Good morning. My name is Tamisha, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the first quarter 2012 financial results 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 then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. Ms. Lynn Liddle, you may begin.
Good morning, everybody, thanks for joining us this morning. A couple of quick housekeeping things. Make sure that you do take a look at our safe harbor statement in the event that any forward-looking statements are mentioned. Also, this is an investor-designed call, please, members of the media, if you would be in a listen-only mode, we would appreciate that. We have some prepared remarks this morning, followed by Q&A. We're going to begin with our Chief Financial Officer, then our CEO will join us after that. We're going to start with Michael Lawton, Chief Financial Officer.
Thanks, Lynn. Good morning, everyone. During the first quarter, we continued to grow our same-store sales both domestically and internationally and had strong store growth in our international markets, which we believe shows that our strategies are working. We continued to drive shareholder value with 12% adjusted EPS growth. Overall, we are pleased with the operating results this quarter. During the quarter, we announced the successful completion of the recapitalization of our company. As a result, we incurred certain expenses that affected comparability this quarter, which are disclosed in our filings issued this morning. Subsequent to the quarter, we used a combination of cash on hand and some of the proceeds from our recapitalization to reward our shareholders with a $3 per share special dividend. Now let's dive into our first quarter results. I'll start by looking at our system-wide sales for the quarter.
Our global retail sales, which are the total retail sales at franchisee and company-owned stores worldwide, grew 7.2% during the quarter when excluding the impact of foreign currency. When we include the negative impact of currency, our global retail sales grew 6.1%. The drivers of the global retail sales growth included domestic same-store sales, which grew 2% in the first quarter, lapping a negative 1.4% in the prior year quarter. Broken down, franchisee same-store sales were up 2.1% for the quarter, while company-owned stores were up 1.6%. Also, international had another strong quarter as same-store sales grew 4.7%, which was lapping a very strong 8.3% in the prior year quarter. We closed net nine stores domestically, made up of 13 store openings and 22 closures.
Our international division grew by a net 77 stores this quarter, bringing the total store count to 4,912 as of the end of the first quarter. Turning to revenues, our total revenues for the first quarter were down $4.6 million or 1.2% from the prior year quarter. This decrease was driven primarily by lower company-owned store revenues resulting from the sale of 58 company-owned stores during 2011, and to a lesser extent, lower supply chain revenues. The decline in our supply chain revenues was due primarily to reduced volumes that resulted from lower order counts at the store level and a change in the mix of products sold per order. These declines were partially offset by higher commodity prices. Our promotions this quarter focused on side items, primarily Stuffed Cheesy Bread and Parmesan Bread Bites.
While these did not end up growing order count, they did as intended, raise ticket and sales and store-level profits. The previously mentioned decreases in our domestic businesses were offset in part by higher international revenues, resulting primarily from same-store sales and store count growth and higher domestic franchisee revenues. More detail regarding our revenue by business unit can be found in our 10-Q, which was filed this morning. Moving on to our operating margin. As a percentage of revenues, our consolidated operating margin increased 1.1% from 28.7% to 29.8% quarter-over-quarter. This was due primarily to a change in the mix of revenues attributable to fewer company-owned stores and increased franchise revenues. Operating margins for our company-owned stores as a percentage of revenues increased 2.9% from the prior year quarter, in part due to the positive impact of a higher average ticket.
These increases were offset in part by a 0.6% decrease in supply chain margin percentage versus the prior year quarter, primarily due to an impact of slightly higher commodity cost, higher fuel cost, and to a lesser extent, lower volumes. As a reminder, food commodities are priced on a constant dollar markup to our franchisees. Therefore, increases in commodity costs do not impact our supply chain dollar profit. They do, however, negatively impact our supply chain margin as a percent of revenues. The average cheese block price in the first quarter was $1.52 per pound versus $1.69 in last year's quarter, which moderated the overall increase in our market basket during the quarter. We continue to expect our market basket for 2012 will increase 1%-2% over 2011 levels, which is consistent with what we saw in the first quarter.
We have fixed pricing on approximately 35%-40% of our expected purchases in 2012. Turning to G&A expenses. G&A increased $1.3 million, or 2.7% quarter-over-quarter. When you exclude the $1.7 million impact from the sale of company-owned operations in 2011 and the $300,000 of recapitalization-related expenses incurred in 2012, G&A was down $700,000. This $700,000 decrease was due primarily to lower variable performance-based bonuses quarter-over-quarter and the timing of expenses. We have previously indicated that in 2012, we expect an additional $8 million-$10 million of incremental G&A expense from 2011 reported levels, which seems to contradict what I just said. Please remember that variable G&A, including variable compensation, can fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter. Where we stand today, we still expect to have higher G&A in 2012, but we are currently trending towards the lower end of the range previously given.
Regarding income taxes, during the first quarter, we had a higher effective tax rate versus the prior year quarter due primarily to a valuation allowance recorded on a deferred tax asset of $900,000. We continue to expect that 38%-39% will be our normalized effective tax rate for the foreseeable future. Our net income, as reported, was down $6.4 million or 23.5%. This decrease was primarily the result of $7.4 million of after-tax expenses that affected comparability this quarter. These are outlined in a table in our 8-K. Our net income benefited from higher domestic and international same-store sales, international store growth, and higher company-owned store margins, and it was negatively impacted by our lower supply chain margin. Our first quarter diluted EPS, as reported on a GAAP basis, was $0.35 and $0.47 when adjusted for items affected comparability. These items are outlined in the 8-K release this morning.
The $0.47 is a $0.05 or 12% increase from the $0.42 as adjusted EPS in the first quarter of last year. Here's how the $0.05 difference breaks down. Our improved operating results benefited us by $0.05. Our lower diluted share count, primarily due to our share repurchases in 2011, benefited us by $0.02. Foreign currency exchange rates negatively impacted us by $0.01, and our higher interest expense for the quarter negatively impacted us by $0.01. Let me step back for a moment and talk to you about our interest rate going forward. As a result of our recapitalization, our all-in interest rate, including fees and amortization of financing costs, will be approximately 5.7%, which is lower than the rate prior to the recapitalization. This rate assumes no draws on our revolver. Turning to liquidity.
We ended the quarter with almost $215 million of unrestricted cash, of which approximately $185 million was paid out after the end of the quarter in the form of a $3 per share special dividend. We'd also like to remind everyone that we currently have $82 million remaining authorized under our open market share repurchase program for future share repurchases. This is another way that we can deliver returns to our shareholders, and management will continue to evaluate all potential means to deliver these returns. In closing, we are pleased with the results in this quarter. We will continue to focus on driving shareholder value through our operating results and our use of strong cash flow. Thanks for your time today. Now I'll turn it over to Patrick.
Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. I can report that we delivered another good quarter with positive EPS growth, robust international unit and same-store sales growth, and positive U.S. sales comps that fell exactly in the middle of our long-term guidance. Our brand and system continue to strengthen, both domestically and internationally, and our technological leadership continues to resonate with consumers around the globe. Our international brand equity comes from having a recognized name that's known for quality products, excellent service, and engaging technology. For example, one of our international store growth leaders this quarter was Turkey, a market with excellent store operations and great service. Digital ordering is driving gains in countries like India and the U.K., where they recently reported a 44% increase in online sales, and that mobile orders now comprise 16% of the U.K.'s total digital orders.
These business drivers are behind an international enterprise that produces strong stores with excellent returns, which in turn spurs franchisees to build more stores and are the reason why our international business continues to grow at the rate and pace we've seen over the last few years. As a matter of fact, as of last quarter, we now have more Domino's Pizza stores outside of the U.S. than we do within the U.S. I want to take a moment to really punctuate that point and congratulate our Domino's international community for reaching this incredible milestone. It's a testament to our strong international franchisees and our international team and more proof of the opportunities that exist for our company on the international front. This achievement was helped by robust unit growth in the first quarter, one of the strongest first quarter store growth performances in our company's history.
It marked the highest first quarter global store growth number for Domino's in a decade and the highest Q1 for our international division ever. The day when Domino's Pizza worldwide has 10,000 stores is not far off. It's a milestone I look forward to celebrating soon. International sales, meanwhile, continued to grow strongly in the first quarter as well. I've often said that pizza isn't recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant, and we're proving that theory right now in many of our European markets where the economy has been weak. Our Asia region also posted strong results with solid sales in Japan, Australia, and South Korea. The U.S. also performed well again this quarter, sustaining the positive sales trend on our bigger base, and continued to benefit from the great brand equity we've built over the past few years.
During the quarter, we once again promoted a non-pizza side item, Parmesan Bread Bites, which was excellent for building ticket and was also a very profitable item for the stores to sell, which makes our franchisees happy. While it didn't drive traffic like a pizza-focused promotion might do, we felt that focusing on promoting some higher-margin items, combined with promotions for some higher traffic-driving items during the year, would balance out our marketing calendar and drive up store profits and sales in 2012. Our corporate stores posted better profits in the first quarter, and our franchisees saw strong profit growth as well. We know that profitable franchisees make for a healthy system. Our focus is on helping our franchisees generate strong store profits and to turn those profits into new stores so that our domestic store growth rate improves.
Managing our marketing calendar is an important part of managing our system from a store growth and sales perspective. Some promotions may be designed to drive margin and others to drive more traffic. We're making sure we're managing the promotions and brand message for the entire system, and it's one of the most important jobs of a franchisor. One topic that's been all over the news recently is the price of gas. I thought I'd spend a minute on that topic. Let me remind you that for us, the biggest potential impact from gas prices is the effect they can have longer term on commodity prices. At the store level, franchisees may have to pay delivery drivers an increase in mileage reimbursement, but it's usually not a big impact in overall store costs.
In our supply chain, we experience the impact of diesel prices. We also have fuel surcharges that help offset some of those costs. While we do care about higher fuel costs, the direct impact to us and our system is smaller than many people assume. One thing that continues to impact our system in a decidedly positive way is technology. In the first quarter here in the U.S., we launched our new Android app, joining the iPhone app that we launched last June. We're happy to report that roughly 7% of our total U.S. sales now come from mobile devices, including our two apps and existing mobile website. The new Android app is already over 1% of total sales. Over 20% of our digital sales now come from our mobile site and these two apps.
The iPhone and Android apps are definitely helping sales. They give consumers the ordering access that they've asked for and expect from an innovative company like ours. Our recent TV commercial highlights another unique innovation from Domino's. We're using our iPad Pizza Hero game to hire great team members. Customers do well making online pizzas with the game. They might just get hired at a local Domino's store. We're probably not going to get a flood of new hires this way. It does demonstrate that we're using innovative thinking here with technology often at the core. We've got more technology news on the way this year. With Kevin Vasconi, our new Chief Information Officer on board, we're excited about what the team can do to build on our technological advantage.
While technology differentiates us from many in our sector, another important feature of our business story is free cash flow and the financial management of this company. We averaged over $2 million a week in free cash flow over the last 12 months. This robust cash flow stream enables us to use our cash for any number of purposes for the ultimate benefit of our shareholders. Most of you were probably on our call March 19th when we reviewed our successful recapitalization. I'm not going to repeat all the details from that call, but I'd like to reiterate that we're very pleased with the new debt structure and that we were able to reward shareholders with a $3 special dividend. It shows our commitment to shareholders and our ability to make significant moves to reward them.
With store-level profits improving, consistent sales and store growth off to a great start, combined with the successful recapitalization of our debt, I'm pleased that 2012 has started off well. With that, I'd like to open the line for questions. Tamisha?
At this time, if you would like to ask questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the roster. Your first question comes from the line of Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer.
Thank you very much. The market was looking for a little bit higher domestic comps in the quarter. Maybe we can just first address the trends there. I understand the 2% that was reported was definitely in line with your long-term outlook. I still think there are several reasons why I think the domestic comp could potentially outperform that goal in the more medium term. I think it might be logical to think that maybe the fantastic weather we had in January and February might have shifted some spending away from delivery in the near term. Maybe you can talk to us about what you saw from a weather effect internally, maybe how you think about that internally.
I realize you don't like to address intra-quarter trends, or talk about how trends happen throughout the quarter, any color you could potentially give us on that would be great.
Yep. Thanks, Brian. It's Patrick. First, I'll take the weather one. We did a lot of analysis on weather and did some regression analysis and really dug deep on it because weather is something that gets talked about a lot across our industry, and this was for us, as negative a weather quarter as we could have. That said, our analysis said that it still just wasn't that big a deal for the quarter. It probably was a couple of tenths, maybe slightly more than that, but it really was not a big effect. When we kind of pulled out the weather by region and looked at the overall effect, at the end of the day for the quarter, it really was not that big a driver of the comp result.
I think the answer is first what you said, which is our long-term guidance is kind of 1%-3% for the domestic business. We came in in the middle of that. Obviously, we've been performing the last couple of years at a higher level than that. We think what we're proving is that we can grow off of this new higher base. That said, I think when we look at the quarter, really, the net effects of the quarter were primarily driven by what we were choosing to promote. Parmesan Bread Bites sold very well, but you're not going to drive robust order growth with a side item, right? The analogy would be burger chains going on air selling French fries. The answer is you want people to know the Parm Bread Bites are there.
It's effective for driving ticket and profits within the store, which I think really was the big positive news story out of the quarter were store-level margin really nicely forward. fourth quarter was good, first quarter was even stronger. You saw the corporate store margins were up 2.9%, we saw nice movement from the franchisees. That's something that I've been kind of calling out for a while, that we were very focused on, and it wasn't something that we were seeing the level of improvement that we wanted over the last couple of years. We saw really nice store-level margin improvement. I think those are kind of the different factors. Weather really was not that big a deal. It was as bad as it could be for us by being good in the middle of the winter.
We just didn't see that much effect out of the weather. I think, honestly, we can kind of take that one off the table, it really came down to what we were promoting, how it affected the overall traffic of the business. We love what it was doing for store profits, we're still growing off of that higher base.
The restaurant margins have definitely improved, I guess really the best way for shareholders to realize the benefit of that is for it to translate into unit growth.
Yep
just because of the model. Maybe you can talk about maybe this margin improvement, how it's obviously impacted the franchisees' earnings, but what about the backlog for unit growth? Has it improved the backlog for unit growth? Maybe you can talk about the U.S. backlog for unit growth for 2012 and 2013.
Yeah, I think the answer is you're still not going to see anything meaningful in the near term on store growth. Over the medium term, getting store level profits to where they want to be, it clearly can become a driver for us. I wouldn't start raising expectations around domestic level store growth in the near term. Our view is very strongly that stores get built because they should be built. It takes some time for that to cycle through. Our franchisees are in a much better place with their overall profitability than they've been. Frankly, playing over to the international side, it's why we're seeing just incredibly robust results from the international side on store growth.
If you look at the 77 net up on the international side, it's the best we have ever done in the first quarter with the international business, you'll see that it's up pretty markedly from first quarter last year. The one thing that I would say on the domestic side is if you look at the trend on closures, that trend is definitely moving in the right direction. That's part of that net growth, are the stores that are at the bottom that aren't doing as well, that are kind of getting weeded out. The answer is you'll see some sequential reduction in the number of closes. That's probably showing up before you're going to see gross store openings.
This is just the last question from me. How should we think about the strategy for the rest of the year for the U.S.? Is it going to be a strategy where you're continuing to try to drive margin improvements and focus less on driving traffic, or is it going to shift back towards traffic? How do we think about the strategy? Because it did shift in the first quarter.
Yep
You know.
I think the answer is you're going to see balance from us over the course of the year. It's got to be a balance of both ticket and some things that are more center of the plate. For us, that means pizza, that are going to drive volume more and order counts more. We look at it on an overall basis over the year, and obviously I'm not going to get into the specifics around what's coming. I think the answer is expect some balance around side items and pizza.
All right. Thanks, Patrick.
All right. Thanks, Brian.
Your next question comes from the line of John Glass with Morgan Stanley.
Thanks. If I could follow up on that line of questioning in the U.S. comps. Why did you choose now to focus on store-level margins? I've gone back just quickly and looked at store-level margins. It seems like they've never been better, so it's not as if I would think that there's a big complaint that they should be higher. Maybe you could just underscore that. Is there a significant, or is there an increased concern that margins should be higher at the store level by the franchisees? I'm also surprised that given your ability to advertise both online and use the online messaging as well as your promotional activity on traditional media, that you couldn't balance both, that you couldn't have both drive traffic as well as check. Maybe just the final, might as well ask them all at once. Maybe could you give a granularity?
How much did order counts actually fall? What was the order of magnitude by which they fell off this quarter, just so we understand what the balance was this quarter?
Yeah, we're not going to get into the specifics on the orders, but the answer was they were a little negative. That's as specific as we're going to get on it. There are a number of things kind of going into that. That's kind of that side. The margins, and in terms of franchisee profitability, you're right. They were very good. Relative to where they've been, and you asked, are franchisees concerned about the profitability level? The answer is clearly they are unanimous in that they would like them higher. So would we. I think the real punchline on that is if you look at domestic unit growth for Domino's, we haven't moved for two decades, really.
There have been years that have gone up and down. The practical answer is store growth hasn't moved now for quite some time, and we're going to fix that over the medium term. Part of that is getting unit-level profits to a higher level than where they've been. We've got to do that in a balanced way. This may sound like it's a big shift in strategy. It's not. We've wanted to move store-level profits up. We've made nice progress the last couple of years. We made particularly good progress in 2010. 2011, we made a little progress, not a lot. It's something that we continue to focus on. We feel like if we can get unit profits moving consistently the right direction, that's ultimately going to create great value for our shareholders because it can generate store growth.
I don't want to get ahead of myself in terms of kind of expectations around that. The expectations we've given on stores are that the vast majority of that in the near term is going to come from international, and that's really robust. I understand there are fundamentally four levers for growing the top line in this business. International stores and comps and domestic stores and comps. We've had three of the four of those moving nicely. We've got to figure out a way to get that fourth one going, and we're spending a lot of time and effort on figuring out how to get the store growth going. It's going to take some time, but fundamental to that is continuing to improve store-level profitability.
If I could just one quick follow-up. I can only see store-level margins to your corporate stores, so I'm not sure if that analogy carries over. Maybe franchisees are not as profitable. I understand they pay a royalty. How much better, what are, do you think, franchisee store-level margins today, and how much better do you think they need to be in order for them to start opening stores again?
First of all, from a corporate store standpoint, the royalty is included in there, right? It comes into the G&A ultimately. In terms of how we measure store-level profitability, we look at it on an apples-to-apples basis, franchise to corporate. On average, dollar level profits, franchisees still make somewhat more money than our corporate stores do. We don't have perfect visibility on all of the stores' profits, franchisees' profits in the first quarter, but we know they moved very nicely the right direction. Can't tell you if they were exactly the same kind of movement as we saw in the corporate stores, but we get enough of them on a period basis to know that they're moving nicely in the right direction.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays Capital.
Great. Thank you very much. A couple of questions. Just first, a follow-up on kind of the U.S. comp trend. I'm just wondering whether you'd give any color in terms of sequential trend through the quarter, only because it seemed like the broader industry might have slowed later in the quarter. I think the debate going in was, when you look at comparisons for the U.S. business, obviously this past year, you lapped a negative one to two points, which some people might have therefore expected a stronger comp, then obviously two years ago in the first quarter was your best comp in a long time. I'm just wondering, one, just sequential trends through the quarter and two, how you think about kind of year ago versus two years ago, maybe consensus was too aggressive.
I don't know whether you want to share perhaps what your internal target was. I know it's 1-3 long term, just trying to get a sense of one versus two year, especially because we look at the rest of the year and the one year becomes more difficult from a comparison standpoint. Just trying to get a sense of how you look at that.
Yeah. I'm not going to get into kind of splitting out trends within the quarter. You got it exactly right on the comps going back. It was a little negative. I think it was 1.4 negative last year. That was rolling over 14.3 the previous year. It's a little bit unusual that you'd be talking about a three-year comp, but you really kind of need to, because last year was clearly very much a reflection of the previous year, and I think frankly, overachieved versus where all of us thought it was going to be.
Really, I think the answer is, go back to kind of the long-term guidance, which is, what we've said is we've built this new bigger base of business, and we really believe that expectations should be over the long term, that we're going to grow kind of low single digits off of that new higher base. We don't expect to give it back. We expect to grow off of it, but 2% is kind of right in the middle of really where we kind of expect the business to be over the medium to long term.
Okay. Brad, as we look out to the rest of the quarters of this year, I know the first quarter, as we've talked about already, was more profit-driven promotion rather than traffic-driven. Despite the balance that you're talking about, that you would say for the rest of the year, that that's more of a reasonable run rate, and it wasn't perhaps a deceleration or a shortfall in the first quarter that would correct itself and still drive the outsized comp the rest of this year.
Yeah, I'd go back to the one to three. That's where we think expectations should be. Obviously, there are going to be quarters that are over or under that, but that's where we think we're going to be the majority of the time, and that's kind of why we choose that range. I think Mike wants to loop back to something I said earlier.
I want to go back to an earlier comment that Patrick made on store-level margins, which you can see in the 8-K, royalties have not been backed out of that number. Just a correction of a statement.
When we look at comparable profits, when we look at profits between franchise and corporate, we line them up on an exact same basis, franchisees are on a dollar basis, a little more profitable than the corporate stores.
The franchisees definitely did enjoy more profits in the first quarter of this year.
Got it. Just Patrick, one other follow-up question. On the international side of things, I know you talked about perhaps Europe was a little weaker, pizza's somewhat recession-resistant. I'm just wondering if you could talk about whether there were any slowdowns in some key markets. Some of your multinational peers are talking about that, it seems like obviously your international results have sustained themselves pretty impressively, I'm just wondering if you're starting to see any signs of a slowdown, perhaps more in Europe rather than Asia.
Yeah. The answer is it's held up really well. We've felt it a little bit in Southern Europe, in kind of Greece and Spain. One thing that I've said many times, and continues to be true, is that I think the best predictor of the health of this category is employment levels. As you see the employment changes out there, at least at the extremes in Europe, Spain at 24.4%, and Greece I think is at least in the high teens. We feel that, but I'll tell you overall, Europe is holding up very nicely. It's been something that when I look at kind of the list of things that I worry about, we look for weakness in Europe. Clearly, the economy has been weakening over there, and we're just really not seeing it showing up in our business. We're feeling pretty good about it.
Great to hear. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Mitch Speiser with Buckingham Research.
Great. Thanks very much. Patrick, just continuing to focus on U.S. unit growth now with margins looking like they are steadily improving, can you just maybe discuss some of the key constraints as to why franchise unit growth has not been maybe as strong as some people would like it to be? It sounds like you're putting a lot of resources behind trying to get franchisee unit growth going. Can you discuss maybe some of the things that you're thinking about to spark U.S. unit growth?
I think there are a couple of things that go into it. One has been over the last couple of years as we've had some stores that were not performing as well, even though we've been making progress coming out of the downturn, you've got a bell curve on store-level profits. While the averages have been moving, some stores didn't move as quickly or were at a lower base. For our franchisees, I think for our healthier, better franchisees, a smart decision on their part from a straight ROI perspective was to buy some stores that weren't performing as well. We've had franchisees who were growing pretty strongly, but they were doing it by buying stores that were not performing as well or were even distressed.
As we see that starting to ease, and it definitely has, and it's part of why you see fewer closures in the quarter, and if you kind of look at those closures sequentially over the last few years, you're going to see kind of nice progress being made on that front. That's kind of one part of it. They've got to choose where their capital's going to go, and if there's a steady supply of stores that they can buy and turn around, that's a smart investment decision for them. Ultimately, it makes us a better system. While in the very short term, I might like them to be building stores, the fact is, over the medium term, longer term, we're far better off as a brand and a system to have the stronger players buying the stores that aren't performing as well.
The other side of that equation then is, what does it take for them to start building new stores? If the choice is starting to go away on buying stores that aren't as good, then when do they start generating new store growth? That becomes an ROI decision for them as they look at improvements in their P&Ls. It's going to change their confidence around the business. We still are looking at availability of financing being a little bit of a problem still, particularly for smaller players. Our larger players are able to tap the debt markets again. Single store folks that want to build or buy a second store, that still is constrained. There is not as much availability of debt financing out there for the smaller players as there was. That's something that I'm not sure that I see easing.
I think that's going to be a tough market for a while for smaller players to access the debt markets. I think it's going to move to more local banks and relationships that they have than some of the sources of financing that were out there. Larger players, very different story. Our larger, more successful franchisees are clearly able to capture the debt market again. We still think that there are 1,000 stores to be built over the longer term in the U.S. That's going to take time to do it. It's going to take time for us to get real moves in store growth in the near term. I wouldn't start building expectations around that in the near term. It's certainly something we're focused on. We've got a very great team that we've built around this.
They're out understanding this and what the obstacles are. Hopefully, that's a lever we're going to be able to get moving again. It's still going to take some time before that's going to be a meaningful lever, I think, for shareholder value creation.
Thanks. If I can slip another in there. Online ordering, you gave us several metrics. If you gave us this one, I apologize, but just the total % of online orders in the U.S. and where that was about a year ago.
We're north of 30% now, and a year ago, we were probably five points lower than that, something like that. We're probably in the 25 range. The other thing that's moved along briskly is the mobile side of this. 7% of total orders now are on mobile. That's seven out of north of 30 on total. You're looking at better than 20% of our digital orders are now on mobile. By the way, we dug up the numbers, and I got this one right. We were right around 25% on digital sales a year ago.
Great. Just one last one, then I'll pass it on to the next person. The food cost basket for the year, you mentioned, is unchanged. Can you tell us what it was in the first quarter?
As I mentioned in the script, it was between 1% and 2%, which is consistent with what we expect for the rest of the year.
Okay. Thanks for that.
Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Buckley with Bank of America.
Thank you. Just a couple of questions. Again, I guess we'll beat the U.S. to death, but just your thoughts on the QSR pizza categories in the first quarter, Patrick. I know you don't want to talk about going forward, and I understand, but what are you promoting so far in the second quarter? I know you have the new Artisan Pizza offering, what else have you been promoting so far in the second quarter?
Yeah. Artisan, as you said, and kind of early week carryout special, and we've also got some of the Cheesy Bread mixed in, which was a little more fourth quarter. It played just into the first quarter, but a little bit more in the fourth quarter when we were doing that. Right now, it's a mix of really of those three things.
Okay. Just your thoughts on the QSR pizza category in the quarter. We saw the Pizza Hut numbers. QSR, in general, has been pretty strong. Has the pizza category led QSR overall, or is it kind of in line? Or just what's your-
Yeah. I think, I heard a different number thrown out there from one of our peers. Our belief is that you're seeing low single-digit growth in the category. I think you may be seeing share gains from the national players versus the regionals and local players, it may be why there's a little bit of a difference in the number I'm talking about and what one of our peers was talking about. I believe at the total category, not just the national players, but also the regionals and smaller players. I think that's kind of a couple points up right now, and I think the nationals are doing a little better than that.
Clearly, with Pizza Hut coming out with their number stronger us in the two range, I think there's some share shift going towards the national players, we'll find out about the third national, I guess, tonight.
Okay. Then, Mike, just a question for you on the international side. When I look at the overall revenue growth, are there differences in the rate of growth in the first quarter between the kind of traditional franchise royalties and fees and the distribution revenues that are included in the international?
The distribution revenues were relatively flat. I think overall, the distribution revenue was relatively flat, but I'm having trouble checking that number here. Yeah, it was very flat. Most of the growth did come out of the royalties.
The distribution revenues being flat, would that be a function, I guess currency's getting impacted, maybe commodity price is impacted. Is there anything else that would have made it flat?
Yeah, it's the relative strength of Canada versus the rest of international, because the only place we own the distribution centers is in Canada. Canada, I think, was not quite as robust as the rest of international. That's why you see a little bit of a shift towards more royalty revenues from distribution.
That makes good sense. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Anderson with Miller Tabak + Co.
Yes, good morning. Just two quick questions. First of all, you mentioned that the Android app now contributing about 1% of total sales. Is that the number we should use for the total contributions for the first quarter comp, or how should we look at this, and how should we look at it going forward?
Yeah, it's a little over 1% now. No, it was not the average for the first quarter because it actually launched, I think, towards the end of February.
It's ramped up very nicely in terms of number of downloads, the way the orders are moving on it. We're really pleased with how it's performing, and we kind of can go back and look at the growth curve on that versus the iPhone. There are some mix shifts in there that's not all obviously incremental, and we see some coming off of the mobile website because frankly, the app is probably a better overall experience. The total on mobile is now north of 7%, which is just a very nice move for us. We continue to see that growing.
Is the contribution more from the ramp-up in Android faster than it was from coming from iPhone or vice versa? How does that compare?
I think it's reasonably comparable. I think overall Android has a little higher share than kind of the iPhone platform. Over time, probably the answer is it gets a little bit bigger just because there are more Android phones out there, I think, than iPhones in total.
Overall, in terms of the ramp, I think it's pretty comparable to what we saw with the iPhone.
Final question, what are you seeing in India? I remember there was a big growth driver in the last quarter for you in terms of same restaurant sales.
Yeah. I can't get into specifics because they're publicly traded, and they haven't released their numbers yet. I would tell you, in general, the answer is everything's still on track, and it's a market we're very excited about.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Alain Concepcion with Citi.
Hi, good morning. Just wanted to get some more clarification on your comment that your marketing of pizza versus side items would be more balanced. Relative to the first quarter, would we expect more marketing focused on driving order counts, which would then impact profitability, or was the first quarter more indicative of the balance?
Well, first quarter was pretty side item focused. We had early week carryout special, but it was some cheesy bread and then mostly Parm bread bites. I guess since we're out right now with Artisan, the answer is, it's going to be at least a little more balanced because the first quarter was pretty much about side items, with the exception of the carryout special. Over the course of the year, it's going to be balanced. First quarter was probably a little more weighted towards side items.
Okay, great. Were there any noticeable changes in the mix of delivery orders versus carryout orders in the quarter?
No.
Okay.
Pretty consistent with the past.
Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Saleh with Cowen and Company.
Great. Thank you. Just wanted to ask about the domestic franchisees. Can you remind us again, are franchisees allowed to open or own any other concepts aside from Domino's?
Yeah. You've got 1,100 franchisees, and it's something that's kind of unique about our system, is they're focused on us. Those who've come up through the system are dedicated to Domino's. We've got just a few that we've kind of experimented with over the last couple of years that have come in with outside restaurant experience. That's a very small minority of the overall. The vast majority are just operating Domino's Pizza stores.
Great. The vast majority of your unit growth is really coming from international, and we do continue to hear of weakness in Europe from many of your peers. Just wondering, what is your confidence in the new unit growth expectations over the next 12 months if we do see a weakening in same store sales over in Europe?
Yeah. First I'd go back to the previous answer, which is, we just really haven't seen it in Europe yet. Look, at some point, if you see a weakening of comps, does that start to play into your store growth? At some level, yes. What I would say is, what you're seeing right now is more an acceleration, and that's because unit-level economics are on average, pretty robust in our international business. It'd be almost more a momentum effect, if things slowed down than kind of an actual change in the ROI, short of them turning negative, right? It might affect kind of just their level of confidence, but The returns are incredibly good right now on average, and that's why you're seeing the kind of robust growth that we're getting.
Great. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Smith with Feltl and Company.
Hi, guys. I think most everything's been asked, but just wanted to clarify a few things. First, you said that delivery versus carryout there was no real change. Is that flat sequentially or on a year-over-year basis? If you can talk more on that, do you see any impact from weather on carryout? Lastly, can you talk about how much you were promoting it this quarter versus a year ago?
Yeah. A year ago, we had a couple of very significant one-week promotions on carryout, and we did not have the same thing this year. We were promoting Monday, Wednesday. We've got more of a regular carryout offer going to develop that type of customer. I think, as we said, kind of proportionately, we haven't seen a big change, and part of the reason for that is year-on-year, over the last few years, we have been growing the carryout business as a percentage of total sales. We may have seen a bigger increase this year if we'd run the same carryout specials that we did a year ago. Instead, we're not seeing that because the natural growth numbers maybe offset by the fact that we were heavily emphasizing it last year. We're seeing kind of flat on both.
We're not seeing a big change, but that could be due to the mix of the offers.
Does the weather help when it's warmer? Do more people feel like driving over to the store to pick it up?
As Patrick said on weather, we don't see big differences, but we certainly would expect that our carryout business would see a bit more benefit with the good weather. As I said, we didn't see a lot of shift this year versus last year.
Okay, lastly.
Just want to go back to the weather comment. We pulled it apart hard looking at that. It was going to be the best quarter for us to really understand how much it can affect it, because clearly the weather was very warm, which is generally a bad thing for us, and it just didn't amount to that much of a change, that much of an effect.
Okay. Real quick, I know that you talked a little bit about the pizza category, did you guys see any different competitive pressure or easing in kind of pricing pressure this quarter?
No, not a lot. Pizza Hut was out with their box of pizza and breadsticks. Overall, one of the things we always keep in mind around here is the majority of our competition in the pizza industry is not the national players. The majority of our competitors out there, this is a store-by-store deal, and most of those competitors are the regional chains and the local chains, and that's going to tend to not drive as much movement in their promotional practices, et cetera. Overall, even from the national competitors, I wouldn't say we saw really meaningful differences in terms of what they were doing. I think just as importantly, I always try to remember that the bulk of our competition is not the other national chains.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of John Ivankoe Jr. with JPMorgan.
Hi. Thank you. Hopefully quickly. In Europe, or I guess maybe even your developed markets more specifically, was there anything that either happened in the first quarter and recent quarters tactically from a promotional product development perspective that's really worked for you guys that kind of shows how, again, that you can take or even grow share, grow traffic in what should be, as you pointed out, a declining overall industry environment? Is there anything specifically going on there that we just might not be seeing?
Yeah. I think technology is a big part of that over time. I think that's the newest, biggest leverageable competitive advantage that we've got, both domestically and internationally. I think that's the most important one.
Like, for example, in the U.K., I think you're actually indexing even more than the U.S., is that correct?
Yeah, in terms of total digital, yes, it is higher. Yep.
Okay. In continental Europe, again, it is surprising, Dave, as you've laid out total employment to not see fairly significant contraction in your business. Your knowledge on the franchise level, they haven't had to resort to significant discounting or what have you? The price points have been able to hold relatively steady?
Yeah. It's held together pretty darn well. I think some of it is this category is still certainly much less developed outside of the U.S. than inside on average. Our view over the longer term is you've got kind of a 5%-ish growth in the category outside of the U.S. and kind of low single-digit growth inside the U.S. Some of it is, I think there's just still more room for the category to grow outside of the U.S.
Great. Understood. Thank you.
Yep. By the way, I was hoping it was going to be your dad asking the questions, unfortunately, I guess it was John Ivankoe Jr.
There are no further questions.
With that, I'd like to thank you all for participating in today's call, and we look forward to speaking with you in July for our second quarter call. Thank you.
This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.