With us again this afternoon to discuss Jollibee's third quarter results is Mr. Richard Shin. He is the CFO of the Jollibee Group, who is also, as some of you might know, currently CEO of the international operations of the company. As has been the case previously, Richard will begin with a presentation, after which we will open the floor to Q&A. I won't hold this up any longer, so we will have more time for questions. So let me, sorry, let me pass it on to Cosette, who has some reminders.
Yeah, thank you, Gio. Thank you, Regis Partners and Jefferies, for hosting our earnings call. Okay, so good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Jollibee Group's earnings call for the third quarter of 2025. Yeah, before Mr. Shin starts his presentation, let me quickly read the reminder on forward-looking statements. So this earnings call may include forward-looking statements that are based on certain assumptions of management and are subject to risks and opportunities for unforeseen events.
Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated in the relevant forward-looking statement, and Jollibee Foods Corporation gives no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be correct or that such intentions will not change. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to Jollibee Foods Corporation or persons acting on behalf of the Jollibee Foods Corporation are expressly qualified in their entirety by the above cautionary statements.
So now I'll turn over the call to Mr. Shin.
Great. Thank you so much, Cosette, and thank you, Gio, for hosting us once again. So a very good afternoon and a good morning to those of you who are dialing in from different time zones. This is very much appreciated that you've taken the time and effort to join us today. As usual, before we get into the financials, I'd like to share with you some of what we believe will be top-of-mind questions that we all have running the business, but also as investors and potential investors. So we'll cover that. We'll go through the financials, and we'll conclude with our guidance, and then we'll open up for live Q&A.
First and foremost, I know many of us are wondering whether the 1.2% same-store sales growth that we published for Q3 of this year is, in fact, a new run rate, whether, in fact, there are any concerns about the Philippine consumer base, and I am here to tell you it is absolutely a temporary impact. And if you were to look at October, of course, we can't share these results in the Q4, but things are looking much more back to usual and the numbers that we delivered in the first half of this year as well, so you can see here a note of 14 typhoons that really hit, and it's also the magnitude of these typhoons quite often causing flooding.
As you know, we are a restaurant and cafe business, meaning that we're not consumer packaged goods.
So a lot of our impact on the same-store sales, of course, will be impacted on our dine-in when weather conditions are so disastrous. Although we have delivery, that also does get impacted. So that's the main theme here. You have also seen that there's a little bit of a margin movement, if you will, in terms of OPM rate. I'll be addressing that throughout. The big compression that we saw was on GPM, but let me assure you again, the margin squeeze caused mainly by the cost of inventory rise is such that we did not take aggressive pricing again for the third quarter in a row. And I've said this in past calls, but our aim really is to make sure we take pricing at the right time that reflects the market condition. But also, our goal is to continuously drive transaction count or volume into our store.
And so we've taken that strategy again. So we're okay with the margin movements as long as we continue to grow the size of the pie or net net profitability. On the other side, we did deliver efficiencies, efficiencies to the tune of 30 basis points around G&A expenses. We're very, of course, cautious in how we spend our money and manage through situations that we see these days. So strong underlying demand and disciplined cost management enable us to maintain healthy performance, still positive growth despite all these additional weather-influenced slowdowns. And on the next slide, I wanted to show you a little bit more in terms of how we break this down in terms of what the last two years look like, plus this year's third quarter.
So let me start by saying, just focusing on Q3, we had a two-year CAGR of over 20%, as you can see, 13% here in 2023. And in 2024, last year, we delivered another 6.4% off of a very high base in 2023. And this year is this 1.2 that I mentioned. The other thing to note, if you look at the timing of when school opens and how our consumer base shifts, if you will, between quarters, depending on the timing of school opening. In Q3, we did not have the benefits of longer school holiday days. So in 2024, school opened on July 29th, and in 2025, you can see it opened in Q2. So therefore, there will be an impact related to that that we're seeing in Q3.
Again, I reiterate and emphasize that this is temporary, and what we're seeing in October is more back to where we expect our business to be. Philippines is probably the last market that I'm actually concerned about in terms of median age consumption that's related to food and to value meals that we provide throughout our 3,500 restaurants in the Philippines. Then moving on to the other big topic, which is the Jollibee brand. So we just talked about Philippines. Now, let me share with you where we are in terms of our third quarter performance of Jollibee outside of the Philippines. So here we start with Hong Kong and Macau, where we have a presence of somewhat 25 stores.
And you can see, despite a lot of the news out there about sort of the tightening of the F&B industry in places like Singapore and Hong Kong, etc., you can see a very strong continuous growth, not just led by system-wide sales, but also our existing assets. So our same-store sales growth, we delivered an industry lead of 13.2% in this important market, very profitable market as well for us. North America, the bigger opportunity, of course. We delivered yet again double-digit same-store sales growth at 11.9%. And if you add in the new store buildouts in both Canada and the US, system-wide sales was 16.7%. EMEA, led by Vietnam, but also other markets in Asia and other parts of the world, very strong, robust system-wide sales growth, 24.6%. And a big part of that, of course, is our dominance in Vietnam, which I'll speak to very shortly.
Our same-store sales, it's the same number as North America, 11.9%. So rolling up, we delivered a quarter at 20% system-wide sales and a 12% on the same-store sales. And you can see some of the multi-brands and single-brand competitors that we always track against, effectively the top five plus Domino's here for additional reference point. Now, let's take North America. So the first update I'd like to share with everyone here, we're very proud in the third quarter to announce that we've opened our first franchise Jollibee store in the US. And I've been talking about this franchise opportunity for a while. It's now materializing, as you can see through this opening. And our ADS of that store, this is not a freestanding delivery store. This is, in fact, an end-cap, so slightly smaller footprint and, of course, lower CapEx for the franchisee.
Nonetheless, this store continues to deliver around 17,000 ADS, again, making us very proud of this moment, but also excited to continue this franchise rollout with speed and intention. To that point, in the third quarter, we have also onboarded a very experienced senior, very capable head of franchising for Jollibee North America, and his name is Peter Wright. He has very relevant experience in the U.S. and also in our sector. Underneath his leadership, we are looking at 47 multi-unit development agreements.
These are agreements that have more than one store, of course, and hence the term multi-unit that's already been signed. 30 new commitments are in the pipeline as of end of Q3. When you move on to our existing store base in North America, Jollibee USA, we add here yet again another 500 versus my last report, which was around 14,000.
We're now running our business at 14,500 ADS, continues to grow month on month and quarter on quarter. And Jollibee Canada here again is a high of 12,000, up from high 11,000 base that are reported in Q2. Some very notables here around product, so as we all understand, we are moving into general population in the U.S., and so it's important to also have menu upgrades that reflect that, so the launch of the Angus Burgers to complement our existing burger lines led by Yumburger, chicken tenders, Botrista, the investment that we made sometime last year. We continue to see incremental ADS coming through that without cannibalization to our soda drinks platform, and we launched here what's called Signature Sips, which is very much targeted about being a better or healthier option, if you will.
It has options around sugar, uses sugar cane versus other artificial types of sugar. It has options, of course, around tea-based fruit puree, not flavors, but puree-based, etc. So it's really meeting the needs of our consumer base that's looking for alternatives to soda pop. And of course, we continue to carry our soda lineup as well. We've also launched the Korean Barbecue Chickenjoy as an LTO, and I'll speak of that a little bit more on the next slide, and continue to upgrade and increase our share of wallet in our handheld sandwiches.
Here we're talking about the Premium Chicken Burger. And all of this is adding to our base, our strong base of Chickenjoy. So we continue to have a very, I would say, tight menu. We're not quite wide, but nonetheless, we're adding very thoughtfully to driving general population frequency.
And the last point here, loyalty program launched during the quarter. It's delivering at this point a snapshot of 17% ROI. That's effectively 1.2 million incremental monthly sales. This will increase, of course, as the program gets wider and better known. But also in terms of new signups, we are looking to sign up one million customers by the end of this year. And at the end of September, we've already signed up 850,000 new members to the loyalty program.
The thing about the loyalty program that's very appreciated in many businesses, including ours, is that the average check tends to be higher, and the frequency of our consumers tends to be also more frequent. Continuing with North America, now more on the brand side, this is the Golden State Warriors, and they've approached us, in fact.
So this is not a high-priced sponsorship, but rather they came to us, and we discussed many collaboration efforts. And so we started collaborating with the Golden State Warriors in a very cost-effective way, again, increasing our brand awareness and the brand reach in the U.S. And then the final point here, this band KATSEYE, it has quite a large following, and we're doing a collaboration with them as well. Korean barbecue was an example, of course, of how we brought this to life. Just note for myself up here, as I'm not as familiar with these bands as some of the other, I guess, younger generation maybe. But Sophia is actually a Filipina, and she's the leader of this very famous multicultural band.
So again, you see some of the numbers and some of the TikTok and YouTube and other social media reach that we've been getting with this collaboration. So very excited to report that. Moving on to Vietnam, our biggest in terms of footprint, biggest market outside of the Philippines with 224 stores as of September 31st of this year. You can see what's written here. So let me just summarize by saying, beyond the market share where we're leading, we're also number one in revenue.
We're number one in average daily sales, and we're number one in profitability with essentially 100% local consumer base. So we'll continue to build stores. There's still room for growth in Vietnam, and our payback for our 100% company-owned stores in Vietnam is now reaching somewhere around three years or 33% store ROIC. These numbers here are not an error.
This is actually our system-wide sales growth due to the rapid expansion and also the same-store sales growth. We're starting to get a lot of traction, in particular in our more densely populated areas such as Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. Moving on to our other category, our segment number two, coffee and tea, and again, the takeaway point here is double-digit high teens EBITDA growth, and on the top left here, you see the system-wide sales growth rates versus last year. You see the various brands and businesses that we have within our portfolio. So just to focus now in Q3 here, you can see Compose Coffee added 11.5%, sorry, delivered 11.5% system-wide sales, and the other big notable here is Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, also growing at 11.2%. Smaller number with Highlands, but you'll see later the contribution these businesses make to our cash profits EBITDA.
So we're now 77% franchise. And the reason why this number isn't even higher is because of our deliberate choice, in particular to Highlands Coffee, where we continue to build stores that are company-owned because of the very rapid payback and the high store ROIC. So just some notable. So Highlands Coffee, it's essentially from a positioning point of view, it is a specialty coffee, and it is really dominant in its homeland of Vietnam. What's also very good for us is upstream-wise because this is Robusta beans.
And upstream-wise, there is a very significant percentage of Robusta beans that are coming from Vietnam. And so upstream-wise, we don't have currency risks. We don't have pricing risks in the same way that maybe some of our competitors may. And so this has worked out very nicely for us.
We also have a very state-of-the-art roasting and blending facility that we put up very recently that allows us not only for the domestic consumption needs, but we're also looking at potentially consumer packaged goods exports to places like the U.S., etc., as Robusta becomes a more and more popular choice of beans as well. So that's pretty much, I think, the full piece of that. And the rest, you can see these are all commercial sort of highlights, doing very, very well. And we've delivered a double-digit same-store sales growth for Highlands in Q3. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, also doing very well with expanded global footprint with 73 new stores that have been built and continues to do very well.
And if we take a market like Malaysia, we have three markets where we have company-owned stores, and Malaysia being the largest of the three, you can see significant growth coming through there as well. Then, of course, we've moved to the Arabica Bean category, but more importantly, the value segment. So we have premium, we have specialty, and we have value. And in the value segment, we have one brand, and that's Compose. We bought that in August of last year. So Q3 is really a month and a half of lapping.
So same stores, but a month and a half that's still not in our P&L last year. So for that reason, we are not showing you same-store sales growth, which in our formula, we need 15 months of lapping before we take that in as a same store.
But you can see system-wide sales growth of 190% year-on-year from that Q3 that I mentioned of last year and 413% or quadrupling of our revenue base. I'll get to this a little bit later, but some of you would have noticed our margins for Compose Coffee shifted a bit versus Q1 to Q2 of this year. That's really because of what I'm showing here. We signed V again, and so his contract comes through in Q3. Of course, this is beyond just a commercial contract. This is also to elevate the brand.
What we're seeing immediate effect in Korea is a very good appreciation of the brand. It's elevated the brand's positioning in terms of image and prestige, even though our price positioning still remains value segment.
And also, it's proven the point that this brand is transportable because we have now received many inquiries from outside of Korea in terms of franchising interest for Compose in countries within Asia, but outside of Korea. So this cost, of course, is not a run rate cost. And hence, you'll see an AUV uplift in Q3, which shows through the margin, but the impact is one-time, if you will.
Some of you may be wondering about compared to last year, why our margin? And this is the EBIT margin here, not just product. Our margin went from somewhere around mid-50s or low-40s to somewhere around mid-teens, high teens, still very good OPM margin, but nonetheless. And it's really this accounting piece.
And if I was to just say it very simply, we were not in line with the industry in terms of where the value segment coffee players sat in terms of how they reported their numbers. We were using, prior to changing it, so the previous regime before we bought the business, we're using a 4PL. And I have a slide to just quickly illustrate that. But 4PL method, which essentially says that the ownership of inventory transfers at a different point in time. And of course, the industry is using a 3PL, and industry margin is somewhere closer to the mid-teens.
So that's the big chunk here. And of course, all businesses have other reasons, such as G&A improvement or, again, this decision, which I just mentioned, to over-index on the A&P as we brought V into our system again for the second year as a brand ambassador.
And the coffee price impact, this is Arabica beans. So there was some impact. I know that's on many people's mind, but I would say relative to other businesses, this is a very manageable impact in which we can weather through quite easily. The other thing I want to mention is beyond the operating income climbing to over 31%, we hit our store number 3,000 in Q3. Our original forecast was to get to that 3,000 level by the end of the year. I think everything we're doing in terms of passing on. We have not taken price.
So by passing on this opportunity to our franchisees to take retail selling price to consumers, but still remaining the lowest Americano in the market, it also allows our franchisees to continue to be very financially viable.
Hence, they continue to buy beans, which is our number one revenue model in Korea for Compose. There's no big royalty play here in Korea. And so by taking that strategy, we're also seeing the halo effect of new franchisees wanting to come into our system. And so we're building somewhere between 30 to 40 new stores per month. Just a couple of footnotes here on the bean price, but also on the impact of V's campaign unlocking potential revenue and system-wide sales uplift. And of course, this will be over time. So this is the, again, illustrative. So don't take these numbers literally. This is an illustration to show that at 4PL, your revenue base is different because you're selling to the 4PL, who then takes ownership of the inventory. And then when they sell on to our franchisees, that's when the full P&L gets actualized.
So you can see here the bottom line remains the same. EBIT is the same at 70 and 70. Whereas in the 3PL, you have a different point of revenue recognition. Hence, you take revenue here, but you'll be showing, again, illustrative purposes, a lower EBIT margin. So the key point here is the bottom line doesn't change. The margin rates look different, but economically, it delivers the same dollars.
Let's move on to coffee bean price and what's that impact. Again, we're a café, not a CPG company where you have less layers, and you probably have a more direct impact in terms of margins and also the impact to consumers. So let me start by saying that the coffee bean price increase, and you can see hitting 400 or $4 per pound, it is a significant number.
But in terms of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, our impact was fairly low at 1.7%. Compose was the one that I just mentioned at 3%. Highlands gives us Robusta beans. So a big part of our business actually has no impact due to Arabica price. And also for that matter, Robusta price increase because of the way we buy forward, sometimes 12, sometimes 24 months out locking in prices because of our dominant position in Vietnam.
Let's move on to Smashburger. So we're committed to having Smashburger deliver profits, and we're still on track to that. Q3, we're showing numbers that are showing improvements in our losses, but also later I'll show you the impact of our same-store sales decline, slowing down to a very low single digit. Some callouts here. We were named the Restaurant Ground Beef Marketer of the Year by the Certified Angus Beef Association.
This is very important because this is a very important part of our branding that we are 100% Certified Angus Beef, and so we got recognized for that. We also got recognized for our side products such as milkshake, with the chocolate shake being voted number one, and you can see here that we're being recognized for the purity of our ingredients. It is not a fast food, although our pricing, the high-low price, which I mentioned last quarter, is putting us in a very interesting place in terms of consumers wanting to come in and try this superior product, but at lower than QSR price. National Cheeseburger Day, for example, if you would just look at that, we had a 47% organic sales growth and a 66% traffic uplift.
So, a lot of great things have been happening in the quarter, and we are going to continue to push those strategic levers in terms of pricing, ingredients, advertising, the way we get out to the market so that, and we're not building new stores at the moment, so that we can get to a place where we can start to refranchise our 97 company-owned stores. And at that point, it becomes pretty much a franchise business and a cash business for us. So, we're on track to delivering that. I think I've mentioned that.
The key point on this slide is, unlike many businesses in our portfolio and perhaps in our competitors' portfolio, our non-traditional franchise meaning places like airports, military bases, and universities, which has a higher density and higher traffic, in particular the airports, we are actually very much over-indexed in that 44% of our franchise stores are non-traditional. And this is a high ratio and is a good ratio for us. But that also means that our franchisees in that channel are making over 20% EBITDA margin. Of course, the translation of that means there's more interest and more stores in the pipeline. So moving on to point two, we opened two more value-creative non-traditional locations in Q3. And one was in Denver. Sorry, one was in Detroit, which made it our first store in the state of Michigan in the US. And the other one was on a naval base.
We have now 13 pipelines in this segment. So we'll continue to drive this hard as this part of the P&L is extremely positive for us. Earlier, I mentioned the 97 stores that we will be refranchising and also adding on to the one ratio within a reasonable amount of time to really expand our footprint as we get this EBITDA margin rate target right for our franchisees to be profitable and successful. China, I think I've mentioned several times our strategy to price down, if you will. So we do have an AC drop as we price our menu down, but we have more than a double, if you will, our TC of 26% more than Compose. That's just double that of the AC, 11% drop.
And so what we're seeing is in Q3, we delivered an 8% same-store sales growth versus Q2 at 3.9% and Q1 at -8.3%. And I think I said in Q2 that we'll have a stronger back half, and it's coming as we had forecasted and planned. So we'll continue to drive the super value model, which is the new store model that we developed that's giving us somewhere around one and a half year payback now. And we're starting to see more interest from the franchisee community. And our number one KPI for next year really is to have a more robust new store openings with this new model. Okay.
So yeah, happy with China on its progress, but I think very quickly you'll see that curve in terms of our scale and scalability when we get to run rates of, let's say, around 15-20 stores a month. That effectively gets us to a very good place where we're growing store network by north of 50% per year. And that then gives us the scale in which you'll see the profitability coming through. Tim Ho Wan, our latest, if you will. I say latest, if you will, because we've invested in Tim Ho Wan through a fund. As you know, we put the capital in back in 2019. And then because it was in the fund, our ability to consolidate did not exist. We took it out of the fund January of this year.
Happy to report that our EBITDA cash contribution has now increased by 4x for the quarter or 3x year to date. Q1 was the start. Q2 started to make improvements on that. Q3, we're now in this momentum rhythm whereby all new stores open in Hong Kong delivers under two-year payback. All of our stores in Hong Kong, which is our center of gravity market, of course, because Tim Ho Wan is Cantonese dim sum from Hong Kong. We can see the profitability of our stores in Hong Kong now in existence, whereas last year that was not the case. We've taken this model of menu pricing, store design, even procurement model of sourcing as one: plates, furniture, ingredients, etc. We're now applying it to our other company-owned store markets such as Singapore and, of course, our franchisee markets such as Japan.
Here you can see our most recent store opening, LaLaport in Japan, was a model that was mirrored after the Hong Kong model. So again, we believe we have the blueprint. And for that, consumers are recognizing us. So in terms of quality and synergy, you can see we've reached a high of 4.8 in Google ratings. And 12 months ago, this was not the case. We were not even above four. So a lot of the hard work and good work that the team has put in in the last nine months is really coming through. So we're very excited about this brand. The potential of this brand is enormous. And we have a very focused plan in how we're going to build this by focusing on our center of gravity market of Hong Kong, but also our biggest opportunity market, the US.
For those of you who are following brands like Din Tai Fung, you would have noticed that brands like that recently was announced as a top AUV. So they're running boxes in the U.S. at $27 million, which translates to somewhere around $74,000 ADS. Our boxes will be smaller, but nonetheless, there's definitely a place for authentic Chinese in the U.S. where this will be a fairly new space in terms of a chain dim sum brand with Michelin star heritage. So hence, you can see the capital light model, all these models that we've developed, we've tested it, and we're now in the process of rolling it out. Capital allocation, we are still very much focused not just on P&L, but delivering, as we said, the 20% ROIC by 2020.
And right across, so if you look at buckets of growth investments, our franchising gives us superior return, of course. We all know that. And those are brands like Jollibee, Mang Inasal, Yonghe King in China, Smashburger, the non-traditional, which I mentioned, and also the future plan of converting Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and Compose Coffee, of course, which is a 100% franchise model. And Tim Ho Wan, where still a very large part of our P&L comes from our franchise markets.
We're also making sure CapEx allocation to company-owned stores are towards those with high payback periods and also high AUVs. So Jollibee, of course, top of the list. I mentioned Vietnam. In the Philippines also, we are returning sub-three-year paybacks. Highlands Coffee, of course, is sub-three years.
Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in places like Malaysia and Tim Ho Wan in places like Hong Kong, which I mentioned is a year and a half. So our new norm now is sub-three years, which means minimum 33% return on that invested capital for those store buildouts. Just moving on, I think I spoke several times about what we did with the perpetual bond. We've now gone to a more cost-effective way of funding.
And you can see the numbers here, all within our debt covenant ratios. And our return to shareholders, the last dividend declared of PHP 344 is a nearly 16% year-on-year increase in absolute terms. Okay. Now let's get into the financial highlights. And I'll go through this a little bit quicker.
So I think some of these numbers you've seen reported, so I won't read through that, but I think I've tried to cover off all the key questions you may have vis-à-vis is there a margin compression? Is it real? Is it temporary? And so forth. So here are the results. Of course, Q3 is superior to our first half, so we have a blended impact here. Our Q4, we continue to guide to be our best quarter for the year, and we see this momentum carrying into 2026 as well. As a lot of our strategies are now setting, and our execution behind that is resulting in good outcomes. Okay. So I think I went through all that. I just want to, just for transparency, call out a couple of them that you may have.
Our gross margin here is gross margin on products, company stores, so rent, labor, etc., plus our commissary warehousing logistics. Basically all of our costs other than G&A and A&P. This gross margin compression of 7.7 or 70 basis points really is due to cost of inventory, which had an impact of 160 basis points. That is to say we found cost efficiencies to bring that down with very minimum pricing in markets like Philippines, which is, again, deliberate as we continue to drive forward hard on volume and new customers.
I think the key one here on this slide is earnings per share. The third quarter is up 8.9% versus the same quarter of last year. Again, I just want to put some perspective. Our gross profit globally, this is now OPM. This is after OpEx as well.
Here we're showing 8.5% global, of which international represents 22.7%. We just put some benchmarks here of the top five just as a comparable. I don't see it as a worrisome market, sorry, margin compression. The reason for that is because we've taken deliberate choice on price to drive volume so that we can net-net get a larger profit pool versus margin rates. I think you've probably seen all this in the 17-C, but just to highlight again, we spoke of the 1.2% here for the quarter. We spoke of the international contributions, and this is where we net out in terms of system-wide sales and same-store sales growth. I do want to call out a couple of things. China earlier, I showed you these numbers from -8.3% to +3.9% to +8%.
Smashburger went from negative 8.9% in Q2, and half that in Q3. Okay, so on this one here, this is the view of nine months. So nine months, so understanding Philippines Q3 had weather challenges. So nine months, we're still delivering 5.3% in terms of same-store sales growth and a very high single of 9.5% in the Philippines. So EBITDA, Philippines continues to contribute more, but you can see this is just a matter of time and it's math because Philippines at 60% contribution here is no longer the main or the majority as international is now contributing 40% of our cash margins.
And you can see versus last year, we're up despite the same-store sales challenge we had in the third quarter. Philippines still delivered cash profits of an increase of 17% or PHP 6.6 billion. North America is up. Smashburger's improved on the losses.
And you can see Q3 losses are now smaller than first half. EMEA continues to, with Vietnam leading, be a large percentage contributor and also trying to get there in terms of absolute. Coffee and tea after the Philippines is the next biggest cash margin contributor at PHP 2.3 billion with an 18.7% increase. And you can see the split here between the various brands. Tim Ho Wan, again, the relatively new, is now a profit contributor. And this is only the beginning because we all know that the potential of this brand is yet to scratch the surface. Cash flow and balance sheet. Again, no new news here. EBITDA margin, this is Q3 of last year versus Q3 of this year. We're 20 basis points up in terms of free cash from operations, 2.4 versus 2.2 same quarter last year.
Before the lease adjustments, it's 3.3% flat and with the lease adjustments, as you can see here. Guidance. We continue to guide the same as we did in Q2 and Q1. We have not changed our guidance. We're on the high end. System-wide sales, we're ahead. Rolling base, it's 4.7% year to date. It's still within, and this should improve in Q4. Same-store sales growth ahead.
CapEx, we spent PHP 10 billion for the first six months, sorry, for the first nine months, my apologies, with one quarter left. Chances are we'll be within this range, if not outside of the range in terms of less than PHP 18 billion. Operating income growth of 14.6% year to date, that's within the high end of the guidance. What sets us apart? I felt that this had to be sort of, I guess, summarized, if you will.
We do believe we're leading Philippine food service company with consistent double-digit top and bottom line growth, and I'll show you the four-year view on the next slide, driven by a very strong local base. Again, Q3 is not the norm. It's weather-dependent, and really what we're seeing is it continues to dominate the market, and there's still quite a bit of room for growth in the Philippines, and of course, global expansion, which we've invested in for many years, and we're now starting to see the seeds starting to sprout. We also reaffirm that our commitment to value creation remains absolutely unwavering, and we're driving clear strategies. We have not been misdirected on any of our strategies. We continue to drive the four food segment categories and the five must-wins that I've shared with you in the past. Focus capital allocation, of course, to optimize and maximize value.
Our executive KPIs, as pointed out earlier, are directly linked to shareholder value and share price. So the top management, we're in the exact same place as the shareholders. And of course, we believe we're still on track to meet the 2025 guidance, and of course, as part of the tripling EBITDA in five years commitment. Just to round off, revenues CAGR, this is a four-year view.
It's 19.7% delivered and NOI 52.9% delivered with a four-year view here. So with that, thank you very much. Just checking. Yeah. We've extended a little bit because I knew today's presentation will be a little bit longer than usual, but we've extended to quarter past the hour so that we can have 30 minutes to take on questions properly. So over to you, Gio. Thank you. Okay. I guess everybody knows the drill.
If you want to ask a question, please feel free to press the raise hand button, and I will allow you to speak and unmute your line. Hold on. Let's take a question from Nadine Bautista. Yeah. Nadine?
Yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah. Nadine here from JP Morgan. So a couple of questions on my end. I'll take them one by one. So first is on Philippines. Richard, you mentioned that it's really the cost of inventories that drove the gross margin compression. I mean, if we can ask what specific input costs were these, and if you looked at the net profit margin, we still see an expansion. Are there below EBIT items or non-recurring items that are driving the NPM expansion for Philippines?
Okay. So in terms of the raw materials, we consistently have very similar mix, Nadine, meaning 35% of our raw materials is chicken.
We're seeing low single-digit inflation on that. So I think most of that we're able to cost-efficiently weather through without taking price. Having said that, we did take a 0.9% price increase in Q3. The other items actually is a long list of items, but they're less than 10% contribution each. I think the other notable there is beef. And that's not just Philippines, but that's also global. So North America and other places where we're seeing raw material price coming in. Below EBIT, non-recurring items in Philippines, I'm going to have to get back to you because at a global level, I think the one that's being called out is the tailwind that we saw in FX. As you know, we report all FX, so both headwinds and tailwinds. But specific to Philippines, if we can maybe come back to you on that one.
Thanks, Richard. Until when should we expect to see the gross margin compression?
I think the world is such, Nadine, that value seems to be driving the winning formula for many of the successful companies we see around the world. For example, if you take Chili's in the U.S., who kind of pioneered this $10.99 value. So I think the strategy of the high, low, and value is an important one for us.
We see that in China. We see that in brands like Compose in Korea, of course, Jollibee in the Philippines. So I think the fourth quarter expects us to not be very aggressive on taking price. But I do believe that building up your transaction count, it's over, let's say, one- or two-year period. That's absolutely the right strategy given that inflation and, I guess, cost consciousness is a theme right across.
I just wanted to share with you, Nadine, that in terms of transaction counts, in Q1, we increased the business by 5.9% through transaction count. And that's a significant number. It tapered off a little bit in Q2, but nonetheless, we still continue to drive with 1.4% transaction count. So I think we'll continue to not we'll take some pricing, but not aggressive pricing because we don't want to tip the scale whereby consumers start to leave the brand. That's very important for us.
Thanks, Richard. Second set of questions is on China. So first, if you can give more color on the improvement in the SSSG. I mean, why are you seeing also divergence between Tim Ho Wan, which is delivering negative SSSG and system-wide sales growth?
Great question. I think what's important for the audience to understand is China is a delivery market. So depending on the business, good chunk, meaning at least two-thirds, which is around our ratio, but in some cases, even as high as 80% or 90% will be through the delivery channel.
And delivery channel means aggregators. So I think it is very important to make sure you can understand the cost impact of that.
And China is not as severe as in other markets because it is such a normal way of distributing your products. But you have to understand the impact on that. So same-store sales growth is driven both, in our case, by dine-in, so more people are dining in, but also through a delivery channel. It is a value positioning for us. So Yonghe King is a, let's call it $2-$3, if you will, breakfast, sorry, lunch, and maybe $1.50-$2 breakfast. Whereas Tim Ho Wan is a very different business.
A lot of our stores were built pre-COVID in malls before the economy in China looked very different. It's not a value play of $2-$3 a meal, but it's a proper casual dining. I think even though they're both in China, that's kind of where the similarities end. They're actually very different segments.
We have a very clear plan for what we want to do with Tim Ho Wan China, now that we have Tim Ho Wan as part of under our management. Just on that point, we made a significant improvement in China on Tim Ho Wan. It's just that segment is not a good segment to expand in. We've halted expansions, and we have strategic ideas on how to manage that piece. Yeah, I think those are the main reasons why you're seeing the differences.
Got that. Last question on China. If you can share color on why we are seeing a drop in the contribution from new stores that's driving this lower system-wide sales growth. And if you can share store expansion targets for China to get us back to the more than 2 billion EBITDA contribution.
Absolutely. So beginning of the year, as most people, the payback landscape was a little bit higher. So let's call it two and a half, sometimes even three. The surge in the non-food category, so beverage, the players like the Luckin and the Mixue Bingcheng, etc., they've established a new norm of payback that is significantly quicker. So as the entrepreneurs look at options in which brands to take on, they're not just looking at food brands, they're also looking at beverage.
So I think the fact that we were trending well within the KPIs around 2.5 three-year payback. We had to shift, and we had to remodel to a different model that gets us to a one and a half. So that's why we were not able to deliver the same, sorry, system-wide sales driven by new store openings.
So the run rate of our plan going forward is significantly higher in terms of new store because we were able to bring our CapEx down from CNY 800,000 to CNY 500,000, and in some cases, even below CNY 500,000 per store. What that means with our new model, plus the CapEx that gets our franchisees in a better place. So we're starting to see more interest coming through.
So our plan to really get back to our new store openings and therefore cash profits, if you will, is to accelerate the new store opening through lower CapEx boxes. The other thing I would say is the good old days of paying high rent, big boxes in high traffic areas like train stations and so forth.
Those days we're seeing it's very difficult for all players. So what we've mapped out now, and we have a map of over 1,800 store locations in tier two cities where it's more leaning towards a residential where your occupancy cost is lower, so sub 10%. And also your daypart gets stretched as well. So you don't have that lunchtime office work is coming down. You have a more spread, plus a more even delivery channel as well. So we've taken all the pivots.
The great thing about China is we have a 100% Chinese team there who's very close to the market, and we do pivot very fast to make sure that we have the right plan for growth.
Thanks, Richard. Sorry. One last question before I get back to you. On Compose Coffee, I mean, can you share what's driving the quarter-on-quarter decline in EBITDA and net income, even if revenues were up? You mentioned this was because of the expense on promotions for V. I mean, is this one time, and what should we expect is the sustainable margin level for 2026?
Great question. So in Q2, our A&P's, our percent of revenue for Compose was 1.2%. In Q3, it jumped to 5.9%. And it is a one-time. So this is the contract for our celebrity endorser, V, which came into our P&L in Q3.
So the run rate, if you will, I'm not sure if 1.2 is the right run rate. It might be slightly higher because we're not number 1. We're number 2. There's another competitor in Korea. I won't mention their names. I don't want to give them publicity. But their A&P spending is higher than us. We know that. So we are going to be higher than 1.2, but 5.9 is definitely a one-time. So you're seeing that Q-on-Q movement. But yeah, great catch on that. That was absolutely purposeful.
Thanks, Richard.
Okay. Thank you, Nadine.
Our next question from Yip Nguyen.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question and congratulations on the recent strong results. My first question on the debt. Despite the positive free cash flow, and I saw debt increased by about PHP 4 billion quarter on quarter, can you explain why do we need this 4 billion additional in debts? And then in the broader context, interest expense is about PHP 1 billion a quarter, roughly about 25% of the profit before tax. So do you think cutting interest expense could be a low-hanging fruit here, which is quite sizable impact on the profit before tax?
Yeah. Great question, Yip. And thank you for that. So we used to have an instrument, U.S.-denominated instrument called Perpetual Bond of $396 million. What we did was 96 of it, we went into classic term loan. And the 300, we kept it in USD currency, and we switched that over early this year into seniors. So the debt increase that you're seeing, majority of that really is reflecting that perps.
We did not account it for debt. It's equity accounting. And now we have PHP 300 million accounted for as debt. The 96, of course, also goes from equity accounting into classic term. So that's the reason why you're seeing the swing on the principal base. On the interest rate base, this is probably maybe my top three topic that I speak with my team and our friends at banks. And absolutely, our run rate at the moment is about PHP 1 billion. And there's a lot of thought being put behind two things.
One, we want to make sure that we have enough debt so that we're because we know we can generate superior returns from those borrowings because some would argue that we could probably go even higher in terms of our debt ratio. So that's one part of the balance.
And then the other part of the balance, of course, is we know it's a direct hit to our EPS. So absolutely. And there are several things that we'll be announcing as time goes through where we are addressing, as you said, the low-hanging fruit opportunity of reducing that.
Thank you. My question was more on Q1Q increase in the debts of about PHP 4 billion. I think the termination of the perp was the quarter before, not this quarter. So what caused the PHP 4 billion increase in debts this quarter?
I think we reported in Q2 because I think it was in April. But let us go back, but I'm pretty sure we reported that in April. So it would be Q1Q. Okay. Well, I know what you're thinking of because the maturity was January. You're right, which would be Q1.
But what we did was we did a bridge, and we did the conversion in April of Q2. That's why I think you were thinking about Q1, but it's actually Q2. Yeah.
Second question on EBITDA, I think quarter on quarter explained why there was a drop in the EBITDA for Compose Coffee. But then actually, it was true for other, including Highlands and CBTL as well, where we saw a drop in quarter on quarter EBITDA. Can you explain what happened there? Because when I look at cost inventory as percentage of sales, quarter on quarter, actually, it dropped rather than increased, right? So what led to margin shrink in these two brands?
I will have to fact-check it, but I don't think we had a quarter-on-quarter drop in our coffee EBITDA business. So I'm just looking back to the EBITDA slide. Yeah.
Because here, what we're reporting is nine months of CBTL, Highlands. And I'm looking at here. Yeah. We'll get back to you, but there shouldn't be a quarter-on-quarter drop across the business. In fact, Highlands, we had probably our best quarter in Q3. But can we confirm back to you on this one?
Yes. That's fine. And then my last question is, obviously, Tim Ho Wan is something you just fully took over the operation. Can you share in your opinion what is optimal EBITDA margin for Tim Ho Wan and where we stand now at the moment on EBITDA margin?
Yeah. Great question. Currently, I would say with the investments, and again, we took a business that was not ours for a number of years, even before Titan invested in it in 2019.
Prior to that, it was run, I would say, more as an entrepreneur business rather than a structured business. So right now, of course, our single-digit EBITDA margin rate on that business is no reflection of where it should be and can be. In my view, that needs to be a good double-digit margin business, and we'll get more learnings as we open our first store in Irvine, California, in the US, end of this year, etc., but my understanding is with paybacks that we're seeing now, etc., with the, I guess, the level of unit economic contribution of these stores, it should be one of our best-performing brands with high double-digit EBITDA margins.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Let's take our next question from Aishwary Rai.
Hi. Thank you for the call. My question is on the CapEx plan. Can you share some initial guidance for FY 2026 on what you plan the CapEx to be? And further, similar to the refinancing of the dollar perp in January this year, there's another dollar bond that's maturing in January next year. Can I know what the plans are for that bond? Thank you.
Okay. So our CapEx guidance for 2026 will be, I would say, similar to slightly lower or tighter range to 2025. And a couple of reasons. In 2025, in addition to the store opening, which is around two-thirds to sometimes three-quarters of our CapEx allocation, so store opening plus renovation, I should say. And that's where we should be investing most of our money. We also have to build up capacity in terms of our commissary, which doesn't necessarily come in every year as a requirement. So I think you'll see that. Secondly, our investment in digital assets.
The last few years, we've invested to really build from scratch. A lot of the must-haves that we didn't have as we were more of a dine-in-focused business for many years. And that also comes to a good place whereby you don't have to have the same CapEx level to invest, and we can still run with OpEx. So the guidance will be below 18, but yeah. But just for prudence, I would say similar ranges this year, but slightly lower.
In terms of our intention, we haven't fully disclosed, but we're looking at optionalities. What are we considering? One, we're considering whether we really need a bond, or can we really have more flexibility in terms of term loans? And within term loans, can we have the flexibility of both floating rates and fixed rates?
Our aim, as always, is to make sure to the earlier question of Yip that we should be thinking about the low-hanging fruits of interest expense reduction. So we're looking at rates that will deliver that. We're also mindful that we're in an environment where rate cuts probably will continue for a few more cycles. So we're looking at optionalities, but we're not ruling out that we may not roll over as a U.S.-denominated long-term bond, but rather have more flexibility.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Let's take our next question from Francis Pua.
Thanks, Richard, for this opportunity. First of all, am I audible?
Yes. Hi, Francis. I can hear you. Thank you.
Thanks, Richard. So I have three questions. So first off is about Chowking. So I noticed that for 3Q, Chowking's SSSG is negative 2.7%.
However, from last quarter, it is at positive 2.3%, which is a steep drop from around low teens or mid-teens SSSG from the first quarter, if I'm not mistaken. So do the management have any comment on this matter? And what initiatives are you trying to—does JFC try to do in order to address this concern regarding Chowking?
Okay. So I think the first and foremost thing I want to say about Chowking in the Philippines is that it is classified along with Jollibee and Mang Inasal as what we call champion brands. And by that, it really means our expectation for growth is high. And also, the way we invest behind the brands will take into account the growth rates. For the specific reasons, I do really think Q3 probably is not representative.
There is nothing wrong with the brand or the stores from the data points that I see regularly on this. So perhaps when there are typhoons and other conditions, people perhaps go to a more familiar brand like a Jollibee or Mang Inasal, if you will, than a Chinese cuisine brand as well.
If you were to look at October, I can't say the number, but I can say that, again, things are back to where they should be. In terms of the previous double digits, I would have to go back and see if there were any specific, I guess, reasons why. Because previous to that, maybe we had a lower base in which we had a higher increase. But Francis, if it's okay, let us come back and address that part of the question more properly with the data to support.
Thanks, Richard. Next question from my end is on Smashburger. So do you have any definite timeline or guidance where you look at the possibility of turning Smashburger EBITDA positive?
Yeah. EBITDA positive will happen sometime in 2026. NOI positive will happen by the end of 2026. And we're very serious about these targets internally as well.
Got it. Thanks. And my last question is on Compose Coffee. So from my understanding right now, Compose Coffee is centered on South Korea. So can you provide any guidance or insights on your future expansion goals on Compose Coffee, first within South Korea, and second, any plans to franchise the brand outside of South Korea?
Okay. So let me start with South Korea first. We're about 9% market share in the South Korean coffee market for cafes. So there is definitely room for upside.
Number two, as Compose Coffee is a Busan, so meaning southern part of South Korea, the second biggest city outside of Seoul is called Busan. And that's where the brand really started. So when you go to Busan, compared to our national number one player in the value segment, the name I won't mention, you can see the contrast of our locations and where we are. So in other words, we are number one in the Busan area.
And so recently, after the acquisition, so August of last year, it took us a few months, but we relocated head office from Busan to Seoul because we knew that the future, the next three, four, five-year growth is going to be coming from getting our fair share of footprint in Greater Seoul, where we were under-indexed compared to Busan. And so that's been our real focus. So we'll continue to grow.
We didn't actually have plans to export this business or transport it outside of Korea for at least three years because we had so much opportunity to grab market share, and not just grab market share, but profit, so just to share with the audience, and I always said with a 100% franchised business with basically no capital requirement to grow, and also with an allowed dividend policy in Korea of two dividends per year, this will be a type of business whereby we expect much higher dividend returns, and in fact, what we saw for 2025 year to date proves that.
It's a very superior return on cash, and next year, we think that return is going to be even double, so it's a very important business for us in Korea, so we'll continue to invest growth in Korea.
So as we're focused on that, I think with investments in things like F&B, etc., we have had an interest from Southeast Asian market, and we've also had an interest from another North Asia market. So at the moment, we are working on two very tangible interests for master franchisees to export this brand.
Thanks, Richard. That's all from my end.
Okay. Thank you very much. Gio, I'm not sure if you can tell or not.
Yeah. I think that's all the time we have for today. So thank you, everyone who participated in this call, especially those who asked very interesting and insightful questions. Before we end, I'll hand over to Richard for any final words.
Okay. Firstly, again, thank you very much. Q3, as we reported, had challenges in terms of weather conditions, etc., in our most important market, Philippines.
But I reassure you that this was weather-related, and what we're seeing really is a continuous appetite for our brands, but also our products and our price positioning, which is very important to us. International, I think the seeds are now sowing. It's our job here in management to really make sure that we accelerate that because on a unit basis, international business will always deliver superior returns because of markets like the US, etc., that has better returning boxes. So yeah, thank you for that. And for those questions that I said, we will get back.
My team has taken notes, so we will make sure that we return answers back to you. Thank you again for all your support and your time. And thank you, Gio, and JFC, Jefferies.
Thank you, Jollibee team. Thank you, everyone, for participating.