Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Deepak Jajodia. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Jubilant FoodWorks Q1 FY 2023 earnings call for investor and analyst. We are joined today by senior members of the management team, including our Chairman, Mr. Shyam Bhartia, our Co-Chairman, Mr. Hari Bhartia, our CFO, Mr. Ashish Goenka, and our Group CFO, Mr. Arvind Chokhani. We will commence with key thoughts from Mr. Hari Bhatia. Mr. Ashish Goenka will follow him with his perspective on the JFL's progress on the quarter ending June 30, 2022.
After the opening remarks from the management, the forum will be open for the questions and answers. A cautionary note. Some of the statements made on today's call could be forward-looking in nature, and the actual results could vary from the statements. A detailed statement in this regard is available in Jubilant FoodWorks results release and earnings presentations. I would now like to invite Mr. Hari S. Bhartia to share his views with you. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Deepak, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to our earnings call. I am very pleased with our start of the year. The strength of our omni-channel model, network expansion, and disciplined cost management has helped us in delivering strong results. Since the onset of pandemic, this was the first quarter where our stores operated without restrictions. The delivery channel registered robust growth on a strong base of last year. The marked resurgence in retail footfalls also helped us deliver strong sequential growth in the dining channel. We opened 52 new stores for Domino's India and entered 12 new cities, thereby enhancing our reach to 349 cities. This is the highest store opening in the first quarter of any fiscal year. It has also set us firmly on the path to open around 250 Domino's stores during the year.
As you are aware, global food prices reached a historical high in March, along with a spike in crude oil and other commodity prices. This affected our domestic market prices as well. Thanks to our constant focus on driving cost efficiencies and introducing relevant product innovations, even during instances of record inflation, we are able to deliver profitable growth while maintaining our value for money quotient. Notably, the Everyday Value proposition's pricing has remained the same since its launch in the financial year 2018. This, in turn, gives us the required headroom to take calibrated price increase in situations like this as a last resort. It's important to underline that despite calibrated price increases, we remain the most affordable pizza brand in the country. During the quarter, we launched our loyalty program, Domino's Cheesy Rewards, and addressed the key white space in our offering.
We have come up with a very simple milestone-based construct which owes the customer a free pizza after every sixth eligible order. All customers can earn points towards free pizza no matter how they choose to order, whether it's online or offline, whether they order on our assets or via other online platforms. The redemption will, however, be on our assets. We believe our loyalty program will become a significant driver of growth, new customer acquisition, and retention for us while growing customer lifetime value. Turning to our international operations in Sri Lanka, the political and macroeconomic environment remained challenging. Thanks to the resilience shown by our team members, our operations were uninterrupted, and we delivered a strong quarter. We also opened one new store each in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In both the markets, the online ordering contribution to delivery sales has been growing steadily.
In conclusion, a series of strategic interventions we have made in the past and during the pandemic have left us better positioned than ever to capture profitable growth, increasing our confidence in the future while we navigate the short-term challenges. With that, let me turn it over to Ashish to share a detailed overview of the quarter.
Thank you, Mr. Bhartia, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining the call today. Our first quarter results marked a great start to the new fiscal year. The revenue for operations of INR 12,403 million increased 41.1% versus the prior year and a 7.1% sequential growth over the preceding quarter. The increase in revenue was driven by like-for-like growth of 28.6%. In Domino's, all three channels performed well. Delivery channel, which had a strong base last year, registered robust growth. Dine-in, owing to operational restrictions last year due to second wave of COVID, is not a comparable base. However, we not only registered a strong year-on-year growth, but also a strong order-led sequential growth as compared to the previous quarter.
Both dine-in and takeaway combined registered a robust growth. We delivered EBITDA of INR 3,045 million, an increase of 44% versus the prior year. Despite significant cost headwinds, the EBITDA margin at 24.6% expanded by 49 basis points year-on-year. Profit after tax and before exceptional items of INR 1,223 million increased by 90.5%. PAT margin before exceptional item was 10.3%. Considering the significant changes in economic environment of Sri Lanka, we have taken an impairment charge of INR 266 billion in the quarter. Consequently, profit after tax is INR 1,010 million. It grew by 61.4%. PAT margin at 8.1% increased by 102 basis points. We continue to grow our network with 62 new store additions in India.
We added 58 new Domino's stores and entered 12 new cities during the quarter. With this, we now have 1,625 Domino's stores across 349 cities. We also added two new stores each for Popeyes and Hong's Kitchen. We are also continuously thinking about ways to introduce customer-centric innovations and means to deliver more value to a larger set of customers. We made two such interventions during the quarter. Firstly, as mentioned by Mr. Bhartia, we launched our loyalty program, Domino's Cheesy Rewards. We launched this after extensive testing, and we tested two models at scale. The winning model is a simple milestone-based model wherein the customer gets a pizza after every six eligible orders. Our endeavor to further enhance value portions and reward the loyalty of our customers will not only help drive frequencies, but also attract new customers and retain them.
Secondly, we also stepped up menu localization by bringing a super exciting fusion of Paratha Pizza crafted for discerning Indian taste buds. We are overwhelmed by the response this has received from consumers. The Paratha Pizza is a value offering, acts as a product platform like how we established Pizza Mania or Garlic Bread. We continued our strong momentum in growing our installed base. The app installs for the quarter was at 8.2 million. We continue to be the highest rated app on both iOS and Play Store, thanks to series of enhancements being done by our digital teams to make the customer experience seamless and intuitive. We opened two new stores, each in Hong's Kitchen and Popeyes. As shared with you in the previous call, in Hong's Kitchen, we are now building greater awareness with ATL campaign. Customer satisfaction scores are improving consistently.
In Popeyes, we are seeing healthy repeat rates across stores and high ratings on both the dine-in and delivery experience. We remain on track to open 20-30 stores in the year. Let me now share key updates from our international business. Sri Lanka, as you know, is witnessing an economic and political crisis. We continue to navigate our business well in the wake of unprecedented challenges. We delivered system sales growth of 83%. The OLO contribution to delivery sales jumped from 51% a year back to 66% during the quarter. In Bangladesh, system sales grew by 49%. The OLO contribution to delivery sales improved from 68% a year back to 72% in this quarter. In both the markets, we opened 1 store each. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh now have 36 stores and 10 stores respectively.
In closing, we continue to grow profitably with disciplined adherence to our five-pillar strategy. We will continue to navigate the current high inflation environment by driving productivity and efficiency across the value chain. We will continue to drive network expansion with focus on Domino's and Popeyes, and we will continue to invest behind and build our digital strength. With that, I would like to turn to the moderator to initiate the question and answer session.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone 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. A reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from the line of Vivek Maheshwari from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. My first question is you mentioned about a strong YOY sequential growth in, you know, this one dine-in. Can you give some. You know, are you back to the pre-pandemic level in terms of, dine-in mix, given that this was the first quarter where everything was, fine?
Thanks, Vivek for the question. I think dine-in remains a very important channel for us, and we are seeing sustained sequential improvement in dine-in revenues and mix quarter on quarter, including quarter one. We expect dine-in recovery to sustain. I think in terms of recovery pre-COVID, I think we are very close to near 100% recovery. We are seeing sustained, month-on-month and quarter-on-quarter growth in dine-in channels. That both by order growth as well as improvement in our overall ticket size.
Got it. This quarter on the delivery side, there would also be benefit of IPL, which was not there in the base, right?
Sorry, Vivek?
IPL.
Yeah. Vivek, despite that, we have seen a very strong momentum in delivery hold up. We have seen strong both sequential and year-on-year growth in deliveries. While we are seeing dine-in recovery, we are also seeing very strong momentum and you know delivery growth holding up.
Okay. You do not think there is a disproportionate benefit because of IPL being there this time around with this quarter?
Vivek, we have not seen a significant impact of IPL on our order. Of course, there has been some impact, but not a significant one, is what I would say.
Okay, got it. Second, you know, if I look at your overall revenues and just do a, you know, a lesser dumb math and look at a three-year CAGR, your revenues have compounded at about 10% CAGR. Your stores have also, you know, increased around the same level. You have taken double-digit price hikes. Basically, which shows that existing stores would have seen a reasonable drop in volume. What is your, you know, comment on that analysis?
Vivek, I think we are also, while we are seeing overall system growth, revenue growth, we have also seen a very strong like-for-like growth, both year-over-year as well as sequentially quarter-over-quarter. We have seen strong recovery, I think, both in the same stores. While we continue to focus on driving our network and expand the network, there is a continuous focus on driving our like-for-like growth. We have seen, you know, very robust growth on like-for-like basis, both order-led and even ticket-led across our existing stores as well.
Okay. Any price hikes that you have taken in this quarter?
Sorry, Vivek?
Any product price hikes during the quarter?
No. We had made a pricing intervention in April, in the first week of April, and thereafter we have not done any pricing intervention.
Got it. Second, on the loyalty bit, you know, just couple of things. One is that, you know, the benefit is available also on Swiggy, Zomato. Any specific reason of, is it just to get the fair share? Wouldn't you want to divert, you know, traffic onto your own asset and therefore just keep it exclusive to your asset? What are your thoughts on that?
Vivek, our fundamental premise of launching a loyalty program is to really drive frequency increase at one level and also attract new customers onto our brand. Yeah? We are making this an omni-channel program where irrespective of the point of entry or of point of order of the customer, they should be able to enjoy the benefits of the loyalty program. However, the burn, as we have said, can happen only on our own assets, which will also drive in, you know, more traffic onto our own assets, and therefore, not only helps us build the frequency, but also drives more traffic onto our own assets. Twin benefits of the program is what we are looking at.
Got it. Thank you and all the best.
Thanks, Vivek. Thanks for your questions.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tejas Shah from Spark Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First, as most of the food aggregators are now making a departure from cash burn path that they had and they are looking for profitability, are we facing any pressure on higher take rates from them in our engagement? And I'll just connect another news item that came just a couple of weeks back that we are perhaps rethinking of our engagement terms with some of the food aggregator apps. If you can just combine and answer.
Okay. Tejas, if I've understood your question, your first question is around higher commissions from aggregator platform. Is that the question?
Yes. Yes, yes.
I think we have a very strong engagement with both Zomato and Swiggy, and we've a very strong relationships that we have built over the years. They are a very important partner and channel for us. We have not seen any pressure or increase or change in the kind of commission or commercials that we have with these platforms. And onto your second question, I think this has been a part of our concerted, stated strategy that we look at always promoting and improving our own assets and migrate traffic more and more onto our own assets, which gives us better customer control and better profitability. That strategy continues. I don't think there is any change in that.
Okay. Sir, perhaps a bit early, but government has actually started this initiative called ONDC, where they are trying to democratize the digital platform. We have also very robust digital asset for ourselves. Any thoughts on joining the initiative from our side?
Tejas, thanks for that question. I think, it's still early days. We have had engagements with ONDC through NRAI. I think they have. Right now, I think it'll be a bit premature to comment on that, but we would continue to evaluate all opportunities. ONDC is also something that we are actively looking at, and we would formulate a strategy around that, as we go along.
Sure. Just last one if I may. Hong's Kitchen and Ekdum!, we had a closure of somewhere around 6 restaurants this quarter versus net new opening of 2. This is the highest in last many quarters. Any insights that you can share?
Tejas, as we have said, we are looking at driving our unit economics and focusing on fundamentals as far as these two brands are concerned, both Hong's and Ekdum!. Yes, we did close three stores this quarter. To just give you a background, we had experimented with a DELCO model wherein we had housed all these three brands together, Dunkin', Hong's, and Ekdum!, with the objective of driving back-end synergies, reducing costs, and providing more options to our customers. We opened a handful of these stores, as a test, of proof of concept. Some of these stores have not worked.
The revenue uptake on these has been lower than anticipated. Also, we realized that the DELCO format does not allow the customers to fully experience the brand and build brand familiarity. We closed 3 such stores, which results in overall 9 store closure because each one for each brand. These were loss-making stores without any line of sight for a turnaround in the near future. That's been the background around closure of these 3 into 3, 9 stores.
Yes. That's very helpful. Thanks and all the best.
Thanks Tejas.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abneesh Roy from Edelweiss Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. My first question is on the loyalty program. Is there a similar program in other markets for Domino's? Why not look for everyday low price? Third is, will this impact your margins? Because clearly it's almost 1 in 6, almost like 15% higher value you are giving. Any comment on this?
Thanks Abneesh for your question. I think on the first one, yes, this is a global Domino's program. Of course, we have tested it extensively in India, with a few iterations, to suit it to the Indian customer requirements. As you would know that, you know, we had tested a couple of models, and this one was the winning model. In terms of it impacting margins, I would say that this is a part of our discount, and we would retain our overall discount levels to where we were in the past. The basic premise of this loyalty program is to not only bring new customer onto our platform, but also drive frequency. I think if we are able to do that, then the program more than pays for itself. Yeah. We see this as a margin accretive program and not really margin dilutive.
Two quick follow-ups on that. One is, you said this is also a global program, but is it being implemented right now? My question is on timing, because after so many years, why now? And second is, you also mentioned you are also targeting new customers through this. Now Domino's obviously has a dominant market share, very well penetrated. Are you mentioning new customers or same customers, more opportunity?
Let me answer both your questions, Abneesh. I think on the first one, I think this is currently active even in the U.S. market. It's a program that they've been running for a few years, and it's a very successful program. Program is also running in Australia and a few other Domino's markets. It is a global program and it's been running. As you would be aware that we have been actually working on our loyalty program for quite some time. We have done extensive testing for the last few months, and we have tested two programs at scale. One was a cashback-based model, which offered instant gratification, and another one was a milestone-based model where the customer earns a free pizza over a period of time.
Of course, the milestone-based concept did much better and as you know, we have now rolled it out nationally. What we have seen during the trial phase and even post the national launch that not only it helps us drive frequency, but because of the attractiveness of the program, we also see a lot of new customers who come into the category. While we have a dominant share of the pizza market, we believe that we have only touched the tip of the iceberg. I think in terms of the category, there's a huge room for expansion and growth. We would want to continue to acquire a new customer and expand the category. I think that's going to be an ongoing journey, while we would want new customers to come into the category, at the same time drive frequency of existing customers.
Sure, that's helpful. My second question is on SSG. When I compare your SSG on three-year basis versus Westlife, there is a big gap. They have grown much faster. If I see quarter-on-quarter overall revenues also, they have grown 18% while you have grown 7%. Is this largely because they would have much higher indexation for in-store dining while you will have much higher delivery? Is that the main reason? Is there any other promotional intensity which is helping them?
Abneesh, while we would not like to comment on competitors, I think the hypothesis that I have is that of course, they are much more dining-centric business and therefore they would have seen a far better recovery. Also in terms of base, I think we had recovered much faster during COVID as compared to any of our competition. When you look at growth over a base, I don't think they are strictly comparable.
Sure. One last quick question. Sri Lanka extremely challenging time for every company. You have taken the impairment. In terms of expansion, next 1 year, 2 year, are you putting it on a standstill? How are you managing the supply chain inflation, the currency depreciation, all those?
Thanks, Abneesh Roy, for that question. I think we are facing a severe environmental challenge in Sri Lanka. As you rightly said, we are seeing spiraling inflation, we are seeing currency depreciation, we are seeing import restrictions. However, I think despite all of that, our local teams have done an outstanding job of ensuring business continuity. We have seen a very strong operational performance in the country. In fact, we have seen a large order-led growth despite raging inflation in the country, which gives us a lot of confidence that the long-term prospect of the Sri Lankan economy remains intact. At this stage, we are not making any change to our plan, even in terms of store opening. Despite the challenges in the quarter, we did open 1 store and have taken our network count to now 36 stores.
Thanks, sir. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thanks, Abneesh Roy.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Percy Panthaki from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. First question is on our diversification. About 1 year, 1.5 years, 2 years ago, I think one more angle to the entire Jubilant investment thesis was that basically it's largely a pizza cuisine company right now, and over a period of time it will diversify. It has Chinese, it has Indian food now with Ekdum! and Popeyes, et cetera. Dunkin' also was there at some point of time. The fact is now, I mean, we've tried all these formats. We've been in there for about 2, 3 years. The ramp-up is very, very slow, and it seems that there is no confidence on the having got the unique economics correct, and therefore the scale-up has been slow.
What happens to this entire story of having a diversified, sort of food tech company? Now entire hopes are on Popeyes apart from Domino's. The other three formats, really, I don't know what kind of scale-up you yourself are sort of factoring in over the next three years or so. What really went wrong? I mean, we are the leaders in the entire QSR space. Why is it that we have not been able to diversify effectively enough?
Percy, thanks for that question. I think we remain committed to build a multi-country, multi-brand, food tech powerhouse, and I don't think there is any change in our intent or strategy as of now. As we have said in the past, we continue to remain focused on building and creating a brand portfolio which we are able to scale profitably. As you would know, and let me talk about each one of these brands. On Hong's, we have now 14 stores across India and which by no means is a small network.
We have been focusing on driving awareness, improving the overall, you know, mix in terms of our store design, menu, pricing, and I think we have done a fairly good job over the last two and a half years, of which almost two years went into COVID. Having said that, I think we are fairly confident that we will be able to fine-tune the model in the next few quarters before we look to scale up. I think scaling up for our size and our capability I think is easier. I think one thing which we have remained consistent over the years is our ability to drive scale along with profitability, because I think it's easier to drive scale, but it's difficult to do it in a manner which is profitable and therefore create value for the shareholder.
Coming to Ekdum!, I think there is a lot of focus on working on fundamentals and driving the unit economics. On Dunkin', we are looking at pivoting to a coffee first strategy. I think we have made a lot of progress in that strategy. We have opened a few stores now which are with coffee queues. We have completely rejigged the portfolio in terms of giving the coffee queues. We have launched a range of new coffees into the portfolio. We've also changed our food offering, which is now more attuned to ready to eat and ready to serve in line with the coffee philosophy. I think Dunkin' is well on its path to becoming a coffee first brand. Once we are confident that the model is working, we will of course look to scale up.
Popeyes, I think again presents a huge opportunity and we've talked about it in the past. Fried chicken is a very large category in India. Almost a huge white space given that there's only one entrenched player there. We have started well in Bangalore. We have added 2 more stores this quarter, taking our total store network to 6. And we have got very good customer feedback, both in terms of the product taste, experience, and we are getting very healthy levels of repeat. As I said, we remain committed to opening 20-30 stores this quarter. I think it's also about focus.
We'll continue to focus on the building and growing the store network for Domino's and Popeyes first year, while we focus on building unit economics for the other brands before we look to really scale up. To summarize, I think the story remains intact, and we are not giving up on any of these brands, and we'll continue to focus and build.
Right, sir. My second question is on this loyalty program. Since it is there in some shape or form in other countries, and using their sort of experience as a starting point, what kind of sort of delta to the LFL growth do you think the loyalty scheme can give? If I look at your LFL growth for this quarter, on a three-year CAGR basis, it is somewhere in the region of about 3%. I think any QSR company, even a mature QSR company in stable state should be having at least a 6%-7% LFL growth, otherwise store economics deteriorates over a period of time. To get from that 3 to about 6 or 7, do you think that this loyalty scheme can sort of give that extra 300 basis points delta?
Firstly, while it will be difficult to put a number, I think our endeavor has been to drive LFLs through a number of interventions, loyalty being one of them. We believe that it will drive customer stickiness, improve overall frequency, and help us generate more life cycle value of the customer. That is not the only intervention that we are doing in terms of driving our overall LFL. I think there is a constant focus on improving product service and our service levels, and that's why there is a lot of focus on Pizza Delivery, a program that we have talked about in the past. We have said that now more than 70% of our pizzas get delivered in less than 20 minutes. We are also focusing on driving product innovation.
We did Chicken Overload a couple of quarters back. We did Paratha Pizza in the last quarter, and we have seen very significantly high level of visits. There is also a lot of focus on driving on a, you know, and improving our customer experience on all our digital assets. There's been a lot of investment that we're making behind that, to make the customer experience more intuitive and frictionless. We are also taking a lot of dine-in, specific interventions as we look at, you know, leveraging on the, dine-in growth. I think all of this put together would drive our LFL growth. Of course, loyalty would play an important role in that entire mix.
In the Indian context, with so many value-seeking customers, you know, people do things like sharing Netflix password with their friends, et cetera. Have you considered that kind of behavior in your loyalty scheme that there might be one person who's sort of having the app and ordering for two or three other friends, and therefore you don't get that benefit of the loyalty scheme, which you would have envisaged?
First, in any scheme there will be abusers, but we believe that the overall benefit that we will get from genuine users, who would genuinely drive up frequency, will far outweigh some of these abusers.
Okay, sir. That's all. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chirag from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. On the multi-brand, multi-country growth approach, can you talk a little bit around how would you incrementally think of allocating capital with a 2-3-year view? And how will the CapEx split between Domino's, other brands, international geographies will look like? And as an organization, do we think that we can generate similar or better ROC on incremental investments versus what we are generating today?
Thanks for that question, Chirag. I think we have a very clearly articulated strategy for growth. Our first and foremost pillar for growth is to build dominance. Then we are talking about creating a portfolio of brands, grow our international footprint, and continue to invest in building digital and data capabilities. I think our investment and capital allocation follows the same philosophy and principles which are in line with our strategic pillars. We have a very strong balance sheet. We have adequate cash, and we have zero debt on our balance sheet. We believe that, by being very calibrated and by way of being very disciplined, we would continue to generate very high return for our shareholders and stakeholders.
Sure, sure. Just continuing on that point, you know, if you look at, you know, Bangladesh today, I mean, the number of stores that we have, even for the size of Bangladesh market, it looks like we are going for very calibrated expansion. So is there a scope to at least increase the expansion and the network base in Bangladesh? Because after a few years of operation, it still remains very low.
No. Chirag, I think your observation is very relevant. I think that is why one of the steps that we took in the last quarter was to increase our stake in our Bangladesh subsidiary to 100%. That was done precisely with the intent of accelerating our store or expansion in Bangladesh. We believe now that we are building the capability to scale up much faster in future.
Thanks.
Sorry.
Sure, go ahead.
Also, I think because of COVID in the last two years, there was some dent in the level at which we would have wanted to grow, and there were some operational challenges. As I said, now that we have 100% stake, and we've also enhancing the level of management quality and building capabilities, in Bangladesh, which will allow us to grow at a much faster pace.
Sure, sure. Just coming back on that loyalty program part, clearly very simple thought out strategy from a perspective of deriving long-term gains. I'm not sure about your comment on the impact of margins in the near term, right? You know, while the view is that you'll be replacing other discounts, when you say there'll be no impact on margins, are you talking about percentage margins or the fact that higher frequency will drive more profitability? Also, when we speak about replacing other discounts, are we talking about then reducing or scaling down the EDV program because that has been a key driver of our consumer recruitment in the past.
No. Chirag, I think if I were to take a step back, I think we have also become a lot more focused in our discount strategy. Our AI team has done an excellent job of creating a discount affinity model, which allows us to, you know, bucket consumer under various cohorts, which are high discount seeking versus low discount seeking. I think over a period of time, anyways, we have been able to drive a lot of return and efficiency from our overall discount spend.
We believe that even after launching this loyalty with the level of discounting and earn through burn that we are anticipating, we'll be able to maintain our current discount levels, without impacting our near-term or long-term, operating margins. Of course, in the longer term, if the loyalty program does turn out to be as successful as we are wanting it to be, we would see significantly improved frequency and it should be margin accretive.
Understood. Just one last question, if I may. On Hong's Kitchen, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of the stores closed down were on the DELCO model. Outside of the DELCO model, do you think that the unit economics now on Hong's Kitchen is falling in place?
The short answer to that question, Chirag, is yes. I think the progress that we have made in some of the other stores is very encouraging. A few of our stores have already turned profitable at unit store level. We've also opened a new store in Noida in Skymark One. If you get a chance, you must visit. Which is a full scale, you know, model, which is a new store design, and I think it's doing exceedingly well as the customers are able to experience the brand in totality, you know.
Sure. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jaykumar Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Now, when I look back at the past 15 years, you know, for Domino's, FY 2008 to FY 2013 was the phase where revenue growth was tracking significantly ahead of store growth. FY 2014 to 2017 was a soft patch where revenue growth was lagging store growth. We saw revenue growth ahead of store growth. Now, when I look at this quarter and compare it versus 1Q FY 2020, revenue growth and store growth are broadly comparable. Even as price increases plus introduction of delivery fees, overall the combined price increase is significant. How should we think about the next three years? You are adding, you know, 250 stores this year, and you may be adding similar number over the next one or two years. Is there any chance that revenue growth may fall behind store growth?
Jay, I think, as we've always stated that, you know, while we continue to drive store growth, we remain incessantly focused on also driving the same store growth, because I think that's the mainstay of our overall efforts in the organization. As I was just mentioning, I think there are a number of steps that we continue to take to drive our LFL growth, be it improving our customer service levels, our operating KPIs, be it introducing consumer relevant innovations like Paratha Pizza or, you know, dine-in specific interventions that we are making, and even the launch of the loyalty program. Along with that, of course, continuous improvements on our digital platform.
I think a combination of all of this will help us deliver a more balanced growth where it comes through a combination of driving the same-store growth as well as you know store-led growth. That's the way we have constructed our growth hypothesis for going forward. We hope to be able to deliver that based on all the inputs that are going in.
Understood. Just a follow-up question there. Now, when I, you know, think about the innovations, you know, new product launches over the past few years, it's largely been within the pizza category. So do such new product launches actually over time, you know, help in terms of incremental value, or it kind of replaces some of the older products? And if that is the case, are you exploring or considering expanding the product portfolio outside of pizzas to be able to drive higher revenue throughput for some of the stores, you know, that may have saturated in terms of revenue throughput?
Jay, I think innovation helps us do two things primarily. I think A, it helps us give a wider range and therefore improves consumption for existing customers. Secondly, it also helps us recruit new customers into the category as it creates more excitement. What we have noticed is that more than cannibalization, it leads to incremental growth. When we evaluate innovations internally, we also do it from a lens of incrementality. Yeah. Some of the innovations, as you said, have been brought in the pizza core pizza category, whether it is Cheezalicious or Chicken Overload or the Paratha Pizza. Also we have been innovating in the adjacent space. For example, we have recently launched the Red Velvet Lava Cake, right?
There are a number of sides where we keep innovating. Even Garlic Bread, I think we introduced a range of Garlic Bread, which was a stuffed Garlic Bread from chicken to paneer tikka. I think our innovation program looks at you know 360-degree of the entire palette in terms of where there is a gap and where we should be innovating. We are also looking at a number of regional mixes. There is a continuous funnel which is getting you know made, and we have line of sight and visibility to at least the next 3-4 quarters of the innovation that we will be rolling out.
Understood. Thank you. Any comments you can give on, when do you intend to go ahead with national rollout of, Hong's Kitchen? We are expecting it to happen sometime during the course of this financial year. Is it still on track or?
Look, as we mentioned last quarter also, Jay, and as you—I think just read it, that we said we will take a pause for the next 2-3 quarters.
Okay.
I think we at this stage remain fairly confident that we should be able to expand Hong's beyond NCR as we get into the next fiscal.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vishal Gutka from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Dean. Just one question on food services business. Our tech suggested that you have started supplying buns, cookies to the HORECA channel. Just wanted to know why you have started this line of business, and any comments if you can give on the margin prospects and long-term aspiration for this business.
Thanks, Vishal, for your question. I think your question is on the food service business. I think this is again more of a pilot stage that we are in. We are looking at. See, we have a large capability that we have built at the backend in our commissary. We have a national footprint of commissary, and we have built a lot of strength at the backend. The idea is to how we can leverage that strength that we have built in our commissary and the expertise that we have in manufacturing and food, and to create a business which could be scalable and profitable. I think as of now, it's more at a pilot stage, and we will see how it pans out.
Okay. Then on Dunkin' Donuts front, I just saw some of the pics in the Skymark building, Noida, where I think you opened a very large format store where interiors seem to be quite good. Are you trying to go on lines of what we call Starbucks? Because in the initial comment you alerted that coffee is going to be the focus. In that case, will it require a change of name as well to what we call differently? As of now the name is Dunkin' Donuts for the brand.
Thanks, Vishal. I think we're not calling it Dunkin' Donuts, we're just calling it Dunkin'. This is in line with the overall global strategy of Dunkin's, where it's actually a coffee first brand, and that's what we are trying to build now. As we mentioned earlier, we have done a number of things to make it a coffee first brand, in terms of changing the beans, bringing in a new store design, bringing in new coffee machines, and making the food compatible with coffee. As I said earlier, I think we are very excited with this new pivot that we are doing for Dunkin', and we really hope that this will really work and redefine Dunkin' for us and for India.
Okay. A last question on the LFL or like-for-like growth. Any comments on what they call metro tier one cities versus tier three or four cities? Or it is broad-based, right, it's coming from all across?
No. We have seen growth across all town tiers, Vishal. Of course, we have seen slightly higher growth in tier two, tier three and tier four towns versus tier one. By and large, the growth has been fairly broad-based.
Okay. Okay, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Yes.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Latika Chopra from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Apologies, I joined a little late. Not sure if this has been addressed. My question was, you know, trying to get a little more color on the delivery growth. You know, what kind of delivery growth have you seen? Have you seen volume growth within your delivery business sequentially? That was my first question.
Thanks, Latika, and thanks for that question. As we had explained earlier in the call, I think that we are seeing a very strong sequential dine-in recovery. The good news is that we've also seen a very robust delivery growth, and the delivery growth is largely order-led. We have seen the delivery growing both sequentially and year-over-year.
You know, no, thanks for that, but you know, your order growth could be different from volume growth, right? Because, what I mean by volume growth is, you know, number of units that you're selling or your number of units per order could be affected. In that context, are you seeing a growth even in number of units? Because given the kind of price increases, you know, we have seen and the sharp recovery in dine-in, I'm just trying to understand, volume numbers for delivery are holding out or they're growing or, you know, what's really happening there.
Latika, you're right. I think we did make a pricing intervention, one in December earlier and then earlier this year in April. Our pricing has overall, I think, landed fairly well. What is heartening is that we are seeing order-led growth, as I said, even sequentially. Given the highly inflationary environment, we have seen consumers make some choices by reducing quantity per order marginally. At an overall level, we have seen both order growth and also growth in our ticket sizes sequentially.
All right. My second question was, you know, in the previous call, there was a lot of confidence shared on the fact that margins for the company will be maintained, you know, around 25% levels despite the, you know, stepped up store expansion and investments in Popeyes. Is this something you still stand by or, you're looking at, you know, the like-for-like growth levels and the inflation outlook and your sustained expansion plans? Do you see this, you know, margin outlook differently?
Latika, I think our margin outlook remains unchanged. As we mentioned in the past, we continue to maintain that we will deliver a healthy level of margins. Of course, this quarter, as you know, was at a very heightened level of inflation. Despite that, we have been able to deliver a very healthy margin of 24.6% gross in there. This was delivered on the back of the price increase that we took, but more importantly, productivity that we drove throughout our entire value chain and through the operating leverage. I think some of these, you know, enablers would continue to fire, and we're confident that we should be able to maintain or deliver current levels of profitability as we go ahead.
All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks, Latika.
The next question is from the line of Sheela Rathi from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. My first question was with respect to the dine-in recovery. I would like to understand how is the dine-in recovery as compared to the third quarter of FY 2020. Have we recovered on a natural basis, which is, you know, comparable to that particular quarter? Or how far away we are from that level?
Thanks, Sheela, for your question, and if I've understood it right, you're trying to compare it to a pre-COVID normal quarter?
Yes.
As I said earlier, I think we have seen a very strong recovery in dine-in. I think we are very close to the pre-COVID level now. I wouldn't say that we are fully recovered, but I think we are very, very, very close now. We are seeing sequential and month-on-month improvement in dine-in, and dine-in has come back very strongly as we have seen the overall fears of COVID subsiding. I think, to summarize, we have seen very strong recovery in dine-in, and we are now very close to the pre-COVID levels.
All right. My second question is, with respect to the recent announcement which came through, on the 40% acquisition of Roadcast. Just wanted to understand how does that fit into your current ecosystem. I understand, you know, they provide some last-mile delivery operations, but I just wanted to get some granularity there.
Thanks, Sheela. I think our investment in Roadcast reflects our intent of making, you know, strategic investments in promising startups, something that we have been doing since last year. Roadcast offers a SaaS-based platform for management of last mile delivery options. I think it provides end-to-end delivery management solutions to monitor and manage vehicles as well as field staff in real time. We see a number of areas driving collaboration and synergies with Roadcast. I think this would be a long-term strategic tie-up and an investment for us, and it should pay out well in the long run.
Just to understand this clearly, we are already doing this bit, right? With respect to monitoring the fleet on an ongoing basis on a live basis. This is an additional element to what we are already doing.
Sorry, Sheela, I didn't get that question. Sorry. If you can repeat it, please.
What I understand is there is live monitoring of this fleet, which you already have. Roadcast would also be offering the same thing. Is it something different from what you are already doing?
Sheela, the company offers two kinds of solutions. One is, of course, delivery fleet management, and the other is live vehicle tracking. We were currently also leveraging on third-party platforms as far as driver tracking is concerned. This is not something which we had built in-house, and that's why we see a very high level of synergies with Roadcast, because it also helps us accelerate our tech roadmap as far as you know, driver tracking and tech is concerned.
Understood. Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Avi Mehta from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Just 2 questions. First, I just want to clarify, the 6 closures in Hong's and Ekdum are nothing but 3 stores counted doubly. Is that understanding correct? I want to just clarify that. Or is that?
Yes, Avi, that understanding is correct because these were store formats where we had housed all these three brands together, which is Dunkin', Hong's, and Ekdum. Therefore, we have closed three such stores, which leads to nine closures overall in terms of stores, because one for each brand.
Okay. Okay, perfect. Sir, the second clarification I just wanted to have was on the margin commentary. You said you would maintain the guidance on EBITDA margin, which is the FY 2022 margins will be similar to 22, or at least to FY 2022. That is the guidance you said last time. That is what you're maintaining, right, sir?
Sorry, Avi. Is your question that we would maintain margin similar to last year level?
Yes. That was the guidance you said last quarter. I just want to reconfirm because you said to the earlier participants that you would maintain that guidance.
I said we'll continue to maintain it at a healthy level. Of course, it's very difficult to give out a particular number, but I think we are in the broad ballpark of 25% now, and we would want to remain.
Okay, sir. Okay. It's maintaining at a healthy level. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take the last question from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, question was to understand the same store growth going ahead. With Domino's being a clear leader in terms of penetration, it becomes easy for peers to open store near Domino's stores. Do you see this impacting your SSG as expansion plans as well as filling of portfolio gaps by peers sort of remain aggressive?
Mr. Devanshu, I think thanks for that question, first of all. I think we have a very clear roadmap in terms of network expansion. There are three clear vectors to that. One, of course, is entering new cities. We have, this quarter also we entered 12 new cities, and we are now present in 349 cities. We are close to 170+ cities where we are the only pizza. That will remain a very important vector of growth for us, where we'll continue to look at entering new cities and new towns. Second vector of growth for us, of course, is entering white spaces in existing towns and cities.
40% of the stores that we have opened in the recent past have been in white spaces in an existing town, as we have seen the town boundaries increasing and also there are areas which we were not serving earlier. Third, of course, is our fortification strategy, where we continue to split stores. As we've explained in the past, they do really well and pay back in less than two years. I think a combination of all these three would be driving our network expansion strategies. Of course, we have built in a lot of science and data in terms of identifying where we should be opening stores. If our competition comes near us, they're always welcome. We are always ready to meet them eye to eye.
Sure. Secondly, wanted to understand, is pricing going to be a key driver for SSG going ahead or you remain confident of volume growth driving the SSG, given the introduction of loyalty program as well as new innovations that we have?
Devanshu, I think, inflation, while it remains high, we have seen some moderation and stabilization, in quarter one. If things stand as they stand today, we currently do not see a need for another round of pricing. We are well-positioned, and we should be able to manage, with the current level of pricing. Of course, we'll continue to look at pockets of opportunity for value extraction, without compromising on our value for money proposition.
Sure. Lastly, in Sri Lanka, we saw a strong growth, despite challenging macros. Wanted to understand more on the reason behind the recognition of this impairment charge as our long-term outlook for this economy also remains healthy.
Devanshu, the impairment charge is more accounting-led, and this is an impairment of some of the historical investments that we have done, largely on account of a depreciating currency and steep increase in the interest rates in the economy. This is a non-cash charge. As we said, we remain very positive on the overall outlook of this economy. Our plans in Sri Lanka have not been changed because of what we have seen, because we have seen a very strong operating performance in the country.
Sure, sir. That's helpful. Thanks. That's it from me.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you everyone for joining us today evening. Wish you all the very best. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your-