Morning, all. I can just see the attendees are starting to populate now, so I'll just give it just a few moments until all of those attendees have joined on our web call. For those seeking to ask questions, if you could just add them into the Q&A button, and I'll be able to answer those when we get to the Q&A session, which will be shortly. Okay, I can see all of our attendees are in there. For those I haven't met, my name is Nathan Scholz. I'm the Chief Communications and Investor Relations Officer for Domino's Pizza Enterprises. I'm joined this morning by our Group CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Don Meij. As you would be aware, we've published a trading update last night, which is that Domino's H1 preliminary NPBT is expected to be between AUD 87 million and AUD 90 million.
This is below the prior corresponding period, but higher than the preceding half, which was H2 2023. The preliminary result for the 26 weeks ending 31st of December 2023 is based on underlying earnings and means remains subject to audit, review, and finalization. With that, I will hand over to our Group CEO and Managing Director, Don Meij, for some introductory comments before we go to a Q&A.
Yes, thank you, Nathan, and thank you for the huge interest that's come on the call today. You know, clearly, it's quite humbling to sit in front of you and to be able to share the disappointing results in part of our business today, and it really shows the rollercoaster. You know, I'm currently in Australia, and we just announced our new charity. Was just taking photos with Tony Hawk, talking about, you know, some of the things that we're doing in the Australian business, and then the reality that, yeah, there's elements of our business that are clearly disappointing and hence why we did an update yesterday, and I'm looking forward to answering all of your questions as best I possibly can. Thank you, Nathan.
Okay, thank you, Don. I'll just start with some of the questions that we've received this morning. Just to highlight, I've spoken or had inquiries from a number of investors and analysts this morning and taken their feedback, which is why we're hosting this call this morning. Don, I guess one of the first questions I would have is in relation to the timing of the announcement as to why yesterday and why specifically last night?
Yeah, we needed to make sure that we did, you know, complete and adequate analysis so that we could give sufficient certainty. When you're doing an announcement as it is, yeah, we needed to make sure we did the proper work and then get that out as efficiently as we could and as quickly as we could.
Okay, thank you. Can you provide some commentary regarding the balance sheet at the moment?
Yeah. So one of the things I want to really make very clear is that we have full support of our eight banks at this point in time, and, and they've given us that reassurance, and, we're still quite confident that we have a strong balance sheet and that, we're gonna continue to trade well within, those, those EBITDA models.
Moving on, obviously from the results, same-store sales H1 2024 in Asia were -8.9%, and it was the only market that hadn't delivered network sales growth versus H2 2023. Could you provide some commentary on, you know, what's going on in Asia and, and where the issues are?
Yeah, there's two elements there. One of them largely has been Japan, and at this point in time, Japan still isn't trading at the performance that we would like. You know, we're really disappointed with the results. We did have a strong week in the Christmas week and New Year, but the trading around that is where we are today and the results that we've talked about. I'd also like to highlight that, you know, it's well publicized that American brands in Asia, and I largely talk to Malaysia in this case, have been affected by what's happening in the Middle East right now. And so that's playing a piece as well from a Malaysian perspective.
Okay, diving into more questions, from Craig Woolford: the time frame for Domino's, what is the time frame to see reductions in COGS across the business? So the most recent comment at the AGM that we said we would see modest benefits for franchisees. Will we see more in FY 25?
Yeah. So when we, you know, when we look at all of the inflation that we were taking in food, and, you know, in the, in the 2022 period, that's come well off. Now, in some parts of our business where we're trading in USD for some of our commodities, whilst the commodity may be coming down, sometimes we still have some currency taking some of the benefit out of that. But when we look at the actual input costs in places like Australia and New Zealand, as an example, we're seeing that food cost is running better than it has in recent history. In fact, what's really interesting, too, with productivity that's coming from some of the sales growth, where we're getting sales growth, we're also seeing labor costs come in despite the fact that we've had inflation in labor.
We're seeing the opposite to be true, obviously, when we're not getting the leverage of sales, and that, you know, that's where what we're doing in Australia and New Zealand and what's working in Japan, Germany and Singapore and places like that, we're making, you know, we're trying to get into Japan and France, largely.
Okay, a question from Tom Kierath: What was the cause of the weak same-store sales growth performance across November and the first three weeks in December in Asia? Are December sales outside of Christmas down 25%-30% in Japan?
... Yeah, look, we'll give, we'll give further update when we get into February with all of the details around around that sort of stuff. But largely, it's been executional that, you know, we, we just didn't execute to what we thought we could do, and and that's the learning. It's, it's one of the reasons that we set up the Centres of Expertise. Now, you know, if you reflect back on Project Foundation, the core of foundation is to, you know, A, we were gonna be-- we'd become inefficient in the way that we'd been operating in business as we expanded relatively quickly around the world. So it was to bring efficiency, but it was also to bring back the reality that Australia was a petri dish. It was a petri dish for most of our life until recent years.
Things like One Digital and most of our innovation came out of the ANZ business. And then where it can be applied globally, we, you know, we are. And today, you've got to remember that approximately 80% of our sales are now digital. Most of our consumers purchase today through an iPhone or an Android product, an Apple product or an Android product, and then they're, they're mostly buying through global, you know, digital networks, things like TikTok, things like Meta, things like Google, things like Uber and Takeaway out of the Netherlands and so on, you know, even Grab and Foodpanda. Many of these are multinational businesses or global businesses using the same algorithms, and the Centres of Expertise have done an exceptional job.
All of the same drivers that are in Australia and New Zealand are the same drivers in Germany, and we're doing very well in Germany. Just by the nature of timing, because it was a smaller market, we're seeing success in Singapore as we rolled out our technology. It's not material, so that's why we haven't made a big deal out of Singapore. But, you know, the reality is it's showing us what can happen. Now, we need to get those Centres of Expertise to be fully implemented with these learnings throughout Japan and Europe. You know, we talked about the modest performance right now because some of that is already starting to work, but we still haven't got all of it in at this point, and still time to see that takes place and works.
Staying on Japan for a while, we've got a number of questions on that. The question in terms of what are the key initiatives in place to turn around Japan, I think you've already just covered that. But has there been a misstep on pricing, and what can you pinpoint as being the key issues that are currently being rectified there?
Yeah. So the best analysis is to say, what's working in the markets that are firing and are firing quite well, is that one is being product led, and we talked about this a lot at the AGM and at the full year, that when we get those inspired products right, we get the margins right, and they flow straight through. Things like... And I'm talking to Australian shareholders mostly, I imagine. So when I talk about the My Domino's Box, that's very, very rarely discounted. It's priced right, it's high margin. When we talk about Melts, they're priced right, they're high margin. They're very, very rarely, you know, added into a discount.
So first of all, getting that product right, building out a product menu and testing that takes longer, especially in markets with longer buy cycles, as parts of Asia are. Second thing is, you know, our mission is to be the dominant, sustainable delivery QSR in every market. And, you know, areas that we need to dominate in include the aggregators. They're some of the biggest delivery lakes for customers that we can access, and we're doing, you know, some of the, the biggest parts of our growth in Germany and Australia and New Zealand are coming out of the aggregators. And then also triggering the, using our digital assets right to get maximum, conversion, get the, the right media mix so that, you know, where we're spending our funds.
For those that are observing Australia, you know, we've pulled a lot of money out of television, and we're applying a lot of those monies against these global digital assets. Now, they are global algorithms, but they still have to be tweaked, because on one end, you've got the media buy, on the other end you've got the offer, and then the third thing is creative. Creative is local and offer is often local. And so that's where we've still got to customize those things to maximize the yield in these results. And because you've got longer buy cycles, it just takes longer to work those through. But what we've illustrated in Germany, Australia, New Zealand, we have our pricing right. We're, you know, we're the fastest growing pizza company in those markets.
We're above QSR growth in those markets for both custom account and for ticket. So, you know, we're showing strong margin growth. Our franchise partners are enjoying much stronger profitability than they have in recent years. And we now need to replicate that largely in Japan and France for our business.
You just mentioned, in terms of, you know, Japan, Japan and France, how much of the underperformance in Japan, Malaysia and France is due to poor execution or strategic direction versus industry-wide factors?
You know, in one of the realities of Japan is that we have—if we look at last year, we have seen that our category has shrunk in the last 12 months, but it's still a large category. So we have been running against some headwinds. We, you know, now, that was last year falling into now, you know, is that going to roll with more structural headwinds in Japan? We don't know that yet. We don't have the answers to that. Put that aside, it's a large market. It's a large delivery market. And so, you know, when we have just over 1,000 stores, you know, we can still access that and get great growth. So, you know, we still need more time to be able to prove through the product and to execute against these digital items.
In the case of France, yes, it's been a lot more executional in that, you know, we've got new management in the area, and, you know, it's very clear we haven't had success in France. That's the one area of our business that we've rarely showed any bright lights. So I'm not gonna overpromise. We didn't overpromise at the full year or at the AGM on France. It's still a work in progress, and we have a lot of work to do.
Remaining on Japan, can we clarify our comment that Japan SSS are flat for the half post-Christmas? Do we mean including January? Yes, that is correct. So the January, this half, to date, has been flat for Japan. Question then is, what has happened since Christmas in Japan to bring SSS growth back to flat from that negative trend, and is this sustainable?
... Yeah, look, it's a mixture of factors. Some of it's softer comps versus last year. Some of it is that we are seeing, for example, it's very early days, so I, you know, please take this in the context of the question that you're asking, because these are short windows of time. But, you know, that we're seeing things like aggregator growth in some of our digital performance, and we've started to launch new product. But there's lots of learning. We're still in. As I mentioned earlier, there's one thing to get the media right and have the Centres of Expertise working on those, you know, those global algorithms in the digital side. Still getting the creative execution and the offer right, we still need more time to prove that out.
Just had a few questions regarding our commentary in the trading update, that any previous guidance for FY 2024 performance, de facto or otherwise, is no longer in effect. The question has been whether that refers to the 3-5-year outlook. Just confirming that this is in relation not to that 3-5-year outlook. At this stage, we're looking at the short-term announcement.
Yeah, there was some commentary that we made around at the full year and at the AGM, and that could be considered as pseudo guidance, and so we're just removing some of those comments. You know, specifically, they referred to that, you know, that Japan. But no, the 3-5-year outlook are outlooks, not guidance, and at this point in time, to still be reviewed, and constantly reviewed, that they still stand.
Now, you've mentioned quite a lot about aggregators. Have the Uber Eats volume cannibalized direct orders through the app or web in markets where it's been introduced?
No, it's been almost full net ad in Australia and New Zealand. So where we're applying those. What's really interesting, and I want to highlight, is that Uber is a very small player in Germany, for example. So Germany is having really strong aggregator growth without the new Uber deal. It has the new Uber deal, but it, you know, that it's not the largest driver. Lieferando, which is still Thuisbezorgd or Takeaway.com out of the Netherlands, is still the leading platform in that market and where we're seeing the biggest part of our growth. And so that's an example where it's not only just that one particular global platform, but it's also what we're doing with the creative and the offer and understanding those algorithms and going after it.
So this is, you know, we think that there's a lot of the similar learning which we can apply throughout the business.
A number of questions on the strategy in Japan and the expansion plans. Have you acquired too many regions in Asia too soon, and would you divest any more markets?
Yeah, look, hindsight's a wonderful thing, and one would argue that, you know, taking on the most recent four markets when we stumbled in Japan, and we've still got delay in France, was bad and poor timing. I don't think that they're, that they're the wrong decisions for the long term, but in the near term, yeah, they've been obviously further management attention. One would argue that's, therefore, that's distraction against some of the core for the return, and, and I think that's fair criticism in the near term. In the long term, they're markets that we should own, they're appropriate for our regions, but, yeah, in the near term, yeah, we, we didn't time them so well.
Would you consider more restructuring or store closures in Asia, given the softer sales?
Be very marginal. These are, these are areas we should be, and it's really, you know, our own macro performance, which, you know, rising tides lifts all boats. It would be, you know, these are, these are structurally where they should be. And so at this point in, in time, for all the knowledge we have today, is that, the stores should exist, and we just need to lift the performance overall of the business.
Two different questions in terms of store openings, this is two different people. Firstly, will we now consider pausing corporate store growth in Japan? And the second one is, why not release the pressure on store targets given DMP is still in a turnaround phase in a number of geographies? Your franchisee profitability is still some way away from target, even in Australia. Why not pause the store rollout, abandon the long-term targets, and get profitability restored before reassessing them?
Yeah, so let me make it really clear, and you can see that in the numbers. We're not aggressively chasing the store growth in this window. We made it very clear when we announced Project Foundation that this was a moment to fix the core, to energize the core, and to become more efficient, and that we would not be aggressively chasing store growth, and hence why, you know, we gave a much lower direction on what would happen in this 12 months. So the stores you see opening are happening from existing franchisees, by and large, who are opening those stores, or that we may still have had a legacy site that could have been a two-year construction or something like that. So there's very few parts of our business where we are aggressively chasing store openings.
To answer your question, that is what's actually happening in the business right now. Now, with the Australia and New Zealand business performance and the German performance, Singapore performance as examples, and there's other parts of the business that are early signs of recovery, then, yeah, if we continue that for the next six months, then that would—my assumption is that will flow into reopening more stores. You know, the demand in Australia and New Zealand has been strong in recent months because, you know, when you can imagine, we share averages, and when you see the top end of our performance, they're very...
You know, the core Australian business is far healthier than it's been in a number of years, and that's leading to demand to either acquire other franchise partners or to buy some of our existing store network and open a few stores as well.
Is the business too difficult to manage now that you have 12 markets? Are you better off exiting smaller markets and focusing on Japan and France, where, which is where the bigger opportunities lie?
So, you know, these are questions that we've been asked over many years. You know, many of these smaller markets are hosted by a larger market. So, you know, a lot of what we learn and do in the Japanese business is what we can apply to Taiwan. So at this point in time, I don't think so. Of course, that's an open question based on performance, but at this point in time, I don't think that that's what we should be doing. You know, we still have high talent in Andre and Josh, Tibia and many other key people in our business, and Michael Gillespie.
You know, we need to give some time for our new Project Foundation, as we call it internally, to roll through our business and get the benefits of these Centres of Expertise. Now, if we were sitting here with longer periods of time and they weren't delivering, that may be a different question for a different time. Oh, Mark, Nathan, you're on mute there. My apologies.
Well, there's a donation to our new charity that's gonna cost me. Don, the way you're describing some of these issues across markets, it sounds like market differences effectively create dyssynergies, and that is one solution doesn't fit all, but you're constantly hoping it does. And perhaps if you could answer that, Don, and I know you've mentioned something about Singapore as well.
Yeah. So there's more things that we're similar in than we're differentiated in, so I'm not sure if I'm giving that impression. But from a... So just imagine, we started the rollout of Project Foundation in the last half in Australia and New Zealand. So we needed to—before we exported these models, we need to prove that they were working. We needed to get the results on the board. As we got the results on the board, noting that Europe was definitely in lag behind that because we have to go through some regulatory processes, which we're still finishing off in largely in France, but still parts of the rest of Europe. So that by its nature, we couldn't even implement, if we wanted to, some of these Centres of Expertise, because there were restructurings that were required.
And I won't get into all the legal and technicality on this call about that, but that needed to—we needed to take time to do that. So a mixture of, first of all, we had to implement, build that knowledge and execute, prove it out, and then export. And that's what we're in the process of. What are some of the differences? And this is a good question. Creative. It may be inspired, so there's some inspiring things. The My Domino's Box has launched by different names in almost every market now. Products like our Melts are launching in many of our markets. There are, you know, we're launching in Australia right now, we're currently selling our new Signature Cheese. That's an APAC product and is now inspiring production in Europe.
That's a tastier, stretchier, and already marginally better for the planet, and soon will be a lot better for the planet product. So those are products that that's global. But then when it's interpreted and there are tastes that are different, and sometimes the way menus work or the offers are different, but the offer testing and analysis is similar with different windows. So I would argue that there's more things that are the same, but you still need to have that time and market to work through these processes and these tools.
Just, moving to capital management, for a moment. Have there been any significant working capital or other cash flow one-offs to drive the AUD 770 million net debt outcome?
Yeah, there is little bits and pieces of timings that often happens at the end of the financial year with the timings of our, you know, largely in places like, Asia and so on. So there are parts of it that is that, but that's could happen in June just as likely. So, you know, yes, that happens from time to time in our business. We're very confident with our balance sheet, and we have the full support. Richard's been in constant communication, and our banks are showing their full support, all eight banks.
In terms of capital management, do we consider removing the dividend and focus on share buybacks given the current share price levels? And also, would we consider keeping the DRP in place permanently?
Yeah, look, the DRP permanently is a long time. I don't think that's the question, but yeah, the DRP is up for consideration. That's probably the only conversation that's taken place in the businesses around the near-term DRP. But you know, we're about creating value, and yeah, I think that with our plans that we have in place, as long as we execute against those, and I know that that's in question on a day like today, but you know, I'm pretty confident with where we're heading with our balance sheet at this point in time, that we shouldn't have to do that. Share buybacks could be material in that. It hasn't been a conversation at this point in time.
Moving to Europe, briefly, is the German business benefiting in the second half from the reinstatement of a restaurant service VAT, which was increased from 7% to 19%?
Not, not as yet. So not. That's still to flow. So, no, in the windows that we're talking about, the German performance, the German performance we're referring to last half and as we sit here today, and that's a more recent conversation that's taking place in that market. Now the team have done an exceptional job, and they've done an exceptional job on product. We talked a lot. One of the things that's different to Australia and Germany is that we're a much more immature chain business. Chain businesses are not as large in Germany, so we're, we're one of the first really leading scalable chains of this size, and, and therefore, our campaigns have lasted longer. And the, the Doner Kebab campaign, new product, was highly profitable and high growth, and that's inspired more work in that same vein.
And then, you know, what's happening with their, their digital performance, their aggregator performance, almost identical to what you've seen in Australia. Some of the platforms are different.
Can we expand what's exactly not working in France and given that it's been a challenging market for some time now?
Yeah, look, you know, one of the things that that is driving our business today, where it's where we're thriving, is delivery growth. And we need to be a lot stronger on our focus on delivery growth. We need to be a lot stronger on our product innovation. There are two leading elements, and then the third one is implement these digital platforms and learnings in France. So, the Centres of Expertise now have larger influence than we've had in the past. In fact, right now, or in the last few weeks and still today, we've had our senior executives of the Centres of Expertise based in Europe, largely France, working through this implementation as we speak. And why now? It's because we're still being. It's taken us this long to work through the regulatory process of the restructuring of Foundation.
Still a number of questions in terms of the future of some of the markets that have currently negative comps. Would we consider exiting Japan? And also, would we consider changing the 2000 store target for Japan?
We constantly will evaluate the numbers as they stand and that will, you know, and if there's a change, a structural change, then we would update the market. No, we, there's been no conversation about exiting Japan. It's, it's— we're very proud to have that in our portfolio, and we think it's going to be a long high performer for our business. We need to execute better than we have been in recent times.
Can we talk briefly in terms of the savings initiatives that have been in place? How much of the cost out benefit was realized? We've said obviously that we are well progressed on that program.
Yes.
Are we expecting the full amount to be realized in the FY 2024 year?
Yeah. Remember we gave two years, so the first phase is literally being the restructure, and in some cases, some of our peers have left the business, and so we've gone through that phase, and that's almost completely finished. It's been finished in Australia and New Zealand now for a number of months, so we get the full benefits of that into the second half. And then in the second year, it's the rollout of shared services. We've appointed our head of shared services now in Malaysia. We're underway with Krakow in Poland, and so now it just needs time to recruit and train for these new shared services in these parts of the business, and that's for the second year.
But yes, we expect to meet our targets, and we're well developed on year one and expect to meet those.
Obviously, we'll provide a detailed update on those savings initiatives at the half year, later in February.
Yes.
Can we comment some on franchisee profitability? How are we seeing franchisee health by market? A key concern is Japan franchisees, and are you seeing less willingness to take on stores, and how does that compare across the regions? Can you provide any color on that?
Yeah. From a macro perspective, and I'll give more color at the half-year announcement, but from a macro perspective, if you're seeing same-store sales that are negative, chances are that's hurting our business and our franchise partners. We've been sharing in that mutually, and that we in some cases have had to support our franchise partners. Where our business is now showing strong same-store sales growth, then we're pulling back from the amount of support that we need to do, and that's where you get that decoupling, and you get that better leverage in our margins. So, that's the two dynamics.
With that, as I highlighted earlier, you see a higher demand for store growth, which initially may be buying out some existing franchisees who may have struggled in the recent period and have lost faith in our business. Some of our corporate stores, as we shared in the whole charters that we announced to the market that we were going to be discounting some of our stores. We've been doing that in the second half, and we've been selling some of those stores. But where our same-store sales is underperforming, you can pretty well relate that to underperformance in for our franchise partners and for ourselves and vice versa.
Okay. In terms of guidance that we've advised that when removing de facto guidance or any other guidance in the market, in November, the trading update was that earnings were expected to be materially higher than H2. So the question has been raised from two different people that the earnings would be higher than the preceding half in H1. And give us a sense of what we're expecting in November, and also, does this mean that we think the full year will be higher or lower than the previous?
Yeah. So we're not giving guidance, and but you can see from the results that they largely are. So the actual results you've seen today, that they are, you know, higher, materially higher than H2. But we're not giving guidance for the second half. That's what we've highlighted. And but we will give more information, and you know, we'll have seven weeks of trade. We'll have updates on what are the numbers around Foundation, more specific same-store sales, all those sort of things, the franchise profitability disclosure, all that stuff. So that will help to bring the picture together. But yeah, we're not giving guidance at this point in time.
I've also had some questions in terms of a regional breakdown of EBIT, in terms of, you know, which markets were higher or lower than the PCP and versus the second half of 2023, but obviously we'll provide a regional breakdown as we traditionally do at the half period.
Yeah. Yeah, because, I mean, this is still going through final audits and so on, so subject to change in any individual business unit.
Talking more now about the broader strategy of the business, that DMP's historically been a global leader in QSR, but since COVID, DMP's performance has lagged, based on peers. What do you put that down to? Is it capital allocation, regional exposure, execution or other?
You'd have to say execution, because we are once again leading in the Australian, New Zealand business and then in the German business, not material, but in the Singapore business, we're leading. The numbers that we have are better than the averages for the category, and they're the highest in the pizza category, and they're strong numbers. This is both customer count and ticket, so we're delivering them both. So we are leading again. And so what we need to do is we need to be able to illustrate that we can do that in the markets that we're not leading in at the moment. There are some different cycles of what some of the other QSR has flowed through compared to ourselves, in Japan specifically. That's not the case for France specifically.
But yeah, we're once again leading in Australia, New Zealand, and in Germany, and we need to do that in the rest of the business.
A couple of questions on food costs. Is there any incremental food cost benefit coming from the annualization of the new cheese contract, or is that fully reflected in the first half of 2024? How material is the COGS benefit from the new cheese contract, and what other headwinds in terms of food prices are we seeing?
... Yeah, so that was, that was largely in the last few months of the second half, that we were able to see that. There were some timing differences just by the amount of stock that we hold in some of the Asian markets for food security, that it took longer to flow through. But yep, that's, that's already been realized in the existing numbers for the tail of the last half and into this year.
How do we think about extrapolating the Japan performance for FY 25 and beyond? Is this a structural issue in Japan or is it solvable?
Yeah, I don't want to give guidance at this point, and as I said, I wanna be able to give better granularity and more detail, because then with more disclosure, I think, you know, we can point to better data points. So if you can bear with me for another four weeks, we look forward to giving, you know, more granular updates clearly around Japan and Asia.
What's the probability of the Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia reaching those earn-out hurdles that we announced when we acquired the business, and how have they trended since the acquisition?
Yeah, so, they're not likely at this point, on current performance. You know, we're quite happy with the growth in Cambodia and Singapore, but unfortunately, they're the smaller parts. And as I mentioned, we have been externally influenced by global matters out of the Middle East, in the Malaysia – largely in the Malaysia market. And that – but that's more recent. That's happened in, you know, more or less the last quarter and continuing today, and that's well-publicized for American brands by some of our larger global competitors.
What is driving the weak performance in France, and can you confirm that same-store sales growth is negative as per our trading update? That is confirmed that France same-store sales in the first half was negative. So what can ANZ work well in markets like Japan, where there's not a pizza culture in France, where trading has been challenged for quite some time?
Look, it's quite simply execution in France, and I can't say that enough, that we need to do better. You know, that's the truth of today, is that, we've underperformed for long periods of time. That isn't good enough in France. The market's there. In other categories of QSR, there are strong performance, and we haven't performed against that. When we're in the very early phases of some of our Centres of Expertise, we can see green shoots, but it needs more time. I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver on France because we haven't had a good track record to date.
In terms of profit on store sales, obviously, we'll give an update at the half-year trading. The question has been: How much profit from store sales was there on a-
It's-
Level of granularity at this stage?
No.
On the cost initiative, similarly, can we confirm what proportion of the $33 million-$40 million EBIT savings was realized in the first half? We'll give a detailed breakdown on that at the half year.
Mm-hmm.
Do we think the business overexpanded during COVID in Japan and just needs to reset base expectations, i.e., in-store expectations or sales per store targets?
Yeah, look, in the near term, that is potentially one of the outcomes that we did put our foot to the floor so hard and that we've got some growing pains with our experience in management in the local market. So yeah, that's a fair comment that we did grow extremely hard and extremely fast. And yeah, that we've got a bit of a hangover in what we're doing. And unfortunately, due to the longer buy sides in Japan cycles, it just takes longer as we test and learn, test and learn. It's not as quick as other parts of our business.
Can OrderCan grow as much as DMP would hope due... or are there concerns about Ozempic/GLP-1? Is this causing any sluggishness in same store sales growth?
The Australian, New Zealand business and German businesses, I like that. I don't know what the data is on how much Ozempic's rolled. I mean, these are detailed things that, you know, what we're showing is that when we focus on what we can control, you know, we're getting great results. One of the things that we have been doing in the Australian, New Zealand business, and we talked about this at the full year AGM, is portion sizes. And you can see that, you know, we've been targeting snacking. We talked very clearly about that. And with products like Melts, the My Domino's Box, and we continue to focus on that, and we think that that's where a lot of consumers are, whether that's Ozempic led, Wegovy, and all of those products or not.
That's what we're doing, and that's where we're getting some good traction.
On the broader business, where do you see the technology advantage versus competitors now, and how does that compare to five years ago?
Yeah, there's no question that that's been neutralized to where we were a number of years back, in that you know, most of our large QSR competitors have now come up and come close to what we have. It's still really important. You know, we still are constantly impressed by what we can do with conversion and execution. It's a lot of eye for detail, A/B testing constantly. So it's still a huge amount of energy and investment in the business because it does matter, and it is material. So you know, we're still investing heavily in there, but many of our competitors have now caught up to that.
And so, you know, what we're saying today is that where do we continue to see the growth from a pizza category is through the inspired products, through delivery. We still think that we have a competitive edge in delivery, that we execute when you look at our delivery times, when you look at everything we do is designed to be delivered. Many of the QSRs that are delivering today, their foods are not designed to be delivered. They're designed to be in restaurants and, you know, on the go in the cars and so on. Our meals, everything we focused on when you look at our food triangle, is that first and foremost, it must be designed to be delivered. You've seen our new design to be delivered D Box rollout, a much stronger box.
When you see the Melts, the packaging that's coming, it's a delivery packaging. We could have even gone for a cheaper, handheld packet or, you know, softfold box like many of our QSR competitors. That would have cost us less, but then it wouldn't have delivered, and we're the experts in delivery. That needs to be sustainable? Things like what we're doing with the, you know, corrugated cardboards as an example. But there's, you know, we talk about all of the sort of things you would imagine: water usage, deforestation, safety, you know, profitability, the sustainability of our franchise partners. So, you know, when we're launching these new products, that they're far more sustainable. And then the third factor is the pizzaness.
Designed-to-be-delivered Crispy Chips was a success, as we highlighted at the AGM, and with pizza salt and coming in a design-to-be-delivered package. So well, that's an example of—and that's, that's how we're differentiating today. We think that there's still a significant advantage in delivery and food that is more sustainable and designed to be delivered, that's, that's got a pizza twist. And we're seeing results, strongest results in six years in the Australian, New Zealand business and some of the strongest results we've had in the last decade.
On franchisee partner profitability, what level of franchisee partner profitability is required to get the store rollout back to the 7%-9% range? And how does that level compare to the current run rate? And can you comment in terms of whether franchisee profitability is above, the previous figure that we provided, which was AUD 93,500? We provided that, for the 12 months to March 2023.
We're still consolidating all of that, ready for that window, so I won't, I won't give any extra disclosure on that today. But, you know, the two biggest drivers are essential sales and the leverage from that, and, and our food and labor management. So when we're seeing, as we're seeing in, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and we've got this identical projects in the other markets, is in rolling out these inspired products, not My Domino's Box, already inspiring at their price points. We don't need to be discounting those. You know, I've seen some conversation this morning that there was more promotional activity in the last half, not from a pricing, discounting point of view, product point of view. If that's what the reference was, yes, we've had a very strong product rollout in the markets that we're getting, great success.
And that's why that gives us hope in, in the other parts of the businesses, is that that's working, that these products are executing, they've got great margin. Our franchise partners love them. We've got to be keep an eye on complexity, so we also are winding out other parts of our product in our menu. Everything has a job on the menu. You've seen in the Australian, New Zealand business, that we've been trading earlier and longer, in parts of our business as well, because we're mapping that out with My Box and with products like Knots. And we've highlighted at the AGM that we have more of those products to come. I'm talking about what's working in the business right now and what gives us confidence.
Some of this isn't in our underperforming businesses today, but we intend to do Asian version and European versions of some of that.
There's a question that it sounded from your commentary as if you're more optimistic on the outlook for Japan compared to France. Is that a reasonable takeaway?
We're not giving any guidance or anything today. I think we're in a mode where we have underperformed, and I don't want to overpromise. We need to bring better results to the market. It's been executional. Management is in charge of execution. We need equity better in those specific businesses, and our track record in France has underperformed over a longer period of time. If you want to use that as a reference, then, yeah, that's a fair reference, but Japan has had, even outside of COVID, has had some good periods of growth. So, you know, the business today is far more profitable than the business that we acquired. It does more orders on the average store than when what we acquired, so it's a better business than we acquired.
We're proud about that element, but we're not proud about the performance in recent couple of years.
You mentioned just Japan and France just then. Do you expect key management changes in either of those markets?
You know, at this stage, there's still some bench strengthening that we need to do from foundation. So, you know, we are recruiting at the moment for a new CMO in France. So yes, there'll be some management that we need to build bench strength around what we have today, and that's part of restructuring that we've gone through with this whole new process. They will be heavily supported by the Centres of Expertise, which are by and large globally run out of Brisbane with local implementation, but influenced out of the petri dish, which is the Australian business, which is how we operated most of our history and gave us great success around the world.
Is the Domino's brand impaired in France? The duration of underperformance through several strategies and management teams indicates it's not resonating with customers.
There are still strong performances within the business, and that we'd say that that's not the case. That, you know, by the way, we're still the largest pizza company and the second largest by store count, fast food company in France. So, you know, from where we arrived, as we were the third or fourth, depending on how you measured us, pizza company, whether it was sales or store count, when we arrived in France, and today we are the largest by a significant margin. We just haven't executed as well. The demand's there. It's very clearly there. We haven't risen to that demand with our own execution.
What do you think about DPZ's comments that China and India will headline store growth going forward, half their international rollout, which is 250 in established markets per annum? This will be well below what's required to hit your long-term targets in established markets.
Yeah, we really try not to comment on our listed peers. You know, clearly, they're very large populous markets, so one could draw upon that. But, look, we just don't. It's not in our place to comment on the other publicly listed entities.
How much rigor has been brought into capital allocation decisions? Do you feel that ROIC hurdles need to be lifted? What should a reasonable incremental ROIC be for a franchise business such as your own? Should it be 30%+?
No guidance in this area, and we need to get back to what our shareholders saw in our business. And I see no reason with the margins. I want to make it very clear I'm not giving guidance today. But when I look at what we're doing in the Australian, New Zealand business in Germany, you know, we're not giving guidance, so I don't want to refer to that. Make that very, very clear. But yeah, the work isn't satisfactory for what we should be doing.
Is it fair to say that the acquisition of additional markets is currently off the table?
In the near term, yes, it is off the table in the near term. Yeah.
How timely is internal reporting, and does this need to be reviewed given the recent downgrades in recent years? Do you have the tools to adjust quickly? Historically, you have for company-owned stores, but it doesn't appear so for Japan in the first half.
Sorry, Nathan, I was still lagging in my mind there. What was that, that question? Please repeat.
Sorry. The question is, how timely is management reporting? Do you still have the ability to respond quickly? Because it doesn't appear so in Japan in the first half.
We do have an ability to respond quickly, but the customer buy cycle is not fast. So you can get false positives and false negatives in short windows of time in these, you know, in some of these Asian markets like Japan and Taiwan specifically. So our internal reporting is, you know, daily, weekly. I mean, we've even got media mix models now that we're getting out of Japan. It's just started on a monthly basis that we haven't done before. So our knowledge base is stronger than it's ever been. But it...
You know, as we illustrated around our hiccups in 2022, you know, you need longer buy cycles to make sure that you see what you're testing and learning against when you get dramatic changes in the marketplace, that you know, response times just take a bit longer in those markets.
Okay, I'm conscious of the time, Don. We'll be wrapping up shortly. The company said CapEx was low. What areas of CapEx were cut in the first half of 2024?
Yeah, we highlighted this at the when we made the announcement, that there was some adjustment to our store openings. There were some adjustments to some of our digital spends in the business. Still spending significantly, but there were some adjustments there to the trends that we'd been moving at. So those are two that come to mind off that question. But yeah, we'll be breaking that out in more detail at the half year.
Are there any key parts of the business, example, Japan or France, that management feel is still perplexing, that is, you don't have a full grasp of the key drivers? And if so, how do you get clarity?
Yeah, I think it is fair to say that some of the external influences, seeing some of those trend lines and keeping in a clear enough window of those. So, you know, we only more recently were able to get data from the market of just what happened to our category, the pizza delivery category, for the full year of 2023. And so, yes, you know, getting some of that information and constantly working with that information is really important for us because those things really do have an impact on what we're saying and how we're thinking the business will operate.
Okay. We are going to have to wrap it up. I note that in 45 minutes we've answered more than one question a minute, and I hope we've covered the full breadth. We have had a few questions in terms of a trading update for the past 3 weeks or 4 weeks in a number of our regional markets, and obviously, we'll give a more detailed trading update of the first 8 or 9 weeks of trading when we get to the half year update. Maybe, Don, if you can finish with a comment. You've obviously said that the results this morning are disappointing and not ones you would want to be delivering. Is there maybe a last message you wanted to pass on to, you know, the smaller mom and dad shareholders who would be watching this morning?
Yeah, it's, you know, where we've disappointed, it's been an executional area of our business, and so I want to make that clear. And so therefore, ultimately, I'm held responsible for that as the head of management. Just like when we've had good times, I get... You know, this is a team effort, and in good times, I get undue credit when it's a team effort, especially when there's been high performance parts of the business where those individuals, the CEOs and teams deserve more of the credit. And right now, when things are going bad, I take full responsibility that these are executional issues, that we're accountable to and we need to deliver upon. I am proud in all of this, of the results we're getting out of Australia, New Zealand and Germany and Singapore.
Those teams have worked exceptionally well and are doing well by our franchise partners, by their communities, and are delivering for shareholders. And I just want to also acknowledge those teams are doing, you know, they deserve in amongst this result, the credit that they're getting as well for their execution.
Okay. Well, Don, thank you for your time this morning, and thank you for all the attendees for all of your questions. As I said, I think we've covered the broad swath of the key issues that people have put in front of us. A recording of this presentation will be up on our website, and also the date for our half year results is also on our website as well, and we look forward to providing more detailed analysis and conducting a number of one-on-one briefings at that time. So thank you all very much for today. We'll end the call today. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.