Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kura Sushi USA Incorporated Fiscal 4th Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen only mode and the lines will be opened for your questions following the presentation. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, November 16, 2020. On the call today, we have Hajimejimiuba, President and Chief Executive Officer Koji Shinohara, Chief Financial Officer and Benjamin Porton, Investor Relations Director.
And now, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Porton.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining. By now, everyone should have access to our fiscal Q4 2020 earnings release. It can be found at www.kura sushi.com in the Investor Relations section. A copy of the earnings release has also been included in an 8 ks we submitted to the SEC.
Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today will include forward looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. Also during today's call, we will discuss certain non GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance.
The presentation this additional information should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP and the reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release. With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to Jimmy.
Thank you, Ben, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Like our last quarter's earnings call, our discussion today will mainly focus on marketing's update and our pandemic strategies. However, if you do have specific questions about our Q4 financial results, we will be happy to answer them during Q and A. As many of you likely remember, our offshore guidelines in mid March switched to mandatory shutdowns of industrial dining, we made the difficult decision to close all of our restaurants system wide.
From the start of the pandemic, our primary concerns have been the safety of our guests, the ongoing health and the welfare of our team, our liquidity and our ability to quickly and efficiently resume operations when the time was right. As conditions allowed, we began the process of reopening our stores in late May and by the end of our fiscal Q4, we were able to open 23 out of 25 restaurants. Keep in mind that our restaurants have been hampered by various COVID capacity restrictions, which is reflected in this quarter's sales. You might remember that in California, which contains roughly half of our restaurant base, Governor Newsom did issue a restriction on all indoor dining beginning on July 1. And because this restriction was in effect throughout the Q4, Our California stores operated largely on 2 go and outdoor seating service basis until restrictions were relaxed in certain counties in September.
Outside of California, most of our restaurants were operating at 50% seating capacity during the Q4, and we have been very excited to see solid demand from our guests for our differentiated dining experience as we reopened our dining rooms. In Texas, we saw significant improvement in September with the return of the Fukua experience and the seating capacity increased to 75%. With our Q4 comps in Texas were negative 60%, our comps for September were negative 38% and our October comps improved to negative 24%, which we think is indicative of the recovery we can expect in diligence with reopened indoor dining rooms and the full crowd experience. We saw another example of this with our recent new restaurant opening in Fort Lee, New Jersey, our segment to the end of the quarter, where sales levels have reached 50% to 60% of our pandemic system AUV in spite of New Jersey's 25% seating Chaparral Imitation. As I noted, a significant part of our consumer appeal is our ability to provide guests with a multi sensory crew experience in our dining rooms through the use of our revolving conveyor belt, our on demand ordering screen and the express belt, omni safes dome and our Vicon Rewards machine.
As you can imagine, this experience is almost impossible to replicate in Peru due to current installations. Our most significant headwinds have been in California due to a system wide ban on conveyor belts, which has resulted in the loss of a signature element of the product experience as well as the front of house labor efficiencies that our conveyor belts provide. To mitigate the loss of in store sales starting in late July early August, we implemented several initiatives to supplement our 2 go service, including limited outdoor seating in many of our California restaurants and the system wide rollout of online ordering and delivery options to the Grubhub. As a result of our focus on off premises dining, including Grubhub implementation, we were able to grow our off premises mix to 17% for Q4. This compares to our fiscal year off premises mix of around 1% of sales.
Additionally, by the end of Q4, we had 10 restaurants in California with outdoor dining spaces. While we were able to recoup some of the lost sales, as you can imagine, we are eager to bring back the Fukuda experience to our guests in California as soon as we can. As implementation of efforts such as outdoor dining and our glove hub listing were completed in August, we began to see the full month benefit of these new initiatives beginning in September. Our September October results were also void by the relaxation of timing room restrictions in certain California counties. To provide a comparison between our past quarter and our current quarter, we began our FY 20 24th quarter with only 3 open dining rooms.
But today, we have 18 restaurants that offer in store dining. While our Q4 comps were negative 73%, we've seen consistent comp improvement as we've entered our new fiscal year with September comps of negative 53% and October comps of negative 44%. Notably, we've achieved close to 30% sequential system wide revenue growth in September in spite of August historically being our strongest month. These strong results continued into October, which saw further system wide revenue growth of 20% over September. We are continuing to see monthly improvement in our off premise sales business as well.
While our Q4 Grubhub sales were only $35,000 we were able to grow our Grubhub sales to $84,000 in September, bringing our total off premises sales to $350,000 for that month. In October, our off premises sales continued to grow with off premises sales of $405,000 $123,000 of which were from Grubhub. These early results have been very encouraging and we are exploring working with other channels to expand our digital footprint and mitigate margin pressure from third party fees. We are currently running an in store pilot for online ordering through Square and pending results, we plan to expand this system wide. Through Square, we will be able to offer online ordering through our homepage, offer mobile ordering through our Weiting app and eventually provide contactless service and table size payment for our dining room guest.
Our full cry experience has been one of the drivers of our industry leading pre COVID unit economics and operating our restaurant without this has been a challenge. However, we feel good about the demand for Kura Sushi when our dining room is available and we continue to look for ways to deliver a great guest experience in spite of these limitations. In addition, due to the steps we've taken after the onset of COVID, including retention of store managers and critical kitchen staff, we believe we are well positioned to ramp up our operations swiftly and efficiently when indoor dining restrictions are lifted and seating capacity limitations are relaxed. Regardless of our restaurant capacity, our main goal continues to be the health and safety of both our guests and our team members. To further promote a safer environment and give our guests peace of mind, we have taken several steps for each of our restaurants, including the partner protective equipment for our team members, enhanced cleaning processes, social distancing, efficient between booths and team members' health checks prior to the start of each shift.
As we mentioned on our last call, we continue to implement a customer survey as part of our checkout process focusing on our COVID-nineteen safety procedures. To date, their response has been overwhelmingly positive. Let's quickly discuss our development efforts. Subsequent to the end of Q4, we opened our Fodulin New Jersey restaurant in September and our Koreatown front desk and Washington D. C.
Restaurant in November. We currently have 4 stores under construction, including one that may end up opening in early fiscal year 2022. All in all, we still expect to maintain our stated goal of 20% unit gross CAGR over a 5 year period, which began in fiscal 20 19. But as you can imagine, in the current environment, there are a number of factors out of our control that could alter or delay our plans. In terms of liquidity, I would like to reiterate how fortunate we have entered this challenging time with a capital position that can sustain our company and our growth plans.
As of the end of the quarter, we had $9,000,000 in charge on hand and no debt. We have also increased our revolving line of credit to $35,000,000 from Curacao Japan along with an extension of the payback period from 1 year to 5 years. With the expansion of our revolver, our Chapar portion provides a solid runway, not just for supporting the company through the pandemic, but for continuing to execute our growth plans. With our planned capital expenditures for fiscal year 2021, we have just begun drawing down on our revolver. As always, we appreciate the support of Kurezetan and their confidence in the long term success of our business.
Our 4th quarter weekly expenditures of approximately $850,000 per week was within our expectations, and we expect our weekly judgment rate to be approximately $800,000 for fiscal Q1 2021. Our expected Q1 burn rate is higher than our burn rate expectations for subsequent quarters during this fiscal year as our D and O insurance payment falls on the Q1. Lastly, due to the ongoing uncertainty driven by COVID-nineteen, we will not issue financial guidance for fiscal year 2021 at this time. In closing, I would like to thank all of our team members for their tireless efforts in serving our guests during this challenging time. With strong pent up demand and solid financial footing, we are excited about the long term growth opportunity of our business and we will remain prudent as we navigate through this challenging environment.
This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now happy to answer any questions you have. As a reminder, during the Q and A session, I may answer in Japanese before my response is translated into English. Please bear with us. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Our first question comes from James Rutherford with Stephens Incorporated. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, thank you for taking the questions. A few from me. I wanted to start on Texas where I think you said the comp was negative 24% in October. Just to clarify, was that achieved without being able to run the primary belt? And also what off premise mix did you see in Texas during October compared to kind of 17% level for the company wide?
Sure. Thank you, James, for your first question. Please allow me to answer in Japanese.
Yes. As of October, we've been able to offer the full crew experience, including our primary belt in Texas, which is certainly a driver for our improving comps in that market. In terms of the Texas off premises mix, so our 17% mix for Q4 has decreased as we've entered Q1 and we've been able to reopen some of our dining rooms and increase seating capacity in other markets. And so across our system, we're seeing a lower off premises mix in Q1. That being said, the absolute dollar value is increasing.
It's just the mix that's going down. So Texas is following that same pattern where the mix is lower than it was in Q4. We're experiencing great momentum in Texas, and we're excited to continue to deliver a great guest experience through our conveyor belts and unique sushi suite. We're excited to continue to build out our off premises business in that market. And we think that between these 2, we will be able to maintain the strong comps we have been seeing so far in this quarter.
Excellent. That's very helpful. And then to look at that off premise sales mix at 17 percent of pre pandemic sales levels, very impressive. I mean, just what were the main pieces that drove that improvement? Was it primarily the addition of delivery?
Because I don't think that online ordering has been launched system wide yet. So maybe just unpack the components of that nice step up in off premise, please.
So we began a lot of different off premise efforts during Q4 and we began to see the full impact of that starting in Q1 and that's really been driving the increase in off premises sales. And then the growing dollar amounts is that's certainly being driven by Grubhub. And so we feel that rolling this out system wide was the right move for us. If I could just add on that a little bit. James, you've mentioned that we don't have online ordering yet.
I'm extremely excited and proud to announce that actually, if you go to our website, you can order online now. We started working with Square for a couple of different we started working with Square to begin a pilot there. One of the most interesting things that we've learned as a result of Grubhub implementation was that the vast majority of our guests that were ordering from Grubhub were actually ordering for pickup as opposed to delivery, which is completely not what we'd expected. And so once these results became apparent to us, we decided to partner with Square as well because their fees for pickup are much, much more competitive than Grubhub's. And because of the Square implementation, we've actually been able to offer online ordering on our website.
And our waitlist app is actually undergoing an update right now. I believe it's being actively reviewed by the Android and iOS app stores that will allow people to check into the waitlist step and then directly order from through the app. And so if you're at Irvine and you're which is one of the test stores and you see like a 2 hour waiting period, we've got the button right there to say, hey, why don't you order to go instead? You don't have to wait 2 hours. And so I'm extremely excited about that.
Excellent. Thank you, Jimmy. Thanks, Ben.
Thank you, James.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Peter Saleh with BTIG. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thank you. I believe you have mentioned you had 3 restaurants that opened so far in 2021 and there's 4 more under construction. Can you just talk to us about the 4 that are under construction with the cadences of those openings throughout this year?
So given that we already have these 4 units under construction, looking at our historical build out times, we'd expect opening timings of between Q2 and Q3 for the 4 stores. That being said, because we're in the pandemic, we might have unexpected delays with city inspections, permitting, etcetera. And so there are externalities, but as long as we don't face those, we expect Q2 and Q3 openings. And as Jimmy mentioned in his prepared remarks, we continue to hold I'm sorry, let me rephrase. We may decide to push back one of these 4 units into fiscal 'twenty two depending on the ongoing circumstance pandemic.
Understood. Okay, very helpful. Can we ask about the 3rd party delivery? I know you partnered with Grubhub. Are you guys in conversations to add other delivery partners to expand the off premise business?
So general so as an overall context for our ultimate strategy, we'd like to move all of this in house to mitigate third party fees. And that's been one of the main reasons we've decided to start working with Square. And then we're very excited for what the app upgrades will mean for our off premises business. I'd just add on to that. Square actually has a partnership with both DoorDash and Postmates.
We have the option to turn on that functionality at any point. We're just we're waiting on this because again the goal with Square is to grow our pickup business and not have margin pressures. But if we decide that offering delivery through Square is the right decision, that would be very easy to implement.
Understood.
Right now, is the partnership with Grub for delivery? Are you doing delivery with them? Or is this primarily pickup? And what is the pricing structure? Have you adjusted the prices if it is delivery for to be higher on Grubhub site?
So with Grubhub, you actually we're offering delivery and pick up. The fee structure for delivery and pickup are different. But what was very interesting about the 1st month of Square or I'm sorry, Grubhub was that we found that the majority of sales are coming into a pickup. And that's why we've moved to Square or that's why we were rolling in Square so that we can capture and continue to grow these off premises sales with fewer margin pressures while also reducing friction for our guests that are making online orders.
Ashish, thanks very much.
Sorry, I skipped one thing. For the pricing structure, because of the Grubhub fees, our Grubhub menu is more expensive than our in restaurant menu. But because of the fee structure with Square, we're able to offer the same in store prices. And so if you're ordering a pickup order, a takeout order through Square, there's zero change in there's 0 difference in fee as if you got into the restaurant yourself to order it.
Our next question comes from Jeremy Hamblin with Craig Hallum. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for taking my questions, guys. I actually wanted to follow-up on the online ordering and just to understand a couple of things. So first, in terms of the timing of potentially rolling out Square to the broader set of stores, what does the timing look like on that? That's part 1. And then part 2 is, what type of tickets are you getting?
What's the average order size that you're seeing? How does it compare to your typical ticket when you're getting a digital order for pickup and delivery?
So we're actively rolling this out to more and more stores. We just added a second test store today. We're a little bit hesitant to give a firm date for the rollout, but we do hope to have this rolled out within the end of this calendar year. Given how quickly we were able to roll out Grubhub, I think that's a completely realistic goal. So we haven't disclosed any information about ticket sizes yet.
And so we prefer not to disclose ticket size information at this point. I'm sorry, I misspoke earlier. So our ticket averages pretty much are mapping on to double our indoor receipts. And I think people are just ordering for couples or families. So instead of the $18 to $20 average ticket, we're getting double that.
And our average party size is about, I think, 2.2 people. And so it's pretty much exactly the same as indoor dining.
Okay. So I think we can interpret that as if you are able to get pickup through Square, is it fair to assume that those tickets that come in because of the size of them, is that likely to be margin neutral versus your kind of pre pandemic levels or is that still going to be slightly dilutive versus pre pandemic levels?
I'm sorry. Let me make sure with Ben, if I understand your question correctly.
And so for Square in particular, we're very excited about what it's going to mean for our business with not just for the customer experience, but for our margins as well. Up until now, most of our pickup orders that have not been our pickup orders that have not been coming into Grubhub have been processed by our servers manning telephones. With the Square order, we expect the need for that to be much, much lower. And so we'll be able to reassign those servers and have a more efficient staffing process. And so that will actually help our margins from a labor perspective.
In terms of I know for some of our peers, their packaging has had an impact on margins. But with Ophthalmosis sales, we don't have any disposed plates unlike with the conveyor belts. And so they offset each other. And so we expect no margin difference between a square order and an indoor order.
That's a great opportunity. Okay. I wanted to come to another point that I want and make sure that I heard the details correct. So in terms of your present cash burn rate, I think what you said is for Q1, it's running in the $800,000 per week range, right? And we're almost at the end of Q1, but that you expect that to fall a little bit as we move forward.
Is there any additional color that you might be able to provide on that or just clarify the cash burn rate?
Sure. I'm happy to do that.
So the first thing we want to make clear is that the $800,000 per week burn rate is limited to Q1. We don't expect that to go forward past Q2, Q3, Q4. We expect the full year burn rate to be materially lower than the $800,000 we're seeing for Q1. So for the bucketing for the $800,000 in Q1, dollars 450,000 were spent on CapEx, $300,000 on G and A and $50,000 on restaurant level contribution. Given that we already have 3 units open and 4 under construction, the CapEx expenditures are going to be front loaded for the fiscal year.
And so we expect the CapEx bucket to have the most material change as we proceed through the fiscal year. And so with the steady decreases in CapEx spending throughout the year, we expect our full year burn rate average for CapEx to come in at half or less than half of the burn rate we saw for CapEx in Q1.
Okay. That's very helpful. And then just taking that one step further, as we get into calendar 2021 and hopefully the vaccine information presents hopefully
a little bit
of a light at the end of the tunnel on the top line results and maybe having fewer restrictions. Do you have a sense now with the Square relationship and the way that your business is running today, what types of sales volumes do you need to get to that would make your cash burn rate relatively neutral? Do you need to be at 70% of pre pandemic sales, 80% or do you can you give us a sense of where you need to recover to, to get that run rate down to flattish, again, assuming the CapEx is a little bit lower than what you just had for Q1?
I'd like to add some context for our answer. We'd like to just note that we are a high growth concept and that as our restaurant level operations improve and no longer are decreasing I'm sorry, are no longer part of the weekly burn rate, that we would want to reinvest. Those savings we want to reinvest into CapEx and continue our unit growth. And so given that we want to maintain a 20% unit growth CAGR, we think it'd be difficult to achieve a neutral burn rate without bringing without our business recovering to pretty much 100% of pre pandemic levels.
Our next question comes from Andrew Strelzik with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. My first one, I was just hoping you could give a little more color on the Fort Lee store and kind of what's driving the really strong sales performance relative to the capacity. Is there anything that you can kind of learn from that and adapt to either the legacy stores or kind of site selection as we go forward here?
So Fort Lee's performance has even actually surprised us. It's been a very pleasant surprise. We think the biggest factor for Fort Lee's success is its location. It's in an excellent location in New Jersey and the proximity to New York and the George Washington Bridge, we imagine, gives us access to multiple traffic markets. And then another thing that we've been thinking about is that while there's a ton of sushi demand in that area, there isn't a lot of revolving sushi.
So I think we filled in we're addressing demand that has not been addressed up until this point.
Okay, great. That's super helpful. And then kind of shifting gears a little bit to the off premise business, where you've seen the dine in business rebuild maybe the most and you're layering in the off premise on top of that, especially with the sales dollars increasing, how are you finding the operational components of that? And do you think that in particular with some of the marketplaces that you're working with now, do you find that those customers are more channel to the other?
In terms of the operational implementation, it was actually quite simple. We haven't really run into a lot of difficulties there. In terms of our guest mix for the off premises orders, obviously, we imagine a huge portion of them are existing fans. But being on the Grubhub marketplace, I'm sure has opened up the possibility for new guests to come in. Grubhub is pretty tight lipped with its data, and so we can't really actually confirm the number of new guests that are coming in through Grubhub versus existing guests.
But listening to the store managers, they're saying that the Grubhub marketplace listing is bringing new guests.
That's great to hear. And then my last question is, if you could just kind of discuss the dynamics of reaching out to your customer base and creating the awareness as the stores are opening as the capacity limitations eased in the market, so you talked about going to 75% in Texas, for example. How are you finding the receptivity around that? How quickly when you see capacity limitations change, does the demand change as well? And just have you kind of evolved in all your tactics around communicating with the customers?
Thank you.
The customer response in terms of our marketing efforts, I think, has been incredible. They've been extremely receptive. So after we have reopened an indoor dining room, we're usually hitting capacity in that market within a matter of days. When we reopened the conveyor belts in Texas, we were able to make that announcement and that was big news for everybody and we saw traffic levels immediately rise. One of the really great things that we're experiencing now, this is just adding on to what Jimmy said, but our rewards program is becoming even more useful.
As of today, we have over 70,000 members, and these are all people that are quite dedicated. And the activation rates with these reward members is much, much higher than the industry average. So we've been really successfully able to leverage this existing database in terms of effectively reaching out our guests, which I think is one of the big drivers for how quickly we've been able to pack our restaurants once we've had our capacity restrictions lifted in various markets. The other thing I'd add is it's good to have new news. So obviously, reopening a dining room is news, being able to reopen conveyor belts is news.
And so this off premise stuff is also an opportunity for new news, especially once we have the integration into our waitlist app finalized, that will be another advertising push for us. So we're constantly working on creating new ways to engage with guests and keeping them excited about our business.
Our next question comes from George Kelly with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. So first, I was hoping that we could go back to the Fort Lee opening. And so I guess my question is about, you mentioned a couple of times now that, that location has exceeded your expectation. And with it being your 1st Northeast location, just wondering why that is?
What's your finding? Is the brand already well known better known than you would have thought before opening? And I guess the second part of that question is, does it give you confidence to open additional restaurants in the Northeast?
To answer your second question first, yes, we are extremely encouraged by the results we've seen in Fort Lee and we're actively scouting new sites in the Northeast and some of them are already in our pipeline. And the reason that we chose this specific location in the New Jersey, New York City market is the Fort Lee market satisfied a lot of our existing site selection criteria. And so it indicated that it would be highly successful and it has been highly
successful. George, if I
could answer your question about
brand recognition, I would my assumption would be that our brand recognition in the Northeast is extremely minimal, given that our core markets are in California and Texas. I really think the Kura experience is what has drawn this huge traffic. Whenever we enter a new market, our advertising strategy is to air promotional videos showing off the full sushi suite and just exactly how much fun our restaurants are. And that strategy has been very successful for us in the past, and I believe it's been successful with Fort Lee as well. And so it's extremely encouraging that we've been able to enter a new market and do so well for us immediately just on the strength of our offerings as opposed to customer existing customer goodwill.
Okay, okay, great. And then next question for me, back to CapEx and new store development. How long does it usually what's the direct question is in 2021, are you still going forward full steam ahead with your 2022 and beyond kind of development pipeline? And is that a lot of the CapEx budget that you talked about?
So our revolver is $35,000,000,000 As of November, we've drawn down $3,000,000 bringing it to $32,000,000 But with that capital access and looking at our ongoing performance, we have a very solid runway for fiscal 2021 2022 to maintain the 20% unit growth CAGR. Obviously, we'll continue to make watch our performance and make sure that we're managing our balance sheet. But at this point, we're quite up at this point, yes. We are
That's all done.
20% growth. So while we have the $32,000,000 revolver right now and capital position is strong, we're actively building and going through every possible scenario for how the pandemic is going to shake out. This is an ongoing discussion among the U. S. Board of Directors.
Our last decision in terms of capital raise was to increase the size of our revolver. But we're every option is on the table and we want to make sure that and we are by preparing for this now to be ready to make the best possible decision at the best when the timing is appropriate. And so yes, we're very excited.
Okay, great. And then last question for me. So since I guess this summer, I've seen some real modest pricing changes across your not at every restaurant, but at quite a few. And so just wondering if you're feeling like pricing and this is all for in store, it's at a good level now or should we continue to expect sort of modest annual pricing sushi pricing increases?
Our pricing strategy is extremely important to our business mission. We think a huge part of our consumer appeal is our competitive price point and the accessibility to a huge market. And so we're always extremely cautious with pricing. Historically, the only pricing we've taken has been to coincide with minimum wage increases, and we've taken very small increases just to offset that labor pressure. So we've typically taken what $0.05 $0.10 $0.25 In terms of the summary, you might be referring to our Texas markets.
While there haven't been statutory minimum wage increases in Texas since we've entered that market, the competitive hiring rates have increased to effectively increasing the amount of money, the minimum wage necessary to maintain our workforce, which is why we decided to take the first pricing week in Texas. Going forward, we plan to do the exact same strategy where we have our pricing coincide with minimum wage increases and it will be they'll continue to be extremely modest and designed only to offset the increase in minimum wage. We're not planning on taking any pricing as a way to grow our margins.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, Josh.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Jimmy Ube for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much for your time. We look forward to see you at the next earnings call. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's webcast. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.