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

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the Teleconference of the Third Quarter Results of 2024 from Zamp. [Operator Instructions] We inform that this videoconference is being recorded, and it will be made available in the Investors Relations from Zamp, where you will also find available the whole material of all the results for this third quarter. [Operator Instructions] We highlight the information in this presentation and eventual declarations during the videoconference are in the business perspectives, projections, they are in beliefs and premises of the company as well as information available. These future considerations, they are not performance. They involve risks, uncertainties and premises, and they refer to future events. So therefore, there are circumstances that may or may not happen. Investors should understand that those economic conditions, market conditions and other operational factors could affect the future performance of Zamp and lead to results that differ from those expressed in these future considerations. We highlight today the executive of the company, Paulo Camargo, CEO; Gabriel Guimaraes, CFO; and the Investor Relations team. I would now like to give the floor to Mr. Paulo, who will start the presentation. Mr. Paulo, you may proceed.

Good morning, everyone. It's a great pleasure to have here for this teleconference of the third quarter results from Zamp. In 2024, enthusiasm, this is the word, and this is the feeling that I see in the environment in Zamp. And when I talk about Zamp, in fact, I refer to that of each one of our employees and partners live in our units from BK, POPEYES, Starbucks and Subway. But the truth is those are really who make Zamp a reality. I see a promising future. We are together building and we will share a little about this today. Currently, we are the biggest group of restaurant operators in Brazil with over 3,000 units and a labor force of around 30,000 people. These employees, they are together with our suppliers, our franchisee in our dream of connecting people through authentic flavors and remarkables of each of our brands. For us, people are the heart of this journey. And no one better than those who are in the front line dealing with our customers on a daily basis to understand the particularities of our operation and also to identify the challenges, the needs that will take us to take higher flights and conduct our process with excellence. In this quarter, we are celebrating one more growth in sales and market share gain. And these indicators are fruits of a collective manifestation of all of our stakeholders and employees and the strength of each of our brands will be committed to offer a unique experience and always better for our visitors that is our valued customers. Thank you so much. And let's now start the presentation today. In the Slide 2, we will present our main highlights and the arrival of Starbucks brand and Subway brand. I would like to highlight the important step that we are taking in direction to our consolidation strategy. We are in new segments, and we are opening new avenues of growth within the food service universe, and we increased our market in 2.6x. We sum to our portfolio 2 brands that are iconic reference in their category and with a high potential of scaling. With them, we are also adding over 1,500 points of sales. Only as a reference, considering the numbers of 2023, the consolidation of these brands would have generated systemic sales for Zamp of BRL 6.8 billion, a growth of 46%. This combination puts us in a position that is privileged in order to capture synergies that are implicit and deliver results that are complementary and also to generate long-term value. We will go to the third slide. And here, I want to share with you some highlights of this quarter, third quarter. Our operational revenue -- net operational revenue has reached a new record of BRL 1.12 billion, which represents a growth of 18% versus the same period in the previous year. For this quarter, we have reached significant sales of same-store sales with 16% for BURGER KING and 12% for POPEYES. We have also had a relevant gain of market share for both brands, 150 bps for BURGER KING and 420 bps for POPEYES. In this period, the digital sales of the company represented 52% of the total revenue with a growth of 38% versus the same period last year. In this quarter, the EBITDA adjusted, excluding the IFRS 16 effects was BRL 77 million. In complete numbers, this is the biggest in the company for our third quarter with a growth of 12% compared to the same period last year. In October, as it was informed to the market, we have concluded the increase of our gain a capital of BRL 450 million. Moving on to Slide 4. We present here the evolution of our portfolio of restaurants. In the third quarter, we have opened 5 restaurants -- franchise restaurants for BURGER KING, most of them in the format freestanding. And then we also integrated 1 own freestanding in line with our journey of optimizing the portfolio. We closed 2 operations of the BURGER KING franchise, and therefore, we have finalized the quarter with 1,032 units. Of those, 75% are owned. And now moving on to Slide 5. As we have said last quarter, we are prioritizing the process of modernization and remodeling of our units with a focus on the improvement of the experience of the client. This initiative, we will continue prioritizing in the next years. It is an important pillar for the strategy of the company, making our units more efficient, allowing a service 100% digital. And it is very interesting to share that we are seeing results positive, very positive in customer satisfaction in the sales and also in the profitability of these projects. With that, I would like to now give the floor to our CFO, Gabriel Guimaraes, so that he can go over the important aspects of our financial performance.

Thank you so much, Paulo, and good morning, everyone. Following on to the Slide 6, we have the net operational revenue for the brands. As we have already said, the operational revenue was -- had a growth of 18% compared to the same period last year, with same-store sales of 16% for the BURGER KING brand and 12% for the POPEYES brand, which has led to a consolidated of 16% for this third quarter. In accumulation of 12-month of net operational revenue, we have grown 13% and we have BRL 4.3 billion. Moving on to Slide 7. We have here the net sales for the BURGER KING that has reached a growth of 18% in the current reading and again, a market sharing of 1.5% compared to -- according to Crest, it's worth highlighting the growth of net revenue is a combination of a strong same-store sales of 16% with a good performance of the stores that have opened. This growth comes pushed by a moment that is considerable in the number of visits, mainly the leverage of our performance of freestanding restaurants that have led to a global result up with a good cost benefit for the clients and a balanced communication plan of our main commercial initiatives. Along the quarter, we had some launches that were very important with campaigns for value for money and other partnerships with strategic partners in the launch of new products as Chicken Fries and also BK Mix and BK shakes and all the prestige flavor. In Slide 8, we can see some of these campaigns that have contributed to the operational results and to the strengthening of the preference of the BURGER KING in the routine of the Brazilian consumers. In Slide 9, we see that the POPEYES brand have reached a net revenue of BRL 69 million, a growth of 15% in the same period last year and same-store sales of 12.3%, which strengthens the continued progress of the brand in the country with the indicators of brand as well as operational performance. In this quarter, POPEYES had advanced 4.2 percentage according to Crest, which puts the brand as one of the main ones in the Brazilian market. Going to Slide 10, we can see the continued evolution of our digital channels represented by the delivery, the self-service totem. And here, we see some sales through these channels total BRL 586 million, a growth of 38% compared to the same period last year, represented a 52% of participation of total sales in the company, a growth of around 7%. The main highlight was the evolution of the participation of totem in the sales of the company, 6 percentage points in the current rating. We believe in this tool as an operational leverage as it allows a better experience for our consumers and greater operational efficiency and commercial one as well. In Slide 11, we see here a digital ecosystem. We ended the third quarter 2024 with 52% of our sales identified. With an evolution and regioning of our database, we can act in a more precise ways in the personalization actions and revenue management. As we saw in the previous slide, our app represents 5% of the revenue of the company. And besides a better economic item, transactional one, it's a better channel for us to exploit the data. Our self-service totem's initiatives that align a better experience with the gains in the average ticket represents a growth of 6% and our focus will be to cover more restaurants, especially in the digital format. The delivery also is an important driver of revenue for the company, representing approximately 16% of our total sales in that period, a growth of 29% compared to the same period last year. It's a priority channel for our brands because it amplifies the point of contact with our clients and lets our experience to occasions of consume in the Brazilian habits. And to finish, we have here our loyalty program in the club, BURGER KING Club. In the end of this semester, we have 19 million of people registered. And this is very promising, which represents more expenses to our brand, better profitability, and better NPS. And once we know the behavior in a more detailed way, we have conditions to become more assertive in the interaction of these clients that represent an important share of the business. Advancing to Slide 12, we see CMV and SG&A for the same period. On the left on the slide, we see that the cost of the merchandise sales had a slight increase and represents 34.7% of the quarter. This is a slight increase compared to the last year due to the investment in the commercial strategy. In the main part of the slide, we see that the expenses in the sales of the restaurants, excluding IFRS, represents 53.6% of the total revenue of the company, a reduction compared to the same period last year due to the reduction of 59 basis points in the base points of our fixed cost, a better operational leverage, partially consumed by the growth of our labor expenses, the recomposition to support better sales and better cost per capita. In the right of the slide, we saw D&A, and we see here DGA and we had an increase compared to the same quarter last year. This increase has led due to the expenses of one-off of the acquisitions of the operations we have done recently. Going to the 13 Slide, the adjusted EBITDA, excluding the IFRS 16 was BRL 77 million, the best historic result for our third quarter in the company, with a margin of 6.8% and an increase of 12% compared to the same period last year. This result is a fruit of the combination of the strong commercial performance with the evolution of expenses. And also, we see here the loss, a reduction of 16% of this loss of the same quarter 2023. Going on to the following slide of the presentation, we can see here the operational cash flow presented in the third quarter was BRL 85 million versus BRL 94 million of 2023, reflects of a worse in the working capital due to the growth of stocks in order to support an important quarter of the year, the dynamic of our cash flow. We didn't have any difference in the structural organization of our business. Going on to the Slide 15. The CapEx was BRL 97 million, an increase of BRL 8 million. This is due to a greater number of stores in the format Pavilion pipeline of the inauguration in the following semesters and a bigger investment in remodeling of our portfolio. In the following slide, we see the structure of capital, which has been positively impacted by the quarter in increasing the capital of BRL 450 million. This movement has strengthened our capital structure and shows our trust of our investors in the future of Zamp. In the closing of the period, our debt was BRL 1.5 billion, which has led to a BRL 550 million net in the leverage of the EBITDA. We will consider ranking of our debt without any material compromise. In this way, we end the financial presentation, and we give the floor to Paulo to share with you our priorities for the next quarter of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.

Thank you, Gabriel. Now I would like to share with all of you our priorities is that with the arrival of new brands. They are connected in 5 pillars that are very strategic. The first pillar is our commitment with sales and the traffic. We have a commercial strategy that is very strong and well defined, shown by the results already presented. We are investing in products and platforms that work adding campaigns that are consistent and innovation with half of our transactions being done by the digital channels and our success, the success of our loyalty program. We are ahead of an opportunity that is incredible to better segment our communication and increase the frequency of visits, generating sales that are additional. In the second pillar, it talks about the experience. We have an absolute focus in promoting interactions with our brands that could be interaction would be special and unique. All-in-all, this is aligned to an improvement of our service through the improvement of our programs of training of stores that are more modern, clean and pleasant. These are some examples of our priorities within these experience agenda. The third pillar is our look -- we keep seeking the operational excellence and connected to process that are robust and disciplined in its execution allow along the year in the habituality of this process, the establishment of a new operational standard consistent to the delivery of our promise of every brand we have. That is, the efficiency is not only an objective. It is part of a culture of a daily commitment to our routine of work. Now fourth pillar guarantees the integration of the brands, preserving the identity of each one of them. In fact, we have concluded this process in the month of October in a planned and structured way and with a lot of success, no obstacles. And to end, the fifth pillar is the growth. We are extremely optimistic to the opportunities of organic growth that waits for us in Brazil, especially with the models of freestanding stores that have shown very efficient and effective. And with the brands, Starbucks and Subway, we are strengthening our vision of being a platform that operates brands that are iconic, scalable, complementary among each other and generating value that is sustainable long-term. In order to conclude, as we come to the end of the year, I would like to thank all of those that are contributing daily to our results. And here, I talk about our franchisee, our suppliers, our employees, especially. I would like to thank their performance and declare my trust in our team, my trust in my direct reports, in the management that leads our organization and in the team of every department, of every discipline, of each one of our brands, of all our business managers. Those are who manage the teams, those are who manage the details of all of our thousands of units. We have total trust that we are completely confident that we are ready to capture the opportunities that are really strategic in the food service market in Brazil. Together, we are building a future that is very promising. Thank you, everyone. We will now open the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from [indiscernible] Moving on to the next question. The next question comes from Tiago Harduim.

I have 2 things that I would like to explore. The first one is if that we could talk a little bit more about the new brands. As you have well mentioned, they are iconic. And in the end of the report and in the presentation, you mentioned in the BRL 6.8 billion in 2023. So I'd like to know if we can have a better conversation on the performance of this brand and some idea of margin here in order to understand the better profitability and have a better idea of how the performance of Zamp from now on? And the second point that I'd like to ask is that very interesting you presented -- you have been presenting. And I would like to understand better this dynamic of traffic and price. So it was a much more relevant factor, the price in the quarter. And what is the outlook for this from now on? How can we understand the sustainability of this business? What is the space that the traffic has to continue growing? And then I think it's a very interesting discussion for us to have now.

Thank you, Tiago, for your question. It's the opportunity to -- not only for you, but for -- to clarify for other people what is happening. So I will start with the last question. I think volume, I am sure, in fact, doing this -- we've been doing this for 30 years, volume, price and mix. They are the essence. It's a science of the retail business and also for food service, QSR and restaurants. And this is what we have been doing every day. So in this quarter, we see here in the same-store sales in BURGER KING pushed by 75% was traffic, which was really good. When you have this -- have this market share when you have the client -- the customer with you in your store and they show that they like your brand that they are present when you give the right message. So someone serve for us in the BURGER KING Ribs, which was premium in our portfolio of products. For those, it was the BURGER KING Mix, the prestigious milk shake. Some of them was the combo, was the BRL 25, it's a cheese sandwich for BRL 25, which we started in BRL 25.90 in the month of October, which shows our ever-growing work of revenue management and pricing to check the elasticity of the campaigns. And in this moment, we have some pilots happening and the advantage and this beauty to have over 1,000 restaurants, you can cluster them and you pilot them with different messages and different areas with some having some prices and other with different message. And in a practical way, you end up finding out what would happen even in each competitor market share, you can choose the way to go, and we're always having different plans. So in BURGER KING, we are celebrating this because it's bringing in more people. And once you have the customer, you will sell whatever you want to them. For POPEYES, it was a little bit different, the 2% of the same-store sales, it came through the average ticket. So at POPEYES, we try to simplify what is very simple, but the main driver of this was a promotion of a family of groups that is well located in the menu, is well located in the totem. And this subject of average ticket and traffic, it's our everyday business. As I mentioned, October, we had a little adjustment in the price. So we were benefited by a stability in the price of the commodities, which demonstrates that the way can be a little bit different in the future. So we visualize in the future other opportunities of communication, having the customer by our side and a strong growth, as Gabriel mentioned, in the base of customers in the BURGER KING Club and growing stronger. We will have better opportunities to segment this offer. What is the right price for each one of us? This is the way that we are following. So we will always have this dynamic and making the right calculations to not only have the growth that we expect, but that the margins that the company needs. But occasionally, some months, something will happen. And then in the next quarter, you have to correct, but it's important to have this leverage. In relation to your initial question, if we have other -- how do we see the future? How do we see the brands? I think each one of the brands, they have their own essence. So if we look at the most different one, Starbucks. Starbucks has a culture that is completely different from the culture of BURGER KING. So our work is really through business units to preserve these cultures of each brand. So in this initial moment, we were -- we had to -- if you have to sum up this month that I've just arrived, training on these brands to know the essence of each one of them, then benchmarking of international markets of what is happening in the world in BURGER KING and France was for me the best market, POPEYES in the U.K. and then we're talking with Starbucks in Chile. The General Manager of Starbucks, Mariani, is spending some weeks in Chile to understand that market. We also have a very interesting market, which is Mexico. So the first month was like that, building the structure. So we have a structure that is already in place, just waiting to arrive the new leader of the expansion and development and then she will -- and here, she will arrive soon. And then this month, we will finalize this. And the next step, we will be seeking synergies in forming this structure, the Zamp culture is one, and then we have a lot of synergy here. And then we have the culture and the philosophy that has to be preserved of each of our brands.

If I can add something to help you understand better the anxiety of the numbers. And then as we incorporate these operations, we deliver the fourth quarter of 2024. You have access to economic items and performance indicators of each brand in a better detailed way. But in order to help with the consolidation of the expectation of the system and how these brands have been performing, I would say that 2023 -- we're talking about the Subway system that is 100% composed of a franchisee of 1,600 stores that had a revenue of BRL 1.6 billion, BRL 1.7 billion. The mechanic of Zamp within this context in the first moment is to help to manage this brand in our supply chain, marketing, technology, operational indicators together with a system of franchise partners over 1,000 franchisees within the system. But certainly, we will have an expectation to -- in order to contribute and learn that the brand takes up even bigger proportions in Brazil. And then naturally, at some moment, we will be able to pursue a route to have own operations once we have clear synergies that are implicit in the ecosystem of the Zamp company. When we talk about Starbucks, the figures are a little bit different. We had this brand in Brazil just had around 490 restaurants and everything that happened, especially the SPA with the closing of the transaction, we ended up incorporating 114 operations. And of 114 operations that belong, they are still open in Brazil, they are maybe the best stores in the system that naturally have already done cleaning of the portfolio with important lessons learned so that we take in consideration in the growth plan in the future. And this group of stores had a performance of top line in 2023 of approximately BRL 450 million with something around the double digits due to the performance of our EBITDA. So in this way, we are starting the integrations. We are in the first moment, as Paulo has well mentioned, where the focus is structured organization so that we can have a good operational consistency and a good execution in the different channels that each brand demands at the moment so that in the beginning of the next year and looking forward, we can, in fact, support this ecosystem in this platform with implicit synergies with the economies of scale and expertise that we have built along the last years.

The next question now comes from Thiago Bortoluci from Goldman Sachs.

Thank you for the question and the presentation. I would like to explore some things that have already been mentioned by Paulo in the opening and by the question of our colleague. The first point that is very strategic, Paulo, what is -- you mentioned the commitment with the shareholder to have the balance more stronger with more capital gain. When we think about capital allocation for next year in the medium term, where should be the focus? Should we imagine some acceleration in opening own stores in BURGER KING? Maybe should we imagine a little bit more capital in the beginning going to the acquisitions, the 2 recent acquisitions to understand where are the opportunities and what is the timing for this to happen? And this in parallel with the space of consolidation via mergers and acquisitions. We know that you probably were looking at some brands. You understand that there is some opportunities to be done where these opportunities are happening in the sector. And then in order to close all of this, what is the importance to have these objectives done? Is it organic? Is it inorganic? Is it important for management, for the Board to have the role of this listed in the stock market?

Thank you, Thiago. Let's move on to your answers then. Every brand or each brand, each one of these brands have a specific negotiation, and each of the owners of the brand has a master franchisee of them. So we are still discussing the future. This year, we talked about 40 openings for BURGER KING, POPEYES, we talked about revisited in the proposal, the value proposal, but we will start to grow -- we will continue growing next year. BURGER KING, we will have an important growth in the right moment. We will let you know these numbers. And when we talk about using the capital, what I can say that historically, we take 25% of our CapEx for renovations. But being very objective and trying to be a little pragmatic as well, we're still discussing. This is all very new. As I said, the team is arriving and so General Manager of Starbucks is just started 2 weeks ago. The people and the human resource and personnel has just arrived. Mariana is helping. So this becomes even more strategic in also supply chain. So we have -- so the group is getting together. We are discussing with the Board. So we're still in a phase of -- 3 weeks ago, we had 1,100 units. The following week, we have incorporated 100 more than 1,500 and then all of this is being discussed. So obviously, for each one of the business and for Zamp, we have a business plan. But we are looking at these numbers more carefully and trying to adapt. So in the right moment, we will have this conversation. And this is a composition, right, of the commitments that we have the brand, but more than that, of the allocation of capital in each one of them that we will let you know and the opportunities in the market. But I can say, yes, we will be growing. And then we will talk about the figures. In relation to mergers and acquisition futures, let's say that in the next 12 months, this is not a strategic priority in the short term. The focus now is really to put in order all of these -- to enjoy the existing opportunities, optimize whatever you can in each one of the brands. And for that, we are building this structure and to have the right agility. But in Brazil, we have -- only with these brands, we had the opportunity to reach over 6,000 cities. So recently, I made a trip and I went to [indiscernible] and then in these months that I've been here -- 2 months I'll be here, I've been over Brazil. And [indiscernible], there was a BURGER KING and there was an event, which I went to another very small city, Bahia, there has no BURGER KING, there has no POPEYES. There will be no Starbucks probably, but there's a Subway. And there's -- there are many cities like that. There's a lot of space for us to occupy in Brazil before we get complicated. I'm not making your answer bigger enough. So Brazil is enough. So these brands have a lot to be done. So once these 12 months are over, we will be now ready to get other opportunities that depend on the right price, the right moment. We have space for that. And then we will make this announcement.

The Q&A session is now over. I would like to give the floor to Paulo Camargo for the final considerations of the company.

Thank you, David, the operator that is conducting this session. And honor to thank the presence of each one of you, the interest for the brand, the interest for asking questions, and I hope you have a great weekend.

The video conference of the third quarter results 2024 for Zamp is now over. The Department of Investor Relations is at your disposal to clarify any questions you may have. Thank you so much for the participants, and have a great day. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]