYES.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the webcast from Wellington. How do you see the gross margin dynamics from here forward? And what do you see in terms of sales for the first quarter of '23?

Wellington, thank you for your question. As you have monitored, we have been very diligent, always trying to seek out a balance between market share gains with profitability gains. And I believe that, those numbers leaves us very excited because 2022, although it was a transition year, as was said at the beginning of the presentation, our strategies allowed us to reach at the same time, our gross margin record, and at the same time, a market share record at a time where the company has seen a revenue growth, 32% increased year-over-year and with lots of basis points of performance. We reached 66% of margin, and that's a scenario that we think is very interesting for our segment, but it leaves us opportunities to still be able to make some enhancements. We will have a benefit from the previous year. That number from previous years should allow us to transition into that level of 65% with all the initiatives that we have undertaken. And we believe that the initiatives, be they in-sourcing, be they in revenue management, be they in reaching our data lake with data and increasing the digitalization at the stores, that will allow us to continue navigating in a comfortable gross margin scenario without disregarding the best market share opportunities.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the webcast from Juan. Considering your plan to close a few restaurants in the first quarter, how should we think about the core order payments or other cash impacts? How would that affect your closing plans?

Thank you for your question. These negotiations, they obviously take a long time. There is no standard for these closings, these cancellations of these contracts. Essentially, you have something like an advanced between 1 to 3 months. So in the case of disclosing, if we're not able to get reach a common commercial agreement and we go into litigation, perhaps we will have to roll out that cash while closing these stores, but it is important to say, though, that these assets many of them are below the line, the threshold. So even putting in the investment into these closings, this is an equation that for the company's profitability annually, it's very positive because it removes revenue. It creates a better EBITDA, even with the incorporation of the cancellation fees, we still have a combination which benefits the bottom line of the company already in the year of 2023 and ahead.

Thank you. Please wait while we collect additional questions. Thank you for waiting. Our next question comes from Louis. Can you talk about the trends you see in the first quarter of the year in terms of growth and profitability?

Louis, thank you for your question. I think it is important to put into context the fast food segment. Fast food segment is very resilient in Brazil and the world. So depending on the macro and micro scenarios, this QSR segment has shown itself to be very resilient. In Brazil, it's got a particular characteristic different than other markets because here, different in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. 70% of the food sales volume outside of the home is through independent players. And that is the contrary makes when we look at the entire world, where most of the fast food volume comes from the big chains. What have we seen as a trend? The number of independent stores, which are the moms and pops, they have been decreasing and they have been getting weaker in Brazil. That activity had been happening prior to COVID and they got expedited during COVID and post COVID, what have we seen in the short and what we believe will maintain itself as a trend in the future? The growth of the participation of the big fast food chains over the independents, which are weaker nowadays. And within the big fast food chains, we have seen big players as is the case of BURGER KING and McDonald's, gaining share over the smaller players who don't have the same branding, brand investment, innovation and technology investment capabilities. So what have we seen in the first quarter of this year? Well, this trend has been shown to be true. The big fast food chains have been gaining a bigger share over the smaller ones and BURGER KING also showing a higher growth compared to its peers. In terms of margin, we continue to see what I said. We have been finding an important boost from the initiatives that were implemented in the last few quarters. So we are very comfortable that we will continue to find that important balance between market share growth and the best financial health of the company in all lines. And what Gabriel said that operating leverage has also shown itself to be significant in the first quarter at a time when we are able to grow sales for same-store sales above the cost that we have acquired in our stores, bringing us important financial leverage for growth.

Thank you. We now close the Q&A session. I would like to pass the word to Ariel for his final comments. Ariel?

Thank you, operator. Well, with all this data, we close our results call. Thank you so much for your participation. And I would like to reinforce the invitation to our first Investor Day, which will be on the 15th of March here in our office so that you may monitor and we may share more about the future of our company. I wish you all a great weekend. Thank you.

This officially ends the Zamp audio conference. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful afternoon. Bye-bye. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]