Good afternoon. My name is Emma, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to The Cheesecake Factory fourth quarter fiscal 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. 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 followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. Thank you. Etienne Marcus, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Emma. Good afternoon, and welcome to our fourth quarter fiscal 2021 earnings call. On the call today are David Overton, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David Gordon, our President, and Matthew Clark, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me quickly remind you that during this call, items will be discussed that are not based on historical fact and are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could be materially different from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements as a result of factors detailed in today's press release, which is available on our website at investors.thecheesecakefactory.com and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
All forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today's date, and the company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, during this conference call, we will be presenting results on an adjusted basis, which exclude impairment of assets and lease terminations, acquisition-related contingent consideration, compensation, and amortization expense, as well as reserves for uncertain tax positions. An explanation of our use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our press release on our website as previously described. David Overton will begin today's call with some opening remarks, and David Gordon will provide an operational update. Matt will then briefly review our fourth quarter results and provide a financial update. With that, I'll turn the call over to David Overton.
Thank you, Etienne. We had another solid quarter, with fourth quarter total revenues reaching a new all-time high mark despite the surge in COVID-19 cases towards the end of the year. Comparable sales at The Cheesecake Factory restaurants increased 7.7% relative to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, and continued to outperform both the KNAPP-TRACK and Black Box casual dining indices, reinforcing our confidence in the strength of the brand and our ability to take market share. Once again, our operators managed their restaurants very well during the quarter, with sequential improvements in food efficiencies, labor productivity, and hourly staff and manager retention. We believe our operating results would have been in line with expectations, but for the softer sales trend during the last two weeks of the quarter, which coincided with the Omicron surge. Our first quarter sales trends have started strong.
In fact, we have further increased our gap to the casual dining industry since the most recent quarter. The Cheesecake Factory fiscal 2022 first quarter comparable sales through February 15 are up 24.3% versus the prior year. Looking ahead to 2022, our development pipeline remains robust as we look to further accelerate our unit growth. However, while all the sites that we have been working on remain in our pipeline, we are cognizant of the current environment and the effects supply chain, governmental, and local jurisdiction permitting approvals are having on timing of the openings.
As such, we now expect to open as many as 17-19 new restaurants in fiscal year 2022, including as many as 5 Cheesecake Factory restaurants, five to seven North Italia's, and as many as seven other FRC restaurants, including three to four Flower Child locations. We also currently expect one Cheesecake Factory restaurant to open internationally under a licensing agreement. We believe that we have made strategic investments to best manage through the continued volatile environment while positioning ourselves to achieve our long-term goals of driving both comparable sales growth and 7% unit growth across our brands. We remain committed to managing structural and permanent cost pressures to protect our four wall margins over time.
To that point, we are currently in the process of rolling out our new Cheesecake Factory menu, which includes approximately 3.25% menu price increase in total that will put our year-over-year menu pricing increase at 4.75%. We will continue to monitor the inflationary environment to determine what level of pricing will be needed during our next menu rollout. I remain as confident as ever that our best-in-class operators will continue to effectively manage through this volatile operating environment. With our development pipeline in place and solid comparable sales trends across our brands, we are well-positioned to continue to take market share. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David Gordon.
Thank you, David.
We continue to be focused on our commitment to excellent service and hospitality through the selection, training, and retention of high-quality staff, and believe this to be foundational to achieving our longer-term goal of growing comparable sales, particularly in this challenging operating and staffing environment. To that end, during the fourth quarter, we drove sequential increases to both our Cheesecake Factory manager and hourly staff industry-leading retention rates, contributing to the improvement in year-end staffing levels relative to 2019 as compared to where we began the quarter. Following that, in January, we saw a 10%-15% increase in staff hiring compared to the Q4 trend. Combined with improved retention rates, we have increased our total hourly staffing by 2% already from just the end of 2021. Correlated to our improvement in staffing, we drove sequential improvements in our guest satisfaction metrics.
Importantly, all our dine-in Net Promoter Scores improved, including pace of experience, staff service and hospitality, and food quality. The Cheesecake Factory off-premise channel trend can remain solid, with fourth quarter sales accounting for 27% of total sales. The annualized fourth quarter average weekly sales for this channel continued to trend close to twice the 2019 annual levels. As I shared previously, with the strength of our sales performance, we have shifted our marketing for The Cheesecake Factory restaurants primarily back to brand-based messaging to raise the profile of The Cheesecake Factory brand while continuing to upgrade and enhance our marketing and technology platforms. Moving this effort forward, we launched our refreshed website just 2 weeks ago. Along with a more contemporary look, the more commerce-forward platform delivers a better guest experience with the goal of driving higher conversion rates and average order values for online ordering.
We also migrated our email database to a more robust CRM system to work hand in hand with the rewards program, for which we are now planning to launch the pilot in the middle of the year. Now, turning to North Italia, fourth quarter comparable sales grew a robust 14% versus 2019. That trend has carried into 2022, with quarter to date through February 15 comparable sales up approximately 38% versus 2021 levels, with off-premise comprising approximately 15% of sales at North. FRC drove similarly strong top-line performance during the fourth quarter. We continue to be confident in the developing brands in our portfolio and their ability to contribute to our unit growth.
Lastly, I'd like to thank all of our teams for their continued passion and efforts in navigating through a constant wave of consumer and business headwinds over the past 23 months while continuing to deliver delicious, memorable experiences for our guests. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Matt for our financial review.
Thank you, David. As David Overton alluded to in his opening remarks, we, along with the broader casual dining industry, experienced a deceleration in sales relative to 2019 towards the end of the quarter, which coincided with the Omicron surge. Specifically, fourth quarter comparable sales at The Cheesecake Factory were running at 10.6% going into the third week of December relative to fiscal 2019, compared to the full quarter results of 7.7%. In addition, we incurred approximately $3.8 million of incremental costs related to COVID-19 sick time, paying 100% of restaurant management quarterly bonuses and higher natural gas expenses, with none of these impacts factored into our initial outlook for the quarter.
We estimate the impact from the slower sales versus prior trend during the last two weeks of the year, coupled with the incremental costs I just outlined, to be about $0.16-$0.21 of earnings per share for the quarter. Importantly, key business indicators for the quarter largely came in line with our expectations, speaking to our ability to appropriately navigate the ongoing business environment as we head into 2022. Now to some specific details around the quarter. Fourth quarter comparable sales at The Cheesecake Factory restaurants increased 33.8% year-over-year, were up 7.7%. Revenue contribution from North Italia and FRC totaled $129.7 million. North Italia comparable sales increased 37% year-over-year and were up 14% versus the 2019 period.
Sales per operating week at FRC, including Flower Child, were approximately $104,000. Including $17.5 million in external bakery sales, total revenues were $776.7 million during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021. Moving to expenses, as usual, I'm going to provide year-over-year detail, but of course, note that the significant disparity in revenues, given the greater impact from COVID in the fourth quarter last year drove some abnormal year-over-year variances. Cost of sales increased by 10 basis points, primarily driven by slightly higher commodity inflation than menu pricing. Labor declined 220 basis points, primarily reflecting sales leverage and partially offset by higher wage rates and training costs. Other operating expenses declined 320 basis points, primarily due to sales leverage relative to the prior year period.
Note that versus our expectations, we had over $3.4 million in incremental costs associated with the items I outlined earlier in this line item. This translated to about 45 basis points of impact to margins. G&A as a percentage of sales declined 120 basis points, also primarily due to sales leverage as well as tight cost controls. Pre-opening costs were $3.9 million in the quarter compared to $2.8 million in the prior year period. A total of 4 restaurants opened during the fourth quarter this year versus 3 in the prior year period. In the fourth quarter, we recorded a $17.5 million non-cash impairment charge, primarily related to 5 restaurant locations. We also reported $6.9 million in acquisition-related expense as well as a $4.7 million reserve for uncertain tax positions.
Fourth quarter GAAP diluted net income per common share was $0.04, and adjusted net income per share was $0.49. Now turning to our cash flow and balance sheet. The company generated approximately $94 million of cash flow from operating activities during the fourth quarter. Excluding the $37 million in payroll tax repayment related to the CARES Act, the company generated nearly $250 million in cash flow from operating activities for the year. This performance enabled us to end the year with total available liquidity of approximately $430 million, including a cash balance of approximately $190 million and $240 million available on a revolving credit facility.
Total debt outstanding at the end of the year was $475 million, including $345 million of 0.375% convertible senior notes due in 2026 and $130 million drawn on a revolving credit facility. Guidance and new unit development. While we will not be providing specific comparable sales and earnings guidance, given that the operating environment continues to be very dynamic, we want to provide some thoughts on our underlying expectations for 2022, including some of the timing nuances. Let me begin by reiterating what David Overton termed four-wall margins and will take appropriate actions, including additional menu pricing to offset structural and permanent costs as needed. However, as we have previously been driven by the current environment. First, with respect to sales.
Based on extrapolating current trends and assuming no further material impacts from virus surges, we would anticipate total revenues for the year could be approximately $3.3 billion-$3.4 billion, with Cheesecake Factory AUVs reaching over $1,700 for the 53rd operating week we have this year. Next, for fiscal year 2022, we now expect commodity inflation of low double digits on an annual basis. Specifically, we're modeling for year-over-year commodities pressure to lessen as we go through the year, starting with mid-teens pressure in the first quarter and ending with mid- to high-single-digit pressure. On an absolute cost per unit basis, we're modeling commodities to be fairly stable through the year with the variability in inflation driven primarily by the comparison to the different price points in the corresponding quarters in 2021. The labor market also continues to be dynamic with a lot of moving parts.
Inclusive of known minimum wage inflation of about 5% when factoring in wage rates, channel mix, as well as other components of labor. Other operating expenses, which in total has less inflationary pressure than labor, is expected to start the year around 25.5% of sales. With the benefit of pricing over time, we would anticipate we could end the year at about 25% of sales, with the middle two quarters roughly between those points. We anticipate G&A to be approximately $50 million for the fourth quarter, which as a reminder, includes an extra week this year. We are assuming pre-opening of about $19 million for the year to support our development plans with approximately.
Finally, we expect about $90 million in depreciation for the full year, and we are using a tax rate of approximately 13% for modeling purposes of these moving parts. I will also provide a little bit more detail to help with the first quarter. First, if we take a similar approach to the full year and extrapolate our current sales trends for the, we would anticipate Q1 to be between $770 million and $790 million in total revenue. Next, as David mentioned, we are currently rolling out a 3.25% menu price increase, which will give us a total of 4.75% year-over-year menu pricing increase. This level of menu change and with our objectives of both growing comparable sales and supporting four-wall and enterprise-level profit margins.
On the incremental pricing, based on the timing of the rollout, it is weighted approximately 50% in the first quarter for an effective full-year or full Q1 rate of just under 4% previously. As well as the timing of our pricing actions and Q1 sales trends, we would expect our four-wall margins to be at their lowest levels of the year in the first quarter. Keep in mind that the first quarter historically has lower margins overall than the annual average, due primarily to sales leverage, and we would still expect that trend to follow this year. Also, we would anticipate the enterprise operating margin to be much closer to 2019 than the four-wall in the first quarter as we leverage G&A depreciation and pre-opening.
We would also anticipate taking another menu price increase towards the middle of the third quarter, as is our historical norm. If inflation trends were to remain in line with our current assumptions, which are higher than our prior assumptions, we believe we may need to take close to an incremental 2% menu price increase to regain our 2019 four-wall margin by the back half. Agility in the commodities market and the potential for some degree of reset, it is prudent to remain flexible while maintaining a long-term lens with respect to our margin recapture. We're looking to 19 new restaurants this year, most of them in the second half of the year. We would anticipate approximately $150 million in CapEx to support this level of.
With the filing of our 10-K and related compliance certificate associated with our revolving credit facility, we also anticipate that the company will be in a position to resume capital returns. We are actively evaluating strategies in this area. In closing, it is important to note that despite the ongoing challenges in the environment, our best-in-class operators have met consumer demand for our brands. While current inflation in our industry is unprecedented, we believe the scale of our business, combined with a strategic pricing plan, is effective. With that said, we'll take your questions.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one. First question today comes from the line of Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good afternoon. I guess a couple of questions around the inflationary year-over-year increases was really just a reflection of the year ago comparisons. When you're looking at that inflation on the commodity side and the unit costs you're projecting are relatively stable, does that mean you're actually seeing? Then secondarily, it sounded as if, and I just want to clarify that you are willing to kind of defend your four wall margins if you need to in the second half of the year with incremental price. Comment on how you've seen the elasticity of demand as you've taken price increases over the past year.
Sure. Sharon, this is Matt, and I think those are probably the most pertinent questions we'll get, so thank you for leading off with that. The first thing I would say is with regards to the commodities, inflationary environment, we are somewhere around 60%-65% booked for the year, which is pretty close to where we would normally be, right? Normally we'd be around 67%. We have much better visibility than we did a couple months ago into where the markets are headed. I think as you've probably heard with a lot of companies, there might have been some hope, which is not a business plan. We are projecting it to be relatively stable, and we have a few things that may help it over time. We feel good about that.
You know, it's basically accepting that there's been some inflation. Since as we progress through the year, get closer to double digits and then even into the single digits, you know that's gonna make a lot more competitive sense with retaining guests while getting really, as we look forward, it's not a perfect crystal ball, but it's a lot closer to 2019 second quarter through fourth quarter combined with progressive improvements quarter to quarter. Has been very strong. The varied menu, anything from, you know, $7.95-$30, and the ability for guests to share. You know, in 16 years. We're targeting, and I think to the benefit of our ability to execute, our supply chain's ability to manage effectively pricing slightly below both grocery and our competitive set.
If anything, we're going to be in a better position relative to consumers coming out of this than most companies in our space. We feel good about the past year and specific to your question.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Mullan with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
The Cheesecake Factory brand sales per week basis, that was down about mid-single digits in the fourth quarter. You know, recovery sequentially or improvement sequentially from the third quarter, and you had to deal with Omicron. As you think about operating in a normal environment for a twelve-month period, can you discuss your degree of optimism specifically that those dine-in volumes come all the way back to what they were or even perhaps exceed?
Sure. This is Matt again. I mean, just looking at the simple math. You know, 11 weeks through the fourth quarter, we're running at 10.6% Cheesecake Factory comps. You know, if you extrapolate out the current sales trends for the year, it gets to a Cheesecake Factory AUV of over $12 million. I think just by stating that we've been through the multiple stages of the pandemic, every time the brand actually comes back a little bit stronger than before, the pent-up demand continues to build, and the execution is more resilient. I think that the dine-in business is what obviously has regrown with the off-premise kind of remaining stable. We haven't lost that level of business.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of David Tarantino with Baird. Your line is now open.
I was wondering if you could maybe piece together how you're building the revenue outlook that you commented. I guess my first question is, what exactly do you mean by extrapolating current trends? Is that something you're seeing in the most recent weeks, or is that your quarter to date trend? I may have a couple of follow-ups related.
It's that we're looking more at the last three to four weeks. The first week or two, we're still sort of in the Omicron holiday situation. As we look at where we've gotten to in this quarter, and if we effectively seasonalize that sales performance on a dollar basis, that's what we mean.
Understood. Yes. Then I guess maybe it would help if you told us what that would imply from a comp perspective for the Cheesecake Factory, you know, if that's relevant, but if you could give us some sense for what level of comp would be embedded in that estimate.
Well, you know, we're sort of in a funny space. It's 2019, which is now three years ago, or 2021, which in the first quarter still has some of the noise. You know, we're trying to help with that by giving sort of the AUV. If you're referring to 2021, you know, we're really. It's still early to say what that total number would be, and we're not giving guidance specifically on a comp number because I think with all the moving ups and downs of the virus.
Got it. I guess if you could, you know, maybe confirm, you know, our math would suggest we'd see a pretty meaningful step up from Q1 to the rest of the quarters and, you know, one, could you confirm that? and I guess two, is it mainly just coming off the Omicron impacts, or are you assuming something else is in there?
Yeah, I mean, generally thinking after we lap the Q1 downturn last year, right, we would assume that we would at least fully capture pricing in Q2, 3, and 4 relative to 2021.
Got it. Okay. Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. As we stand here today, I guess your commodity outlook is a little higher than originally expected for 2022, and your labor outlook seems to remain in line, and you're taking this upcoming price increase that gets you to a 4.75% price factor. I guess assuming that your cost outlook is correct, are you saying that all these pieces add up to being able to achieve the 2019 operating margin levels in 2022? Is that kind of how we should take your comments? If things get a little bit worse, you need to take the 2% price increase later in the year?
No. Brian, let's just make sure we walk through that. This is Matt. Just to make sure that everybody gets that math. The first part, you're correct. The commodities are, I don't know, call it 2%-3% higher for the year in our current outlook than when we had our last call. In order for us to compensate for that, if those commodities stay at that elevated level, we would need to take. Normally, we take 1.5%, let's say, in the summer to lap around. We'd probably need to take 2% in the summer to fully offset that and recoup the 2019 margins.
Also just to be clear, really, we're not attempting to do that in the first quarter because at the 15-14% commodity inflation, we don't feel like it's appropriate, nor would the timing of our pricing have enabled it, right? We're really talking about more the second quarter through the fourth quarter about recapturing those. Now, you know, if commodities come back to where we were before and it's only a couple% decline, then, you know, we'd be just lapping our pricing over. That's sort of the toggle that we're looking at. Does that make sense?
It does. I think the bottom line is you remain committed to achieving those 2019 operating margins this year, I guess, is the point.
That's 100% our goal for this year. Again, it's just a little bit more just timing. I just reiterate, it wouldn't make sense to try to price for that in the first quarter alone, given the uncertainty and some of the movement in commodities, as well as just maintaining a competitive balance for where we wanna be. We feel good that over the course of the next six months, we'll get a lot more clarity about where that will be. We'll be able to effectively roll it in. Actually at a lesser level than we did this time, right? We rolled in 3.25% on a six-month basis. We feel like the ability to get to 2% is very viable.
Great. Just a quick following up, just a model question. You talked about net labor inflation of about 5% this year. How do you want us to think about translating that into our models as we model kind of same-store labor costs?
Yeah, yeah.
Do you want us matching that 5% inflation, or is there some-
Well-
some variances or differences in how the actual costs are going to flow through?
Well, two things, Brian. You know, we're not necessarily fans of the operating dollar approach because of the differences in our brands and some of the components, right? We're thinking about helping people model it as a percentage of sales. Roughly speaking, in those quarters where we have close to 5% pricing, you're roughly neutral on a percentage of sales. However, you got to go back and make sure you look at, you know, the other quarters commentary, which I don't have in front of me. Sometimes there were anomalies, I think like in the third quarter particularly with pretty high group medical, right? Which would not be included in our outlook for this year. Those kinds of pieces we'll leave to you.
Great. Thanks, Matt.
Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays. Your line is now open.
Great. Thank you very much. Two questions. One, I'm just wondering if you can talk bigger picture about mall traffic in general. Obviously, you guys are heavily penetrated in, typically higher end malls. Seems like through the pandemic, there were concerns around slowing traffic. Now we're hearing things about maybe a resurgence from a traffic perspective. Dave, I was hoping maybe you could just share your thoughts in terms of the mall positioning today versus, you know, two, three years ago from the health of the platform, broadly speaking, and then I had one follow-up.
Sure, Jeff. This is David Gordon. To your earlier point about early on in the pandemic and, you know, the pressures that were felt at the mall, I think that we proved out during that time that The Cheesecake Factory is a destination and continues to be a destination by the sales that we were attributed early on in the pandemic. As traffic continues to come back to malls, we only can build off of the great traffic that we saw coming purely for a destination. You know, pre-pandemic when we had talked about maybe a lunch part, day part being a little bit softer and some of the places where we saw lesser traffic, we've done a good job of building awareness around lunchtime.
As traffic comes back, we would hopefully anticipate that we'll continue to take market share, because of the execution that's happened in all the restaurants off-premise and on-premise during that time. We feel good about our positioning. We feel good about looking for A sites only, whether that be at a mall or outside of a mall. We'll continue with that historical strategy and move forward.
Understood. Just to follow up, I think you mentioned, you know, the board is keen to discuss return of capital to shareholders once, like you said, the revolver is paid off in this first quarter. I'm just wondering, you know, the pros and cons, I'm assuming we're talking about share purchase versus dividend, but maybe any early thoughts in terms of what the thought process is there. Presumably, I guess at this point, you're not assuming share purchase, of any kind in the 2022 guidance that you offered, or does that still remain to be seen?
Hey, Jeff, it's Matt. Good question. You know, I think everything is on the table. Just to clarify, we will exit the sort of pandemic restrictions of the covenants, but we do still have the $130 on the revolver. So that is an option too. Obviously, the interest rates are low, even with some of the movement up. You know, I think that to be fair, the board's first focus has been around the dividend reinstatement, but they're also supportive of anti-dilutive repurchase at least, right? We have an equity compensation plan and to be able to begin to, you know, make sure that we're just offsetting that piece of it. You know, I think some form of both of those are on the table in future quarters for this year.
Understood. Similar to the strategy you guys have pursued prior to, halting that return.
I think so. Maybe just, you know, in the beginning, particularly a little bit lighter on the repurchase component, particularly given that we have another avenue with the revolver to pay down and also that our growth has increased, there will be more CapEx. I think just as an emphasis point, it's you know, dividend first, followed by maybe some support from share repo anti-dilution.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of John Glass with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. First, Matt, as you think about 2022, you know, stimulus played a role in 2021. I think if you said $12 million AUVs, and that's, I think over 53 weeks, it would assume that average weekly sales are on par with what you experienced during 2021. Do you think there was a benefit or as you look back at the data, do you think is there a risk that, you know, you got excess demand in second and third quarter of last year that you don't repeat? Or how do you think about the role of stimulus played last year and how you think about revenue growth or AUV growth during 2022?
Sure, John. I think you know AUVs will be over $12 million, to be honest, you know, and that's probably excluding the extra week. We don't anticipate that we'll be at the same level of 2021. We are coming up now, and we anticipate that that will be true, at least at the pricing level, even once we lap the full reopening. We're just noting the confidence in the off-premise that we've recaptured and built on that we don't think we're gonna lose that piece of it. I don't think stimulus made much of a difference to us. The biggest thing that we saw, if you look at the cadence of the comps last year, was the reopenings, right?
As soon as you saw a wave of reopening, our comps stepped up and then was really just remarkably consistent throughout the different periods of time, absent really the Omicron surge. I think that we're gonna see positive build on AUVs for The Cheesecake Factory and really for all of our brands.
Thank you. Could I follow up, the operating margins at the North Italia segment actually sequentially improved even though, you know, The Cheesecake margins were under 22% versus the core business. Could that end up being a positive, if you will, as those stores you've opened, you know, more recently start to mature? How do you think about that?
Well, I would say, first of all, it was a big focus for David and David and the North Italia team coming out of the summer because they had kind of gotten to a point where they could stabilize and focus it. It's a smaller brand. You know, the staffing challenges were greater, so the team put a lot of work into building momentum going into 2022. Our supply chain team did some work. I mean, frankly, we would have thought we would be more integrated from a supply chain if it were not for the pandemic, right? We are just beginning some of the work to be able to support those margins, and I think that's starting to show from a maturation standpoint, as you noted, John. Then also the strength of the sales.
I mean, really the fourth quarter North Italia, I think, you know, stood above everybody and they leveraged it well. We're, you know, cautiously optimistic. There's work to be done there, but it's clearly headed in the right direction.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Dennis Geiger with UBS. Your line is now open.
Thanks for the question, and thanks for the commentary on the staffing situation and the gains you've made in recent months. I'm wondering if you could talk, though, a bit more about the impact in the Q2, maybe from staffing and from impacts to operating hours and how that impacted sales. Presumably, that represents a tailwind as you move through the year. Just kind of building on that, just wondering how much more staffing you feel from here is needed. Maybe if any more staffing from here is needed, I'm curious what that looks like. Thank you.
Thanks, Dennis. This is David Gordon. Certainly those few weeks where the surge was pretty relevant out in the restaurants, we saw some probably larger staffing pressures than we had all the way back to the beginning of the pandemic. Not to the point that we had to really make any adjustments to our hours or close for any particular day part. Maybe a restaurant here or there that opened or closed an hour early on a particular day, but nothing that was systemic. What we're seeing now coming out of that certainly is the uptick in staffing that I talked about in the prepared comments.
If that were to continue here in the next few months with that continued positive trend, I think I mentioned that, you know, in January, hiring increased 10%-15% from the Q4 average. If that were to continue, we'd be sitting in a really strong place. Certainly, in no way are any of our staffing needs prohibiting any potential sales at this point. I think we feel really good about the restaurants being in a solid staffing position and enabling really strong execution, whether that's for dine-in or for off-premise.
That's helpful. Just one more. I think, Matt, you spoke to sort of the recovery that you've seen after each wave. Sounds particularly encouraging. Just wondering with this latest wave as we think about the recovery restrictions easing, anything more to share sort of on customer behaviors, impacts to day part or anything else that you would call out that's been particularly interesting, you know, just over the recent weeks that maybe you hadn't seen in previous reopening waves? Thank you.
Yeah, Dennis, it's Matt. You know, that's an interesting question. You know, I would say that for sure we have seen with some of the public announcements recently about lifting mask mandates and and the like that there's a pretty fast correlation to guest traffic. I think, you know, people were heeding the medical advice over the holidays, and people got sick, and they stayed home, and they quarantined. As soon as in the jurisdiction, we see them lifting that or speaking more positively about case declines, you know, the sales. It continues because the dynamic is there's more people that wanna go out to eat than restaurant capacity, and it's not coming back quickly.
Yes, understood. Obviously equipment delays and permitting delays and, you know, any number of things would
Exactly. I mean, all of it.
It's fairly slow to try to
To try to build a new restaurant. If you don't have the scale and the capabilities that The Cheesecake Factory has, well, good luck to you.
Yes, understood. Maybe a little bit related to that, you know, as we look and, you know, we can talk about this over any time period that you want, maybe we can talk about it in current time. How disparate is the performance across the chain? I mean, is there, you know, is there a tight grouping, you know, of restaurants from a sales performance perspective, 2022 versus 2019? Is it still very wide? I mean, are there, you know, a certain number of restaurants that are actually still pulling down your comps that could potentially contribute in the near future?
Yes, that to the last part. The biggest thing that we continue to see is that some of the urban and travel areas are depressed, right? You know, while they may still be doing pretty decent volumes, you know, a downtown location might be doing $12 million, but it may be doing $16 million before, right? There's, I would say I haven't looked at the exact math, but when we looked in the fourth quarter, which I'm imagining is similar, it was a 2%-3% opportunity for those just to get back to breakeven, you know, because they were negative. The rest of it, you know, we do see, I think, very strong performance in suburban malls. I mean, people, you know, to the question earlier, have, you know, returned and but that's pretty broad-based. That's across the country.
I think the single biggest thing is really the urban tourist areas and opportunity there. If what we're hearing, you know, that people are starting to book flights and hotels again could help us out in the back half.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Lauren Silberman with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
Thank you. First, I just want to clarify the trends that you're seeing in recent weeks. How do those underlying trends compare to pre-Omicron levels?
Lauren, it's Matt. We have gotten pretty much right back to where we were pre-Omicron, in the latest period.
Great. Thank you. On pricing, the 4.75% menu price, which, as you said, is below what we're seeing across the industry in grocery. Definitely appreciate being prudent. Do you see any risk to not taking more price now if we start to see more consumer elasticity of price really across the entire consumer landscape?
You know, I think that where our positioning is enables us to be flexible. Like I said, you know, we take pricing twice a year. We've done it for 43 or 44 years, whatever it is at this point now. We've always been effective in capturing it. The difference we're talking about of 50 basis points doesn't concern us at all. We'll be smart about where we place it. You know, we've got the menu variation. We're not talking about a big gap. We're just talking about seeing the tea leaves a little bit longer. It's not like we need to take 3% or 4% more.
Got it. Just on off-premise versus on-premise. Off-premise, you talked about nearly 2x pre-COVID. Seems pretty steady over the last few quarters. How are you thinking about the growth of on-premise versus off-premise from here? Do you expect opportunities for continued off-premise growth versus on-premise outperforming as you continue to capture? Just how are you thinking about those components?
Lauren, this is David Gordon. You know, certainly, as we've said since the beginning of the pandemic, that we feel that the off-premise growth is sticky, and our expectation that we built into the plan for this year is for that to remain. We're not looking to necessarily need to outsize where we currently are today. We'd be happy to currently continue to be in the, you know, high 20s to mid-20s with off-premise. We think we can continue to do that, and we will continue to do that, as the capacity continues to grow back inside the restaurants as well. That's where we stand today and where we're anticipating throughout the remainder of the year.
Thank you, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Thanks and good evening. I guess just to close the loop on quarter to date, I just wanted to make sure my math is right. You know, if I take your one-year comps that you've disclosed at various times, it seems like the quarter to date, two-year on Cheesecake is up 1.5%-2% versus that period in early 2020 before COVID hit. Is that right?
You know, Brian, I honestly, we can follow back up with you on that one. I don't have 2022 year in front of me.
Okay. You did just say you're back to a pre-Omicron trend, and I wanted to make sure that's versus a pre-COVID trend. You're suggesting that you're somewhere close to 10% versus a pre-COVID trend?
I think the best way to think about it, in my opinion, given all of the different comps variations over the years, right? Because you've got moving holidays, you've got weather, you've got the Super Bowl, et cetera. Where we are at today brings us back to the pre-Omicron AUV trend. It's, you know, you always have to seasonalize, adjust it, et cetera, but it basically would get us back to the same AUV levels that we were running pre-Omicron.
At The Cheesecake Factory, I want to just ask about the segment margins and looking at the quarter. I think still down, call it 250 basis points versus the fourth quarter of 2019. AUV is up 5%. I know there's a lot of noise in the numbers, but could you help us bridge that differential between, you know, temporary or one-time pressures versus structural differences? Just help us with the path towards recovering historical margins at the Cheesecake Factory segment, specifically.
Sure. I would say, first of all, obviously the impact from the last two weeks and the flow through there was pretty material. You know, I would say that could be 1.5% of that delta. The second big piece is the commodity inflation relative to pricing. Remember where we said we'd be at about 6% versus, you know, a 3% level pricing. You're talking about another 75 basis points right there. That's probably 2.25. The other difference, really, I would say, comes down to the manager bonus and COVID pay that we noted was around 45, 50 basis points.
You know, you're talking about the Omicron impact, the commodity inflation compared to pricing and timing, and then some one-time costs, and hopefully that gets you back to kind of in the ballpark.
Okay, that's helpful. Last one, I just wanted to ask about the other operating cost line specifically. I know you called out some pressure points in the fourth quarter. It sounded like it was mostly natural gas within that specific line item, but correct me if I'm wrong on that. You know, I guess your guidance for first quarter getting into the mid-25s, if I heard correctly, would suggest that whatever was in Q4 that pushed the number higher is expected to come lower. Am I interpreting that correctly? If so, can you illuminate us on sort of what those underlying dynamics could be there?
Yeah, some of it is the natural gas, as you call it. Some of it is, you know, that does happen to be where we capture the restaurant level incentive piece. You know, essentially for all of 2021, we just paid it 100% compared to a performance base, which would impact some of that. You know, some of it is just seasonality of what you see in Q4 versus the first quarter, and some of it is pricing leverage compared to the inflation. Those line items, things like rent and occupancy really don't have any inflation. They're just associated with the sales levels, and so we should be getting some leverage as we move up to 5% pricing in an area that's, you know, maybe 1%-2% inflationary comparatively.
All right. Thank you. I'll pass it along.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of James Rutherford with Stephens Inc. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much for the question. I know there's been a lot of questions on sort of the recent trends, but just wanna tackle this from a different angle, if I could. You mentioned that you've taken the last few weeks of trend and seasonalized that to get the AUV that you talked about, which is $12 million or greater for the year. If I just do simple math, that $12 million is about 13% higher than what you did in 2019, that $10.7 million in 2019. Is it too much of a stretch to say that your comments would imply that in the last few weeks you are running something in the low double digit percentage greater than 2019 levels, here in the last few weeks?
I'm just trying to kinda reconcile some of those comments if I could please.
Yeah. I think what we're saying is our expectation is that The Cheesecake Factory AUVs will be over $12 million. You know, you have to take into consideration seasonal trends as to where we would be, you know, in 2019 versus that. Also as we've noted, it includes the expectation that we're flowing through the pricing and capturing that. In this year, as we speak right now, you know, we're anticipating around a 5% pricing level. That builds on whatever trend we were pre-Omicron surge.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Nick Setyan with Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you. I apologize for belaboring this margin trajectory in 2019 in the context of 5% pricing. I think you said Q1 starts at about 200 basis points below Q1 2019. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but say we start at about 13.5%, we'd still be below the Q2 2019 number in terms of unit level margins. We'd be at or above in the second half. Is that a correct interpretation?
Hey, Nick. We're probably not fully offsetting that commodities, although we're getting closer. I think you're pretty spot on with that. By the time we get to Q3, it's gonna be and everything that we think is gonna happen happens. In Q4 it could be slightly above. I mean, I think that's right on your comments.
Okay. Perfect. In Q3, the 2% incremental price, what's falling off when you take that 2% price?
1.5.
Oh, no. Okay.
1.5 is falling off. Yep.
Got it. Just a clarification. In Q4, what was pricing, menu pricing?
In the quarter, it was 3% for Q4.
Okay. Thank you very much.
I think just to kind of hit on a point that Nick just made, our strategy here is really again, to reiterate, commodity slate inflation of mid-teens% isn't something that any company is gonna really wanna price for. As we get into a double digit to single digit scenario and we can execute on our plan, if we need to take slightly more pricing, our goal is with stabilization of sales trends to exit this scenario, the pandemic, at margins equal to or greater than on the four wall basis for Cheesecake Factory than 2019.
There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.