Good day, and welcome to the Q4 FY22 earnings conference call of Westlife Development Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dattaprasad Tambe, General Manager, Finance and Accounts. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thanks, Steven. Thank you all for joining us on the Westlife Development Limited earnings conference call for the quarter ended March 31, 2022. We are joined here today by Mr. Amit Jatia, Vice Chairman, Ms. Smita Jatia, Director, and myself, Dattaprasad Tambe, General Manager, Finance for Westlife Development Limited. Please note that our financial results and investor presentation have been mailed across, and these are available on our website as well. I hope you had the opportunity to browse through the highlights of the performance. We shall commence today's call with key thoughts from Amit, who will provide strategy overview, which shall be followed by Smita, who will take you through the key business initiatives, the overall operational progress and strategic imperatives that lie ahead. I will cover the analysis of the financial performance.
At the end of the management discussion, we will have a Q&A session. Before we start, I would like to remind you that some of our statements made or discussed on this call today may be forward-looking in nature and must be viewed in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties we face. A detailed statement and an explanation of this is available in the quarterly press release, investor presentation and annual reports, which are available on our website. The company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements publicly. With that said, I would now like to turn over the call to Amit to share his views. To Amit.
Thank you, Dattaprasad. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining the call and hope you are all doing well. I'm very happy to report that FY 2022 has been a good year for us. Despite challenges of the second and third wave of COVID, inflation and other international events, we have managed to deliver one of our best results. We have delivered our highest ever full year revenue so far. Our results demonstrate that we managed to build a fairly resilient playbook to successfully navigate challenging external environments. The dining business has recovered completely to the pre-COVID levels, and the convenience off-premise channels continue to grow strongly quarter on quarter, bringing in significant incremental business and growing baseline sales.
This trend has reinforced our confidence in our bricks and clicks omni-channel strategy, where the dine-in and convenience channels are complementing each other and giving the consumers more occasions and options to experience us. We are firmly back on expansion plans. We are aiming to be around 500 restaurants over the next three-four years. The growth will be predominantly funded by internal accruals, as we have done in the past. Strategically, we are growing our presence in smaller cities and towns along with key cities, and that is showing very promising business results. We are consistently driving efficiencies in utilities, supply chain and labor productivity, leading to improvements in margins. We entered the pandemic with a strong balance sheet, and we have come out of it with an even stronger one. All of this can be attributed to the phenomenal agility displayed by our people.
I'm proud that we have been able to recruit and retain some of the best talent in this industry. Our next in line management team, which has been working relentlessly over the last two years, has joined the leadership council of the company, which is the strategic decision-making body in the company. We have a strong succession plan in place, and with the knowledge and expertise of our management team, we are confident not only maintaining our market dominance, but also setting new benchmarks in the QSR industry. To sum up, I would like to say that I'm proud of our remarkable progress on the strategic growth levers that we had outlined at the start of this year. This is driving profitable growth, increasing market share and exploring white space opportunities, increasing our geographic footprint and market penetration.
I believe we are on a strong growth trajectory and will continue to build on our competitive strengths and further our business advantage. With this, I hand over to Smita to take you through the highlights of the quarter.
Thank you, Amit, and good evening, everyone. I am happy to share that in quarter four, we were able to build on the strong growth momentum that started in quarter three, which was our best ever quarter thus far. Our revenues for this quarter are up by 27% and same-store sales growth SSG for the quarter stands at 23% year-on-year with 12 store openings. We have delivered a strong March with INR 4.6 billion revenue for the quarter and recorded a PAT of over INR 231 million in the quarter, pre-Ind AS. This was driven by growth across both dine-in and convenience channels that grew by a solid 15% and 42% respectively. This growth in revenue has been complemented with continued cost efficiency.
In spite of strong inflationary pressures, our top line ensured a robust 34% year-on-year jump in the restaurant operating margins and 46% growth in our operating EBITDA. Closed at 16% for the quarter. Our margin growth has been more than our sales growth, hence ensuring operating leverage. Our annual numbers are even more impressive despite the first 1/2 of the year being significantly impacted by the second wave of COVID. Revenue jumped over 60%, making H2 our highest revenue grosser so far. Our FY 2022 return on capital employed stood at a respectable 16%+, which is back to the pre-COVID levels. In the second half of the year, we are trending significantly higher. What is very encouraging is our accelerated growth in H2, which mitigated the impact of the first 1/2 to some extent.
We have seen a strong comeback in dine-in that has recovered to pre-COVID levels, combined with consistent growth in the convenience channel. Dine-in, along with our channels, is now driving revenues of over INR 450 crore every quarter. The average unit volume currently stands at INR 6 crore, which is 1.5-2x higher than the industry average. This clearly indicates that our growth in both dine-in and convenience channels has been continuously setting a new baseline for the business. Our omni-channel strategy has given us better business predictability. Owing to our multi-channel, multi-data strategy, we are able to serve our customers wherever they are, whenever they want it, and however they want. This has helped us cement our market leadership position even further.
We have been making concerted efforts to build and grow our meal daypart business through our Gourmet Burger platform and McSpicy Fried Chicken. I am happy to share that this quarter we have seen a robust 40% plus jump in our meals category revenue and are inching towards becoming leaders in the meals category while continuing to maintain our snacking leadership. Last quarter, we launched our Gourmet Burger Collection, a range of indulgent mouth-watering burgers. We are happy to report that this has helped us recruit new customers, giving our existing ones more occasions to come to us. We have seen a solid 15% uptake in our great tasting burger scores. Our chicken category has also made its mark in the South market. We built our McSpicy Fried Chicken marketing campaign with celebrity announcements, and it's yielding us significant results.
McDonald's great tasting chicken scores have grown 3-3.7x , significantly gaining share from the competitors, and has helped grow our market share, as well as achieve the highest monthly sales in the region. We continue our efforts to strengthen brand trust and affinity through our various initiatives like the Truly Indian Burger campaign on Republic Day, Valentine's Day initiative around McCafe, and International Day of Happiness. Last quarter, we enhanced the nutritional profile of our Happy Meal, and this quarter we introduced Happy Meal Readers, which is an addition of a series of books to encourage reading as a habit among kids. We took International Women's Day opportunity to further our inclusivity agenda and open stores that were exclusively run and operated by women.
We are proud to share that 35% of people who work with us are women, including those at the restaurants. We also introduced EZ Delivery reusable bottles exclusively for our delivery channels for our range of beverages. We thus continue to launch campaigns with different themes to connect with our customers and further enhance brand love. We are continuously building a brand that is accessible to customers at their convenience through various digital touchpoints, through the app and the McDonald's App and the self-ordering kiosks at the restaurants. These digital touchpoints contribute 57% of our revenue and are growing well. While the McDelivery app continues to enable our delivery proposition, our McDonald's App offer engine that gives customers personalized offers plays a key role in driving dine-in, walk-ins, and frequency. These digital touchpoints saw a cumulative download of 17 million.
We also saw both the active user base and average check for the McDonald's App increasing significantly. We are now firmly back on track with our network expansion plan. This quarter, we opened 12 new restaurants and entered three new cities. As Amit said, we opened in tier two cities of Vellore, Bilaspur, and Bhilai. Sales in the first few weeks in these cities are even higher than our metro city restaurants, clearly indicating a strong appetite in these emerging markets. With this, we have a total of 326 restaurants and 262 McCafes across 37 cities. We are also happy to announce that 118 of our restaurants are now fully refurbished, swanky, digitally enabled Experience of the Future stores. Inclusion and sustainability have been important pillars of our business in the last 25 years.
We have been consistently taking steps to mindfully build them into our business. I am proud to say that now we have a significant ESG footprint that we can talk about. We have taken definitive steps to reduce our energy and water consumption. Some of you may be aware that we convert our used cooking oil into biodiesel that is used to power our delivery trucks, thereby reducing carbon emissions. We only use FSC-certified paper for packaging. We have reduced waste and hence landfills by completely doing away with single-use plastic. Lastly, we launched the EatQual packaging to make eating burgers easy for people with limited upper arm ability. We continue to serve more people under this initiative and will be innovating to bring happiness to many more people.
We also continue to support the RMHC family room at the Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children, and this year alone, almost 3,000 families have been able to use our facility. In the end, I say that we are absolutely committed to growing our environment and social footprint as we are to the highest standards of financial and corporate governance. I now hand it over to Dattaprasad Tambe, who will take you through the financial highlights of the quarter.
Thank you, Smita, and good afternoon, everyone. Hope you all are doing well. As you are aware, and already as shared by Amit and Smita, we have ended our full year 2021 on a very strong note. As a company, we clocked our highest sales for the quarter. Our revenue for the quarter was up by 27% year-on-year to INR 2.6 billion. I must mention that for the year, our sales jumped by 60% to INR 15.8 billion, firmly setting us on the path of future growth. Our gross margins have been stable at 65% despite the inflationary pressures. This was because we continue to maximize our supply chain efficiencies and product mix management.
I would like to highlight that our restaurant operating margins are best in class with INR 1,016 million, and even as a %, we have been able to achieve a 30.7% improvement in ROM year-on-year. Talking about the operating EBITDA margin, our margin for the last quarter stood at 15%, and for the year it was respectable 13%. We believe our cost management strategy is working, which is helping us to improve our profitability substantially. Our profits are growing more than our revenue. Sorry. The EBITDA stood at 14% for the full year, wherein the EBITDA in the second 1/2 was recorded at 17%.
It is important to note that for the last two consecutive quarters, we have delivered a PAT of INR 232 million plus pre-Ind AS, reaching our best ever sales in quarter three. We are also able to deliver a positive PAT at a pre-Ind AS level for the full year. We believe that the trough of the top line growth and the cost leadership initiative also gave us our margins a strong boost. It is heartening to share that we maintained a strong balance sheet and a robust liquidity position by optimizing our treasury and working capital. Going forward, we are confident that our operating performance will continue to fuel growth in our already strong free cash flow profile. As a result, we are committed to our historical capital allocation priority to invest in new restaurants, refurbish existing restaurants, and lock in opportunities to grow the business.
With that, I hand it over to Amit for his closing remarks.
Thank you, Dattaprasad Tambe. On the outlook, I believe the business environment will continue to be volatile. Rising inflation coupled with a shortage of inputs due to the global geopolitical situation will continue to be a challenge. While there may be some blips in the short term, we are confident that in the long run, we will be able to navigate this successfully to deliver strong, sustained growth. In the last two years, we have redesigned our cost structure and increased productivity. We believe that with strong average unit volume and restaurant cash flows, we are well positioned to withstand the pressures ahead. We have already embarked on an aggressive growth journey to deliver accelerated business results and shareholder value. Thank you. With this, I open the call up for Q&A.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Abhi Mehta from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amit Jatia, Smita Jatia. Congratulations on this performance. Just one bit on the inflation. If you could give us a sense whether you've taken any price hikes in the first quarter. Is there any other line item that kind of makes you any pressures in terms of availability, be it employee or you know, any of the other inflation in the other line items which you want to highlight? Thank you.
Sure. In terms of price hike in the last quarter, of course, we didn't do anything. In the current quarter, we have taken a price hike recently. Yeah, that's that. In terms of the line items, other than food, we are all right. I mean, yes, utilities could be something that could come up depending on availability of coal and all these things that I'm reading about. Currently, you know, 45 days are gone, and we've been able to navigate most of it quite well.
This price hike, what would be the quantum and would it be enough to take care of the input pressure? Would that be the right understanding?
Sure. I mean, see, price, we don't believe that it's only price hike that covers all the costs as we've been able to do that over the last five-seven years consistently. I think the whole idea is there are three levers, as I always talk about, product mix, it is menu prices, and it's raw cost. Currently, of course, there's pressure on raw cost. Typically, we take 3%-5%. Currently what we've done, and we don't anticipate sort of going back to that, in the near term.
Okay. Lastly, Amit, on the store expansion, could you provide any guidance for this? Is it 40 stores you're planning on an annual basis? Could you give us a sense on what we should expect?
Sure. Absolutely. Basically, as we have said consistently over the last one year particularly, that we intend to build another 200 restaurants over a three-four-year window. Obviously, I'm happy that even with half a year or many difficult times in the last financial year, we still did 12 restaurants in the last quarter and made up for missing 25 restaurants. Obviously the pace quarter- on- quarter and year on year is gonna grow. This year, yes, we are looking at 35-40 restaurants, and that is the plan. Of course, the following year, if we want to do the 200 in the three-four years, the pace will go up. We are well geared up for that, Abhi.
Oh, perfect. If I may, just the last bit. I just wanted to clarify. You said some blips in the short term. Could you kind of just explain which? Is it your ESG argument from a margin that, you know, your guidance that you had given, you know, the target you set for ourselves and mid-teens. While we look at the online, is that trajectory what you're talking about or was it? If you could just clarify what was that delivery.
I'll explain. I mean, when we say blips, you know, you read in the newspapers every day, one day edible oil is not allowed for import, one day the government stocks wheat, and all this means volatility. All, you know, things are gonna happen. I personally feel that with 25 years of experience, and particularly since you've been watching our results, you know, the entire community, I think irrespective of anything, we've consistently delivered. Now we have history to talk. We've consistently, for the last five years now, given 150 basis points improvement year on year on the EBITDA level. While something goes up, something else we are able to manage. The whole point being that quarter on quarter some line items may move, but year on year you will continue to see this company deliver what we talked about.
The mid-teens EBITDA, we don't shy away from it. That is what we are going after.
Okay, Amit. Always a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.
Thank you, Abhi.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Urjit Patel from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Just wanted to understand your town tier-wise mix of the stores versus what you have today. Three years, Fur years down the line, would it remain roughly the same, or would it change?
Okay. I mean, see, roughly, these are rough numbers. Our broad strategy is not changing. We will continue to grow our sort of key cities, which is Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Meanwhile, the smaller cities, we are penetrating that a bit more aggressively. Let's assume we are 70/30 today. Maybe we are 65/35, 60/40. That's the mix change at all because the good news is that look at the opportunity. So far we have 330 restaurants roughly with only 44 cities. I mean, you know, I noticed that our competition is in over 100 cities, so that's an extra 60 city advantage that we have to penetrate. Yet we believe that in our key cities we are gonna further double.
Again, you know, I'm proud to say that if you look at Mumbai, we've opened in very difficult markets like Mazagaon, you know, more recently in Mahalakshmi area and so on and so forth. I do believe in summary that we will continue to penetrate aggressively in our Tier I cities, which is Mumbai, etc. We will now start expanding a bit more rapidly to the smaller cities and therefore maybe the 70/30 mix at best will become a 60/40.
Right. Two follow-ups on this. One is, as you penetrate further into the existing large cities like Mumbai, let's say, where you have more than 100 stores already, do you see some kind of store splitting effect? Like for example, we have seen in Domino's, because they are opening in the vicinity of their existing store in the same micro market. There is some effect, of course, the total system level sales does benefit, but the sales per store grows at a slower rate than it would have if the stores were not clustered close to each other. That's Part one. Part two is a very small effect. You did mention that, Tier II sort of exposure going up.
Not a very large effect, but just wanted to understand that the sales per store in those smaller towns how much lower would it be versus a metro town?
Firstly, I don't understand the meaning of splitting and all that. I mean, at the end of the day, we have 330 stores and 100 in Mumbai, so we don't believe in splitting and therefore we share same-store sales growth consistently, since, you know, we started quarter on quarter. That's the only measurement we understand even globally. We follow, you know, that particular norm. To give you examples, we have two restaurants opposite each other in Andheri. More recently, you know, we have Crossroads, and we opened what is called Saat Rasta Mahalakshmi and both have increased sales. Both have done well because these are under-penetrated markets. The same thing in Ghatkopar. We opened another store, you know, nearby in our city, and then we opened Ghatkopar station. Our philosophy is we spend a lot of time.
We've done what is called a trading area survey, and we understand impact by restaurant. Eventually we find that if the location selection is right, the impact is very short-term and we believe in a big basket. That's not a shelter we wanna take. Therefore we talk about comp sales. Number two, I laughed because you asked me a question, how much lower is that? I felt, why can't it be higher? And it is higher. You know, it's not. You have to understand the dynamics. They're different. You know, you go to say a Tirupati, we have a restaurant in Tirupati. The town is small in the sense that there are not many players. You know, McDonald's is a good brand now with McCafe, Fried Chicken, et cetera.
We have a tremendous draw from families to, you know, young people and so on, so forth. Therefore, actually, average volume in smaller stores is higher. You know, it's just that I believe in a cluster approach, and that is why we've taken a specific strategy, and to be honest, it's working beautifully for us.
Right. That's all from me. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gaurav Jogani from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity, sir. My first question is with regards to the impact of the Omicron in terms of your margins. I mean, given the fact that even there was an Omicron.
Okay
in December and we have been able to do a three-year 0.5%. If not for the Omicron impact, how much could have been your earnings profits?
I mean, you know, I don't think we can go that macro, that micro rather. I mean, Omicron impacted pretty much most of January. You know, I can give you hypothetical answers, but the important thing is that without January, we still delivered INR 455 crore in sales, which is absolutely top-notch. We've been able to keep margins, because when you lose a month, you know, it's not that you can gain that back in the following months. Yeah, you've lost that overhead. I would not like to isolate those 20 days, and so on. It's hard for me to sort of give you a more accurate number on that.
Just not an accurate number is whatever key you know asking what is that how much are you under-appreciating the margin expansion here because of the Omicron? Like it is showing 7.5%. If not for it you know could be higher and how much it could be?
No, that's what I'm saying. Yes, it could have been higher. That there is no question in my mind because like I mentioned earlier, that the overhead that you've lost and the sale you've lost, right? If we had that sale, the contribution flow through would definitely come. To give you a number because it's just estimate, you know. It would definitely be better than the whatever margin you are seeing today.
Sure, sir. Thank you. Sir, my other question is with regards to, you know, the menu innovation that you have done like the Gourmet Burger and, you know, the RPG, both seems to be a higher price point products. You know, with the you know campaign now also expected to come back to these store working, how do you see these impact on the gross margins favorably? I'm assuming that these products will be a significant amount of your same-store sales.
I'll take that question. We've always said, you know, gross margin is a combination of three main levers: raw material, efficiencies as well as product mix and pricing. We just spoke about pricing a few questions back. Product mix has always been a very key lever. While, as you heard that we've always been snacking leaders, meal strategy was one of our new levers focusing on two quarters back when we actually launched chicken and then the last quarter we launched Gourmet Burgers. Now, obviously, when a person consumes a meal vis-a-vis a snack is definitely higher, and the gross margins are also higher. Hence, as we keep product mix, there will be a favorable impact on margin.
The chicken inflation is also here to stay for a bit. However, we are confident that we will be able to respond to that with good product mix management.
Sure. Just one last question from my end. You know, like Amit did mention, you know, that the operating performance is being aided by the various efforts of visibility of supply chain and logistics. If you can dwell a bit more in detail about this topic, that's okay. Have you worked on giving you this efficiency in the operating
We didn't get the question because your voice is not clear.
I'm sorry.
We didn't understand the question.
Hi. Audible now. Is it better?
Yeah, this is better. This is better.
Yeah. Sir, I was just asking in terms of line item which line items are you working on in terms of driving the operational efficiency?
Yeah.
I think that's a continuous process. You know, over so many years, there are a few line items where inflation is always there, and you have to continuously drive operating efficiency there. This would be the food cost, this would be utilities. Labor is again a line item while, you know, inflationary in India just now, but world over there is shortage of labor which is being seen and somewhere it will come to our country also. I think it's always been utilities, labor and food cost. I think if these three line items are driven well through operating efficiencies, you know, we will be able to combat inflation.
Thank you. Thank you, Smita and Amit. That's all from me.
Thank you, Gaurav.
The next question is from the line of Amnish Aggarwal from Prabhudas Lilladher. Please go ahead.
Hi Amit. Congrats for good set of numbers.
Thank you.
I have a couple of questions. First being that, on the number side, I think in the reported numbers on a consolidated basis other income is showing INR 13 crores vis-a-vis the number of INR 3 crores last year. Is there any one-off sitting over there?
No, absolutely. One second. Dattaprasad Tambe, you wanna take that?
Hi, Amnish. This is Dattaprasad. So basically, there are no one-off sitting in there. It's in the normal course of business days operating income.
Okay. There is a sharp jump in the format in which we report to the exchange. It is going up from INR 3.3 crores to INR 13.1 crores.
We'll have to probably get back to you.
Get back to you, yeah.
We can figure that out. I mean, we'll come back to you on that. There is no one-off gain. This must be maybe some supply chain write backs if there were some costs that were taken earlier. It might be some of that, but we can come back to you on that.
Okay. Secondly, Amit Jatia, if you look at, say, on the expenses side, despite our opening so many stores during the current quarter, other expenses on a Q/Q basis, or you can say, they have not risen. Actually, they have gone down. Any particular reason for cost control or whatever we have done over here?
See, quarter-on-quarter, you know, it's very hard to sort of talk about that. It's all about operating leverage. You know, I mean, the sales going up, I've always maintained when people ask me what is it that's gonna take you to the mid-teen EBITDA levels, and I've always said it's average unit volume consistently for the last five years. That has been our focus. You know, the best example is if you look at, say, fried chicken, it's an example. Yeah. What happened with fried chicken? The old restaurant base is there. With minor equipment, we were able to get, say, INR 50 lakh extra sales per year per restaurant, which is only increasing. The flow through to the bottom line is pretty nice on that. You know, the other thing is if you look at even G&A, it's pretty well managed.
You know, the whole idea is every quarter I always say this, you know. We have to have the latitude. If some line item going up, we play with some other line item that's outside our control. The key is we've got to show delta in either the operating EBITDA and tax, which is really the true, you know, the true measure. I can't sort of comment on each line item, but yes, the cost control is tight. Wherever we are finding an opportunity to control when something else is going up is where we focus on. Smita gave in the last question the three or four key line items that we focus on. The operating leverage work.
Okay, sure. Finally, just one more question from my side. Like I think, what is the proportion of, you can say, convenient sales or the delivery sales which happens from our own app and from, say, Swiggy, Zomato or from your own distribution and the outsourced one? Is there a difference in the profitability or the margin which we make if we supply it from, say, using McDelivery vis-à-vis Swiggy and Zomato?
You know, we don't share the breakup. Our own app does quite well as well. We've shared the numbers of download and usage. Clearly there's tremendous focus in building our own app. In terms of profitability, again, we don't share it by channel. The good news is we do well on both accounts. My philosophy, which I've shared many times in the past, is that wherever there's business you have to make your business model work. We work very hard to make our business model work, even with 3POs. It's all about partnerships, and I think we've demonstrated that in our supply chain partnerships over 25 years, and we've demonstrated that with both the 3PO partners.
If you see all my interviews over the last, touchwood for us, you know, we've always worked with them even through difficult times. We've never really felt them as a threat to our business.
Okay. Thanks, Amit. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jaykumar Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Sri, when you mentioned 50 million per store. Is it on what basis, how many stores do you have in your portfolio, and how many stores in your portfolio offers Fried Chicken?
It's more all of the South stores. That's roughly about 130 stores.
It's averaging INR 50 lakh a week, average net volume for these 130.
Incrementally, yeah. Yes.
Incrementally. Okay. That's useful. Can you give some color on, you know, how Gourmet Burgers has, you know, sort of fared for you since the time you launched it, you know, across the network in October 2021? Any data point that you can share that allows us to appreciate, you know, the product is extraordinary and, you know, any numbers that you can share?
I think. Yeah, you know, we've shared in our earnings presentation how it's all about the brand eventually. What it has done, my philosophy is that any new category that we had launched burgers as a category many, many years ago, and the category evolves, and that is when consumers want indulgence, and that's what the gourmet burger offers. With the halo of brand McDonald's, when you launch the gourmet burger in the packaging, in the patty, whatever we've done with the jalapeños, and the taste, I think that's resonated very well. Some of the data points are already in the earnings presentation where we talked about how great burger scores have gone up. It's on Slide 15, you know, where great tasting burger scores have gone up by 15%. That's quite a lot, by the way, in a short period.
We talk about, you know, the filling-ness scores are important because you see the IEO construct, meals are a very important part. You know, in snacking, we've kinda given you the data today that we are leaders in snacking. Here is meals. Today we've openly come and announced to the world that's where the next frontier is. With both the fried chicken and gourmet burgers, that frontier can be conquered. Lastly, you know, we've given that sales contribution. We don't share breakups, but we've shared that it was up 20% pre-gourmet to post gourmet. So our sales contribution of gourmet burgers is rising. You know, the halo effect of gourmet burgers is amazing because whenever I talk to people qualitatively, right, I'm hearing very, very good things around that.
The feedback that we are getting from consumers is very, very positive. Gourmet burgers are here to stay, and it's a category itself that we feel we are gonna grow substantially.
Can you help me with that chart again? You know, when you said Gourmet Burger sales contribution has gone up by 20% versus pre-Gourmet. What, you know, how should I read that data point? Because, you know, you were earlier offering this burger for a very small number of stores, and then you've launched it across the network. The 20% I'm not able to understand. My understanding is it should be-
Basically, pre-Gourmet, we had some what we call premium burgers, like the Maharaja and the McSpicy Chicken. If you take, and then we included the Gourmet burgers in that, the contribution from these premium burgers have gone up by 20%.
That is helpful. Is it possible for, you know, as a one-time exercise, give us some color on roughly what would be the premium burger contribution in overall, burgers for you as of what it would have been five years back?
Unfortunately, we don't share such breakups at all. Product mix breakups is not something that we share. All we believe is, I think we have this time given a construct of the IEO market. I think, you know, we felt this is really the right time to introduce this concept. The whole point is, as on that Slide Number 13, we are talking about meal and leadership for brand McDonald's in the meal category. Essentially, we feel that gourmet burgers in West and the chicken platform in South is what's gonna give us leadership in the meal category, which is the largest category in the informal eating out. We already lead in the snacking daypart, but the whole idea in the last couple of years has been to go towards meal.
There has to be a logic for doing something. You know, I have to talk about premiumization of the brand. Premiumization is a very generic word. Really, there has to be a more sort of measurable reason why we are doing something. Today we decided that, you know, we should start talking about what is the relevance of Gourmet Burgers in our strategy, and what is the relevance of white chicken in our strategy. If you see Slide 16, it will kind of give you a better indication. Based upon product mix is something we don't share.
My final very quick short question, do you have any plans to launch fried chicken in western markets or you would refrain from that?
We are doing some research and we've launched it in some of the trial stores. Depending on what the results are, I'm sure we will see a need, but we're just going to balance in terms of what we focus on. Just now we feel Gourmet is what we are focusing on the West. At the right time, we will launch Fried Chicken also.
you know, you can visit some of the stores that have it and see how fantastic the product is. Because that's what our consumers are telling us.
Gourmet is there in South or Gourmet is yet to be launched in South?
No, Gourmet is across the board.
Across the board. Thank you so much. This is very helpful.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi, thanks for the opportunity and congrats on some competitively strong performances. Sir, I wanted to understand, when other players are sort of taking 10%-12% price hike, why are we taking only a 4%-5% price hike? Why not increase our gross margins with other levers like you talked about efficiency, product mix, et cetera. Third-party, sir, do you feel that this 10%-12% price hike will not be able to be absorbed by the industry and can affect volumes?
I mean, you know, leave some of this management to us. I think we know what we are doing. What we've done is all scientific. It's not that we just increased 5% or 3% or 2% because we like it. There is a way that we've been doing some research for the last six months, and that data, and that data tells us certain things. Based on that, for certain things, we have a full pricing workshop, and we get support from global pricing team on this. You know, pricing decisions are not just arbitrary, that inflation's running at this, so take the price increase. We are here to build a long-term sustainable business. You know, my philosophy always is we are leaders, we lead, we don't follow. We've set the path based on what it is.
I think, you know, today, after five-six years of history, I mean, I think, we deserve quite a bit of applause on the way we manage our growth margins. We've kept our pricing tight. Leave it to us, net-net.
Sir, I actually wanted to appreciate only that.
I know, I know you did. I know.
Thank you.
I'm saying that, you know, we stay with what we've done, and I hear you, but I gave you the logic of why we follow this path. It's on a study. I know that you are appreciating it, and you are saying we can take more and get better. Trust me, what we are doing is a well-thought-of strategy.
Sure. That's it. Sir, we have sort of improved our non-veg portfolio in the southern states. Just wanted to check if you can qualitatively share as in how has this helped us improve the profitability in those stores when it comes to sort of returning back to normal?
That's a very good question. You know, I have in the past explained that of course, you know, if I were to just take West, I mean, you would love our business even more. I think you might still be coming here, but you'll love it even more. South, you know, we entered South very late. I feel by doing what I've done, putting INR 500-600 crores, the bold move, we've earned the right to play in South. It's a very important point. Now we are earning the right to win. Therefore, with what we've done with the product mix, the brand relevance in South is going up. Obviously, average unit volume in South was lower than what we would have liked.
All of this play around the chicken and some other things that we've done, Experience of the Future, even McCafe for that matter, all the reimaging that we've done, even in smaller towns, the resonance to the brand is phenomenal. Our market share in South India has come up very, very well. You know, I mean, we are really loving it. We wanna grow even faster, but you know, I always balance the quality of real estate with growth. The average unit volume is better, and it's helping us get better returns. Nita today talked. We again subtly gave out another number. You know, our return on capital employed of over 16% for the whole year. Remember, the first 1/2 was where it was, and we lost a lot of money in the first 1/2.
Yet that's the number we are at. Imagine what the run rate that we are at today. It's very promising.
That's intelligent, sir. Sir, a couple of data points I wanted to have a look at. What is the royalty rate that is going to be for the fiscal 2023?
4%.
4%. Can you also sort of tell us what is the current rental cost run rate?
We don't share the breakup of rentals. It is not. It's under control. I mean, it is what it used to be. It's not something that. Yeah, right. I think the portfolio retake we did has really been very helpful. Like I always said, I mean, if, you know, if you've been on my calls, how do you not lose this COVID time, and how do you keep it useful? I think we worked very hard to get the cost structure right. The other work that is not necessarily sort of understood because we've not talked about it is the portfolio mix and all the work we've done to get to the restaurant portfolio are very, very strong and solid.
Sure. Next time, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Nihal Jham from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Good evening, and congratulations on the strong performance. A couple of questions from my side. The first is on the SSG. Now, despite the Omicron impact, we've shown a very strong performance, and that's not on any weak base. It's a convenience or commoditization. As I deconstruct our performance, I do notice that over the last couple of years, some of the strong initiatives that McDonald's implemented have been delivery. And we have obviously spoken of gourmet and chicken being an addition. Would it be right to say that delivery has been the biggest driver, even if I look at how the share of delivery has sustained, and that is what is really driving the strong SSG? If it's possible to deconstruct as much as possible.
Sure.
Yeah. Actually, if you see Slides 7 and 8, it kind of gives you a understanding of our convenience channels. If you look at it from even quarter four of last year, it has grown by 42%, you know. If it was 100, it's 1.42. If you actually look at pre-COVID levels, our convenience channels have grown by 2x. You're right. Other than just menu interventions, it is the omni-channel we have adopted. We also gave a data point that 57% of our sales are now digital, which is also links to our convenience strategy as well as our dine-in strategy. Net-net, it's not only menu, it's definitely convenience. In convenience, delivery does play a very critical role.
Sure, that is helpful. The other question is, I do notice that we've obviously been implementing our EOTF strategy, and on top of that, we've obviously launched a range of gourmet burgers. So there is an effort to premiumize the luxury tier and the menu. There is obviously a core category to McDonald's also which is the value or the evening snacking category. There I think we only have one entry-level veg and non-veg burger. Would it be right to assume that most of the launches that you wanna do in the future will be more towards the gourmet or the premium side, and there the portfolio is more or less complete?
Yeah, go ahead, Smita.
No, I mean, if you again go to Slide 13, it's not that snacking is just about a veg and a non-veg burger. You know, it's fries, it's coffee. Even in McVeggie, McChicken is sometimes eaten as a small snack. I don't think our strategy is only to premiumize and only speak about meals. We have to be continuous to be leaders in the snacking strategy, and we will continue to add some SKUs. At the same time, we will add the products which are required for the meal strategy. Again, you know, we've always said that we are a limited player, because that's what helps us to keep operational efficiencies, give better quality service to the consumer.
There is by no means, I think there was a gap in the meal strategy which has been augmented by gourmet and chicken. As time goes and as our customers needs will change, we will obviously be abreast of them and be able to introduce relevant burgers in both categories.
Sure. Smita, just a follow-up on that. Was that the launches are being more on the gourmet side? While we do have an extensive portfolio, it's not that we've added anything. Is that the right thought or there have been many additions which I have missed?
Sorry, the question wasn't clear. Can you please repeat it?
Yes. My only follow-up to that was that I was asking that in the gourmet category or in the premium category, there have been multiple burger launches. Whereas at least in the value category, while we have an extensive menu, I don't think any new SKUs have been launched. I was coming from that part when I was asking.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think our snacking strategy is quite robust, and we have products which we can play with. You know, coffee is a very integral strategy also. Therefore, we didn't feel the need to introduce something just now. You're right.
Absolutely. That's all. I wish you all the best.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Shirish Pardeshi from Centrum Broking. From Centrum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, Amit and Smita, for the opportunity and hearty congratulations. The efforts what I have heard over last 45, 50 minutes, I think it is really commendable. Today I understand, I think product innovation, which in the past you have said it's a continuous thing. How much effort, at the back end, I mean, if you can spell out what is the team size or how this innovation happens? I'm really interested in the merits of how this whole thing links up to the supply chain.
Sure. See, this goes back. I mean, we've been doing this since 1997, and we built competencies around that time. We obviously have a couple of chefs, but it's all about our suppliers. Yeah. These suppliers are our global partners, and there's a lot of research involved. With research, we understand consumers, we look at competition, and then we have a pretty set global process as well, where we then do some designs, the products are showcased to us, but it's all around a consumer need. It's quite a detailed process, and there's a workshop we do called the Menu Vision. That Menu Vision lays out a three-year plan, and it goes back to that Slide 13. The IEO we are targeting for the relevance of the market today.
I mean, it's gonna be hard for me to just explain that whole process, but broadly, it's a pretty well-defined process. It's not that I wake up in the morning and I see competition has launched something and we go after it. To give you an example, on fried chicken, we decided in 2017 that, you know, we need to go after chicken leadership in South. Then our team went to different McDonald's markets. We looked at our entire range. We looked at competition's entire range. We identified some gaps. That is when, you know, direction was given to our suppliers and the menu team that, "Okay, start putting the product together." We do some trials, then we do some small tests, and then we put it into a market, and then we launch it. In 2019...
Sorry, 2020 Q1 is when we launched it, when COVID hit. This is typically the process of how we go for it. The whole idea is to do something that is unique. The big differentiator, and we are getting this from consumers about our Fried Chicken, is that it is crunchy to the bone, up to the last bite, and not just the coating. We are quite pleased with what we've got.
Just to add to this, you know, this came from consumer insight. It wasn't something which we just kind of worked on and innovated ourselves. The insight was that when a customer eats bone-in chicken, normally the flavor is only in the coating. By the time they get to the bone, the chicken becomes bland. That's the insight we caught on, and we kind of gave the brief to our chef to develop the product.
That's helpful, Amit. I have more questions on that. I'll take it offline. I actually wanted to see that what is the split to market, right from the conceptualization to the actual prototype and launching in the market. I'll take it offline. I'm on slide-
Yes, yes. That's why there's a three-year Menu Vision.
Yeah.
Yeah. That is why it's continuous. It's always continuous.
I'll take offline. On slide 20, you have given quarter numbers, where the growth in dining was 15% and 40% for convenience. Can you spell out what was the full year's number?
Full year numbers, I think we gave it somewhere.
15% in dining.
That was from.
I would.
We have it.
Okay. I would just say that if you look at it, you can take Slide 7 and 8. Again, in Slide 8, because you know, the only issue is quarter 1 was not the right quarter to take on because dine-in was not present. If you analyze the number, I don't think you'll get a better understanding. Only when you look at it quarter-wise, even if I take half 2, the numbers would be same, where convenience has grown that completely.
Okay. I'll do that. Amit, would you like to comment how April and May, which is more of a normalized months, how did-
Sorry, that would be too forward-looking and, you know, let's keep the
Okay. My last question is on the downloads. 17 million downloads is a very good traction you guys have. If you could tell me what is the hit rate or maybe what is the conversion rate you are getting from this? I mean, the question is more of how the repeat customers are there, and when somebody can download, how quickly it could be.
We have the data, but you know, we don't like to share beyond that. You know, maybe for now this is what it is. I mean, in our opinion, we are best in class.
No, I do understand, Amit, and I respect what you're doing with the business. The only thing is that you might not be able to give on a quarterly basis, but maybe on an annual basis, you should make it a practice and actually share some data points so that it will help us to model it correctly.
Oh, sure. Sure. That is why this time around we gave the whole construct of the IEO. We are trying to, at least on a yearly basis, give a little more insight into our business so that the understanding is slightly better. Point taken, and we'll definitely consider that.
Thank you, Amit. Thank you, Smita. All the best to you and the team.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, we take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Amit Jatia for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
No, thank you, everybody, for patiently listening to the commentary and attending the call. I really appreciate it. If there are any more questions, please direct that to our investor relations. Have a lovely day. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Westlife Development Limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.