Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.'s earnings call for the first quarter of 2026. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on May 1st, 2026. I will now turn the call over to Christine D'Sylva, CFO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.'s earnings call for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2026. Joining me on the call today is Pizza Pizza Limited's President and Chief Executive Officer, Paul Goddard. Just a quick note, our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements that may involve risks relating to future events. Actual events may differ materially from the projections discussed today. All forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with our cautionary language in the earnings press release and the risk factors included in our annual information form. Please refer to our earnings press release and the MD&A in the investor relations section of our website for a full reconciliation of other disclosures related to non-IFRS measures mentioned on this call. As a reminder, analysts are welcome to ask questions after the prepared remarks.
Portfolio managers, media, and shareholders can contact us after the call. I'll now turn the call over to Paul for a business update.
Thank you, Christine, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call. This afternoon, we released our results for the first quarter of 2026, which you can find posted on our website. The overall macroeconomic conditions remained challenging through the first quarter of 2026. We saw the impact on consumer confidence, spending, and demand, all of which negatively impacted our retail sales, specifically traffic. In the first quarter, our overall same-store sales growth was actually - 4.1%. Pizza Pizza restaurants were down 4.3%, while Pizza 73 restaurants were down 2.7%. Beyond the current macroeconomic impact on sales, the impact of last year's non-recurring sales tax holiday was also felt at both brands. While consumer confidence remains low, businesses continue to face rising costs and ongoing uncertainty.
In this environment, we are focused on controlling what we can, strengthening our product offering, further expanding our footprint across Canada, and driving operational discipline. Starting with product offerings, our core pizza category remains resilient, supported offerings at all price points. While value continues to be critical, staying top of mind through innovation is equally important. Our innovation pipeline allows us to attract new customers, encourage trade-up within our existing mix through premium offerings, and deepen overall brand engagement. This quarter, following the success of the Volcano Dipper pizzas at Pizza 73, we rolled out the product to Pizza Pizza. This unique ownable new product provided us with the opportunity to showcase Pizza Pizza and our food in a fun and playful narrative while reinforcing our dip leadership position.
We also recently introduced a CAD 5 meal deal, slice and drink combo, in late March to strengthen our walk-in channel and compete with other QSRs offering entry-level value meals. We saw immediate improvements in both sales and traffic within this channel, which is exciting. We remain focused on delivering strong value to our customers, knowing that we are competing for a share of increasingly constrained consumer spending. Turning to our restaurant network, in terms of restaurant development, I'm pleased to share that we started the year stronger than we have in the last five years. As a reminder, with over 800 restaurants from coast to coast, we have more points of convenience than any other QSR pizza chain in the country. During the quarter, we opened six traditional and three non-traditional Pizza Pizza locations and closed one traditional and one non-traditional Pizza 73 restaurant.
Our new traditional restaurants span the country with openings in B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and two in Newfoundland. As mentioned on previous calls, our business is driven by two revenue streams. First, our traditional restaurant network, which generates 90% of our royalty pool sales. Secondly, our non-traditional and special event locations, which typically generate the remaining 10%. Our non-traditional segment is currently facing some headwinds, particularly locations within colleges and universities, where lower attendance tied to international student policies stemming from reduced immigration, et cetera, has resulted in reduced operating hours and overall sales. Looking ahead, we continue to see growth opportunities across our network. At the same time, we are taking a more disciplined approach, carefully selecting locations and formats to ensure long-term profitability, particularly in the context of rising costs.
As I close out my comments, we expect us to continue to face headwinds across our entire system in the near future. Consumer confidence is still low, and there continues to be much uncertainty. However, we will continue to be there to provide our customers with the best food made especially for them. Our platform is solid and battle-tested. We will drive further value and innovation, and we have the experience and track record to do so. The strength of our brands and experience of our team and our owner-operators as a critical part of that team have enabled us to navigate through these challenging conditions before, and we have great confidence in our ability to successfully manage well through this latest period of economic uncertainty and leveraging our proven competitive advantages and leading brand platform.
Thank you again for listening in today, and I'll now ask Christine to provide a financial update.
Thanks, Paul. As a reminder, Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp . Is a top-line restaurant royalty corp that earns a monthly royalty through a license agreement with Pizza Pizza Limited. In exchange for the use of the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 trademarks in its operations, Pizza Pizza Limited pays the partnership a monthly royalty calculated as a percentage of the royalty pool sale. Growth in the corp is derived from increasing the same-store sales of the restaurants in the pool and by adding new restaurants to the pool each year. As we announced earlier this year, on January 1st, 2026, the royalty pool increased by 20 net new restaurants as a result of adding 39 new locations less than 19 restaurants was permanently closed.
For fiscal 2026, there will be 814 restaurants in the royalty pool, comprised of 712 Pizza Pizzas and 102 Pizza 73s. This is in comparison to 2025, when the pool was 794 restaurants. Now briefly covering the financial results for the quarter. As Paul mentioned, same-store sales, the key driver yield for shareholders, decreased 4.1% in the quarter. Both brands saw a decline in traffic, which resulted in Pizza Pizza restaurants reporting same-store sales decrease of 4.3% and Pizza 73 restaurants reporting a decline of 2.7%. The positive impact of the 20 net new restaurants added to the royalty pool was offset by the same-store sales decline and resulted in an overall decrease to the royalty pool system sales and the corresponding royalty income.
Royalty pool system sales for the quarter decreased 3.5% to CAD 145.8 million from CAD 151.3 million in the same quarter last year. By brand, sales from the 712 Pizza Pizza restaurants decreased 4.1% to CAD 224.5 million, and sales from the 102 Pizza 73 restaurants decreased 0.9% to CAD 21.3 million for the quarter. The partnership's royalty income earned as a percentage of royalty pool sales decreased 3.5% to CAD 9.4 million in the quarter. As a reminder, the Pizza Pizza and Pizza 73 restaurants are subject to seasonal variations in their business. System sales for the first quarter of the year are generally the lowest, while system sales for the last quarter are generally the highest.
Turning to partnership expenses. Administrative expenses, which include listing costs as well as director, legal and auditor fees, decreased in comparison to the prior year. This quarter, they totaled CAD 132,000, compared to CAD 152,000 in the prior year. In addition to administrative expenses, the partnership is making interest-only payments on the CAD 47 million credit facility. Interest paid in the quarter was CAD 435,000. The all-in rate for the credit facility for the next three years will be 3.51% compared to the maturing rate that expired in April 2025 of 2.685%. After the partnership received royalty income and interest income and paid administrative and interest expense, the resulting net cash was available to distribute to its two partners based on their ownership.
After the vesting, on January 1st, 2026, Pizza Pizza Limited's ownership increased to 27.2%, and Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp. Shared in the remaining 72.8% of the partnership distributions. The Royalty Corp. Received distributions, paid taxes on its share of the earnings, and any residual cash was available for dividends to the company's shareholders. The company declared shareholder dividends of CAD 5.7 million in the quarter, or CAD 0.2325 per share, which was consistent with the prior year. The payout ratio for the quarter was 134% and resulted in the company's working capital decreasing by CAD 1.4 million to end the quarter at CAD 2.3 million.
This CAD 2.3 million working capital reserve is available to stabilize dividends and fund expenditures in the event of short to medium-term variability in system sales and in turn, royalty income. The company has historically targeted a payout ratio near 100% on an annualized basis, and any dividend decisions will be made with this target in mind. That concludes our financial overview. I'd like to turn the call back to our operator to poll for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Cheryl Zhang of TD Cowen. Your line is already open.
Good evening, Paul and Christine. Great to hear from you. Thanks for taking our question.
Hi. Thanks, Cheryl. Hi.
Hi. Obviously, it is certainly not an easy quarter for anyone in the QSR space. I'm curious what you're seeing that customers are cutting back on in particular, and is there any notable changes in consumer behavior compared to the last quarter?
That's a good point, Cheryl. I think we see this landscape we live in. There's some common issues people face. I think just generally, not unlike our last call, I mean, traffic's overall weak. I mean, we still did see some growth positively in pickup, but certainly, people are shying away from delivery. We saw, you know, negative in delivery, and that's something we certainly have some plans to try and address. We've been trying for a while, but we have some other ideas we think we will be more successful. I think, you know, there are some signs of light, but definitely people are just really hurting. I mean, you've got the global geopolitical situation. Gas prices are on everyone's mind. I think we're hitting CAD 2 gas in British Columbia, things like that.
Really since sort of mid-Feb, really, you know, we and I think the whole market has seen just all that much more conservative, careful behavior on the part of customers. That translates into things like less frequency, less add-ons. People just getting what they really need and not sort of treating themselves as much and as often. We just sense it's just been weakening, as we see, we saw really in the quarter, weaker than it was even in the last quarter.
I see. That makes sense. Curious if you could offer any early reads on the trends so far in Q2.
Well, it's still a little early, right? I mean, we're just kind of end of April here. I think we really need to see. You know, we've got a lot of menu innovation going on and other things we're planning on doing later this year. You know, I think things like our CAD 5 slice and a Coke deal, we think that's out in the market, that that's gonna have a big impact in walk-in, in a positive way. That's something that's really unique to us, really as a major chain. There's others that do slice, nowhere near kind of the volume that we do. That's just one example. Things like that, we're actually pretty optimistic about having a material impact. You know, the overall landscape's still very tough.
People are looking for value. You're seeing some extreme discounting by other folks that we don't think is really sustainable. We certainly, you know, discount ourselves, but we're also trying to play the long game here and play to our advantages. I think some of our menu innovations have done well, and we're gonna keep pushing things like organic delivery a little more, and we've had some signs of success there, but I'd say it's still a little early for the quarter to really make more comment on that.
Yeah. Thanks for that, Paul. Speaking of competition, how do you feel about, like, your pricing and offering compared to competitors? How do you think about keeping your value edge without escalating discount? You mentioned in your prepared remarks some subsequent improvement after you launched the CAD 5 meal deal, and I'm curious if you could add some color to it.
Yes. I mean, I think we, you know, we generally have a good sense of price. I mean, when we look at competitors, which we're doing all the time, you know, seeing where we have traffic strengths, traffic dropping off, what's happening with relative check. I mean, we saw check was up, generally speaking, traffic was down. It's always hard to find that balance. We think we're well-priced. I mean, we are not shy to change prices. We've changed prices on à la carte items. We've changed prices on specials from time to time. I think generally we feel like we're in the right zone for what we offer. I mean, we know we offer very high quality relative to some others. Yet we think with our cost structure, we can be very competitive with our pricing.
I think we feel we're sort of in the right zone, but we do see downward pressure overall from people that are getting extremely aggressive, I guess you could say. We're, you know, we're aware of that. We have to get good results. We have to get top-line sales growth. That's our job. We also gotta make sure it's profitable for our franchisees as well. I think just overall, we're really looking to play to our strengths, so things like the slice deal. We launched chicken tenders at Pizza 73, some unique items there. We've got more in the pipeline. I think BOGO's been successful out there for us as well. I think, you know, we've had some success with things that we think will work well and some other things maybe haven't resonated quite as well.
I mean, one example would be the Volcano Dipper, which we did very well in Pizza 73. We translated it over here. Didn't quite get the pickup that we thought, to be honest. Not everything we try does work, but we have a pretty quick cycle time on our innovative marketing team. You know, we don't always hit it right, but we thought that was great value. We also have more success with things like our Vladdy Jr. special, the XXL CAD 19.99 three-topping pizza, which became very quickly one of our top mixing specials, and it's certainly fantastic value in a fun way, and especially in our major markets, it's done really, really well.
You know, it's just not doing well enough because customers are still, at the end of the day, hurting so much that even though it's a great deal and popular with a lot of customers, even that, you know, only has limited potential. We're also looking at how do we get something even better, more interesting, that can drive traffic further. Overall, I think we're well-placed as a value player overall. We're really careful about our pricing. We're looking for opportunities to accentuate things like dips as well, which we're really famous for having the best dips as add-ons. You know, we know people are cautious, so we need to really get more and more creative about how we can really leverage our advantages, still be a value player, and get that traffic up.
It's just all about transaction count, getting that traffic up, and doing whatever we need to do to do so.
To add on to that, Cheryl.
Thanks a lot. Mm-hmm.
We do have the multiple channels, right? We make sure that we have value at every point where a customer is interacting with us. If they're coming in for a walk-in, we've got a walk-in special. If you wanna come in to pick up to save on the delivery and the tip, which, you know, as consumers are getting more constrained in their available spend, we have pickup specials that are available to you, so you can save on the delivery and tip. We always have our delivery specials, like the XXL Vladdy deal. We try to make sure that at every price point and at every convenience point, we have something to offer our customers.
Yeah, that's a great point.
Yeah, that's very helpful.
Across day parts as well. I mean, we slice and dice the numbers all, you know, every way you can imagine, of course. We're always looking for growth in various day parts and those sort of omnichannels, like Chris said. That is some flexibility that others don't have. At the end of the day, we're still not getting enough transactions. We know we've got to get traffic up and, you know, we are pretty excited about some of the things coming down the line, and some of them will take longer as well to bear fruit, to be honest.
It's kind of a, you know, we have kind of a long view on the platform and what we can do to really win over more people from competitors and then get our loyal customers to actually coming to us more often, more frequently, and adding on more items. It's a bit of a long game, but we do think there's, you know, there's some signs of hope, but the overall economic climate is still, you know, pretty concerning.
Yeah. Thank you both so much for the color. It's very helpful. Actually, it's, as you've mentioned that, you still see some improvement in organic delivery, I'm curious if there are any drivers for that you could highlight. Is it, is it because of better speed, visibility, or is it a SMS tracking, promo construct like free delivery or anything that you could highlight there?
Yes. I mean, we do think there's benefits to customer and there's economic benefits. I mean, we've actually been, as of, last couple of months, I think it was sort of the end of Q2. Correct, correct me if I'm wrong, with the sort of time, the guarantee time, and we try to highlight that a little more because that is something that we, you know, people don't get on third-party platforms. We do use those as a channel like everyone else. Customers can rely on, you know, uniform Pizza Pizza delivery driver with really good tracking times. We have, much like the third-party providers, a customer tracking map. You know, see where your order is on the map as it comes to the customer with a SMS reminder as it's about to get to your door.
It's better service, better speed. It's cheaper, rather than, you know, paying commission to a third-party aggregator. We think that's helpful because our delivery charges are, you know, really nominal compared to those, and we think that's a real competitive advantage we have. We're famous for our guarantee and, you know, although the third parties are a channel that some people only order from, they're also shying away from that. I think we see some weakness overall in the sector there for third party because delivery is just so expensive. We see people trending more towards pickup. We think leveraging things like loyalty and cross-channel marketing, getting people to behave in multiple channels, loyal customers, or winning new ones in some of our multiple channels, that's a good pathway to success.
We also have on game days, 'cause we have such big partnerships with a lot of the sports teams across Canada, we have free game day deliveries. We try to get those customers who are watching the game with friends at home, ordering and saving on that delivery fee to keep them coming to us. We always promote our on time or free, right? We are always less than 40 minutes. That's a guarantee that Pizza Pizza has always had, and we're proud of it. The fact that you can track your order now is something that our marketing team has done a great job this quarter of promoting as well.
That's great. Thank you. Just last one from me. What are you expecting for network expansion in 2026? Are you seeing any early impact from the rising costs, like fuel costs? Any impact on equipment construction costs or input costs that might impact franchisee pro-profitability and interest in opening new stores?
Yes, we are. I mean, we still are, I would say, on offense growth-wise. We think in terms of traditional stores, we're still looking at that 2%- 3% range. I mean, last, you know, this quarter's been encouraging in that respect. We do think, you know, really most parts of the country, we have lots of, lots of green space to grow on it. While others perhaps are being a little more, you know, defensive. You know, we're certainly defensive about our key markets, but on offense on the store development side. I think we are getting suppliers increasingly looking for fuel surcharges and things like that, that does indirectly impact us. We're holding the line on that as best we can.
We haven't seen sort of equipment costs necessarily go up yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of that in future. We've been really challenging our construction team to also ensure that the unit economics look good for a franchisee. Can we reduce construction costs? Can we, you know, skip certain items or reduce the cost of certain items so that the investment for the franchisee is more palatable? I think we're being pretty creative with some aspects like that, and that's pretty exciting. I think we have a good record, a good franchisee pipeline, but certainly, there's headwinds. I mean, with the inflationary pressure, depending on how long this big crisis goes on overseas, and just even without that general economic malaise, I mean, that's what we expect.
We say, if it's a tough environment, we still need to be successful. What do we gotta do? If it ends up not being as bad, we'll look even better. We are seeing some pressure, things like fuel. Most of our Canadian ingredients are Canadian, for instance, so we mirror that quite well, and we've held the line pretty well there. Certainly, you know, we'll control what we can control and, you know, make sure that the food basket overall is okay, and same with lease costs and things like that for franchisees. We're trying to make sure that our economic unit level economics are attractive even in a sort of really not helpful economic backdrop.
That's very helpful. Thanks again for taking my questions.
Okay. Thanks very much, Cheryl.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one. There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Christine D'Sylva for closing comments. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call today. If you have any further questions after the call, please feel free to contact us. Our information is on the earnings release. Thank you for your support of Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp. You may now disconnect your lines.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.