All right, shall we? I'm Brian Harbour, cover restaurants and food distributors, at Morgan Stanley. Thank you guys all for being here. Usual disclaimer. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. Joining me, Josh Kobza, CEO of Restaurant Brands International. Josh, thank you for joining us here today.
Thanks, Brian. Pleasure.
Maybe, you know, just kind of a bigger intro question here. Looking back at 2024, you have a pretty broad vantage point. Obviously, you have a lot of restaurants across four brands. What kind of worked and didn't work in your industry this year? I think it's fair to say we saw slowness. Do you think that was price sensitivity? What else was going on here? And then maybe, you know, if you care to comment, you had said there was some kind of early fourth quarter improvement, you know, in your last earnings call. Do you think that's still sort of inconsistent at this point?
Yeah. Well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. I would say, you know, if I rewind back about a year, I think when everybody was kinda sitting at the back end of last year, I don't think we all foresaw exactly how this year was gonna play out. And I think it felt a bit better in probably the first quarter of the year. And then things softened, especially as we got into the second quarter and over the summer. And I think a little bit of what was going on is I think there were some pressures on consumers, kind of on consumer spending that came from a variety of different forces, everything from consumer confidence to interest rates catching up with people. And I think that drove a bit of a focus on value.
And you saw that kind of pick up as you got into the summer. But I would tell you, for me, as I look at kind of where I think our businesses did the best and where, you know, some of the other players in the business did well, it wasn't just on having discounts or, you know, what we traditionally view as value offerings. I think it's the people who were getting all of the basics right consistently. And I think that delivery of value to the customer, not just price, but the experience and the quality, those are the folks, both those are the businesses within our business, and within our competitors that I think stood out and performed the best through that time.
You know, as you go then from the summer into more recent times, I think if you look at things like the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index, that's one I look at a lot, that sort of bottomed out around July, and that's to us was sort of consistent with how we saw industry sales trends. It's actually gotten better every month since. There's been four consecutive months of improvement, and so I think we feel that a bit. I think some of that is kind of maybe a little bit of interest rates getting easier, some amount of gas prices getting a little bit more normalized, and I think as you came through the election period, there was a little bit of tension probably before that.
I think the clarity that we have now probably has helped a little bit on consumer confidence as well. So we mentioned, on our Q3 earnings call that, we'd see some improving trends in October. It was pretty broad-based in our business. Some of the things that had struggled a bit more over the summer improved, which was great to see. We don't like to share, like, month-to-month updates and spend all our time talking about months. We felt it was important, though. When we see a big departure from trend, we wanna let investors know if there's something material. We don't have anything further to share on that today, so no new big changes in trends.
What I would say is, as you think about kinda the fourth quarter and beyond, just things to look at, I think in the U.S., people have a pretty good feel for things. There's a lot of data, sources that everybody looks at, so you have a little bit more real-time visibility on what's going on. In the international business, that one is one that people struggle with a little bit more. The thing I would just call everybody's attention to is, you know, some of the geopolitical tensions that we had in the prior year were now lapping. So that is definitely something that helps a little bit in terms of the trajectory of the comps that I mentioned in October. But you'd see that effect persist throughout the rest of the quarter and into next year.
And I would also just tell you, Tims in Canada. That business has been doing fantastic for quite some time. And I think it's doing well for all the right reasons. It's not a, you know, particular promotion that we had in a moment of time or a new product launch specifically. They are really doing all the basics right and improving on the fundamentals of the business. And I think that comes through in their performance, which is the best in Canada in the year to date. We see it too in things like brand scores, which are the best in the industry. And our metrics, they're improving materially year- on- year.
There's a lot of really great underpinnings that I think transcend any given promotion or discount that anybody does that are what gives us so much confidence in the direction of that business for a long time to come.
Okay. Great. Maybe let's just talk a little bit about store development to start. So you have sort of a 5%-plus target, right? You have what sort of caused you to fall short this year? You know, I mean, we can talk about China, but maybe also just talk a little bit about closures and some other key markets that you think have driven that. And you know, talk about your confidence in sort of getting back to that mark.
Yeah. So I'd say two main things that caused a shortfall this year. I think there were some markets that have been impacted by some of the geopolitical events that fell short of what we'd expected a year or so ago. So there's some impact there. But I think also, as you pointed out, China's slipping softer than we thought. You've had some amount of store cleanup at our Tims China business. We've now taken over the Popeyes China business, so we'll work on ramping up the pace of growth there next year. And the BK China business has struggled a bit. And we've called out a couple of times. That's about 100 basis points of year-on-year delta in our restaurant growth. So that's probably the biggest factor there.
As we mentioned on the last call, we're in a dispute with the partner there at the moment. We're hoping to work through that as quickly as reasonable. But that's something that we've still got to work on.
Okay.
Just maybe, Brian, on your question of kinda what we're working on and the things that can drive us back towards that 5%-plus target, I think the good news is, while there are a couple of headwinds, there's an awful lot of things that we're working on that are driving improvement and will drive improvement into the future. Maybe I can, I'll kind of go around the world.
Sure.
Across a couple of the businesses on those. Starting here in the U.S., we have the Burger King business, which has improved a ton, right? The same store sales and the profitability have changed dramatically over the last couple of years. And you're starting to see that flow through to the trajectory of unit growth. And I think if you look at what's happened in the year to date versus what's happened in the last couple of years, you've seen us get much closer to a stable unit base. And so I think that's tremendous progress. And what we'd like to see over the future is for that to then migrate to unit growth, so we'll see progress this year. I'd like to see even more next year. We've also made progress on some of our other brands in the U.S.
Firehouse, which we acquired because we wanted to accelerate the pace of growth, has now started to improve. So if you look at the year-to-date improvement in NRG, we're up something like 40-plus%. So we are accelerating the pace of growth. And we expect to, as we get through the end of this year, show even more growth in the Firehouse business. So that'll be another contributor to marginal trajectory there. On top of that, the Tims business is improving. And we've gotten to more well. I think we'll be kind of flat, slightly positive there this year. We expect to do even more next year and to grow both in the U.S. and Canada. So that's another growth driver.
Going, stepping a little bit more broadly into their international business, it's a tough one to talk about because we grow in something like 110 different brand-market combinations. So I think we only have 30 minutes left, and I won't talk you through every single one of them. But one helpful way to think about those, you know, one is the KPI of the net restaurants. I would tell you even more important is to look at the system-wide sales contributions of those markets. And I say that because some of those units contribute very differently than others. If you look at a new unit of, say, Popeyes in the U.K. or Burger King in France, that could have 5 to 10 times the revenue of a unit that we open in some of the markets in Asia.
So it's when we look at what's going to drive the growth over the next five years or so and what's gonna drive the system-wide sales growth and that operating income growth, some of those markets kind of count differently than the restaurants we're implying. When you look at that, you'll realize some of the biggest ones that probably matter the most are places like Burger King in France, which has been doing wonderfully, and it's been growing very consistently over time. Places like Popeyes in the U.K., which is doing fantastic store-level revenues, and it's growing really quickly. Some of those big European markets are actually probably the biggest contributors overall. The Asia markets do matter, but they're actually quite a bit smaller in terms of their system-wide sales contributions.
Right. Yeah. Makes sense. Maybe we talk about Tim Hortons a little bit. So you've had quite a bit of product success recently. I mean, you've talked about kinda food and cold beverage side outside of the traditional Tims wheelhouse. You know, what else should we kinda look forward to here? You've seen traffic growth in the Tims Canada business too, right? And, you know, are you sort of confident that there's ongoing drivers of that into next year?
Yeah. Yeah. I would tell you, first of all, I'm tremendously proud of the work that that Axel and the team in Canada have done with Tims. I think it's one of the best stories over a long period of time of having a consistent, experienced team, a clear, straightforward plan, and just consistently executing against it. And I think that's what's driven such tremendous results there. As I mentioned, we're winning in so many categories across brand scores there of all the big QSRs. And we're extending our lead. So when we look at our latest brand tracking across everything from, like, value for money, brands I associate with, brands I trust, we're extending the lead that we have in the market. And that reflects itself as well in the same store sales and same store traffic.
So of the top 10 brands in QSR in Canada this year, we're number one in sales and traffic. I think there's only one other big QSR brand that's grown traffic, and I think it's ours as well. It's Firehouse. But Tims is just really been doing wonderfully. And to your point on some of the product stuff, we laid this out a few years ago that we wanted to grow in PM food and cold beverage. And I wouldn't get too focused on any one product. You've seen us with a lot of fried, I'd say, menu additions and renovations out there.
I would tell you we have a tremendous pipeline of innovations for the next couple of years that go in a similar direction, both renovating existing parts of our menu, upgrading the quality of items, and launching new things that will further grow our market share in those two pieces of the business, so really proud of the team there. I think they're doing all the right things, and I think you can probably continue to expect more of the same from them.
Mm-hmm. Should we expect store growth in Canada and the U.S. here? I think, you know, you have talked about the U.S. opportunity for a while, right? Maybe, you know, address that as well.
Yeah. So I'll take them in turn. And so Tims in Canada. Over the last couple of years, what's really changed in Canada is the population growth trajectory. The country's population has grown pretty materially, which, you know, means more customers potentially for Tims. And I think that changes the number of units we should have in the country. If we add another 1% to the population, we probably need about that many more stores. And so we've been looking very carefully at what the parts of the country are where we're least penetrated and looking at adding more stores there, especially freestandings and drive-throughs. We've been doing some conversions of inline stores without drive-throughs to drive-throughs, but that's kind of a net wash on the unit side. Now, I think we'll be looking to open more freestanding drive-throughs.
I think you can expect to see that come through in the results next year.
Mm-hmm.
On the Tims US side, we're starting to make more progress. Kat Glyptis took over that business a year or two ago. And I think it's done a really nice job, both on the existing business but also ramping up some of the new markets. We've signed development agreements all over the country. So we have a lot of great new development partners, and we've opened a lot of new markets. I think the real unlock there to get from where we are today to a I would say a material growth driver for the aggregate business is we've gotta deliver the unit economics to the franchise partners consistently across our existing markets, our new markets, and a variety of new markets.
If we can show that we're delivering those paybacks and the returns on capital to the partners across all of those different geographies consistently, unit after unit, I think that's what will unlock the confidence of those partners and of other partners, to grow the brand. So that'll take some time. I think we're making good progress against it, but it's probably something that plays out over a number of years.
Just out of curiosity, Tims U.S., how do you sort of view the competitive position of that business? Because obviously, this is a very attractive category where there's a lot of fast-growing concepts. How do you think about Tims versus them?
Yeah. I would say Tims for going back all the way to when we got involved with the brand probably 10 years ago, the idea has always been the same, and that's to deliver a version of what Tims does in Canada all around the world, which is extremely high-quality coffee. We buy the best quality coffee beans anywhere in the world, and I'd put our coffee up against anybody's, paired with good quality food at an affordable price, and I think that's what the competitive landscape has given space for. You know, there are other players out there, generally higher priced, and I think that creates a bit of an umbrella that somebody can come into many markets and deliver a more compelling value proposition against with great quality. And there aren't too many other players that are delivering fresh, high-quality food paired with that coffee.
So I think that's a bit of a unique space in the market that in many places, whether it's the U.S., or Mexico or the U.K., there's a space there that nobody's really occupying. And that's what we've been going after.
Okay. This supply chain business here, obviously, it is, you know, fairly material to your profits. Are we kinda back to status quo on profits there? and then also, I mean, I think we've, you know, just all been watching coffee prices go up. I mean, what are your franchisees? How do your franchisees kind of feel about that?
Yeah. So I do think the supply chain business is in a pretty normalized state. So I think that's more likely to grow kind of in line with the business and the underlying transactions in Canada over time at this point. In terms of coffee, we've also been watching the spot markets for coffee, which have been very volatile. What I would say there is, one, we hedge out a lot of our purchasing. So we're not dependent on the spot market at any given point in time, and coffee purchases are in the order of magnitude of about 10%-15% of the aggregate purchasing basket. So it might seem like it's more, but it's actually a little bit more moderate size of our aggregate purchases.
And in those purchase baskets, there are other commodities that are either stable or declining, you know, things like wheat, so there's some stuff that balances out. I'm, you know, not a commodities trader, but I am hopeful that, you know, things will normalize a little bit. I think whether you look at forward markets, you know, they show a little bit more normalization. And I think as we get through the next couple of months, you'll have a little bit more visibility on things like the Brazil crop that's coming up, and hopefully, you'll see prices get to a little bit normal place.
Okay. Makes sense. Maybe we talk about your international business. It's a large bucket, but just from a demand standpoint, I mean, how do you think international demand sort of shapes up as we look into the coming year? You know, you do benefit versus your peers. I think there's a little bit less Middle East exposure, a little bit less China exposure. But maybe talk about some of the other markets and kinda your demand outlook there.
Yeah. So, if we look back on this year, things did soften a little bit through the year. There are a couple of different drivers. China's been a little bit soft. Some of the geopolitical tensions caused some impact. But as I mentioned, it feels like we've started to lap a bit of that now. And that's definitely helping us a bit. So we have seen a decent amount of improvement in some of our big markets. That was reflected in some of the comments that I made on October. So I'd say we are feeling better. And there are a bunch of reasons that we think things can get better into 2025. I would also say we've just had some markets that are really outperforming for a little bit of specific reasons.
Places I've called out, like Australia, which has really been a standout for us. Places like Japan, Brazil. These are just some big markets, where I think our partners are just doing a really nice job and gaining market share and outperforming regardless of what's going on in the macro.
Mm-hmm. Are you pretty consistently taking share in a lot of those? Or I guess asked a different way. Are there any markets where you think you're kinda below potential outside besides China?
Yeah. So as I look at across those, I think there are places we look at markets like France, which is actually our biggest one. We've been consistently taking share in that market. In Spain, we've been growing for the other part of a decade, both through units and same store sales. So we've had a bunch of really good markets, like those. There are still some. I think there are some other ones, not that are struggling so much, but where I think we could have a much bigger business than we do today. I would say some of the Western European markets, you know. I'd say our relative market share in some of those places like the U.K., or Germany, I still think there's a tremendous amount of potential that we haven't realized quite yet.
I view that as an opportunity for the next five or 10 years where we could have much different relative market share in some of those big European markets that are great markets, you know, for some of our competitors. I think, you know, we could perform a little better with some of our brands.
Right, and is that specific to the Burger King brand, or you think that, you know, kind of growing the others in those markets is really the key part of it?
That's a great point. I was referring to Burger King and those comments. But you know, especially if you look at something like Popeyes, we have almost no market share in some of those big markets if you go back five years. Kendall and I were talking about it. I think when we bought Popeyes, the whole international business was something like $300 million in system-wide sales. And we've now expanded. I think we're in like 45, 40 maybe 40 markets now, and we're at $1 billion too. So we've been growing really quickly. If you go back, one of the most interesting things to look at in our filings is the system-wide sales growth of Popeyes. And I think it's at something like 45% year- on- year.
So we have a billion-dollar-plus system-wide sales business growing over 40% compounded on top of even bigger numbers last year. So, you know, when you do that consistently over time, those become really big numbers. And, you know, the good thing is underlying it, we have some tremendous businesses that we're building in some of the best QSR markets in the world, whether that's places like Canada, Spain, the U.K., France. Those are things that, you know, if you extend your time horizon to five or 10 years, could be really big businesses. And that's why we bought Popeyes in the first place. And that's why we continue to be so excited about it.
Yeah. And I guess just once again, in China, you talked about store growth there. But I mean, from a demand perspective, do you think that we're sort of past more of the challenges? Do you think it's kinda not much change as we go into next year?
Yeah. You know, I was there about three weeks ago and so spent a bit of time on it, and I would say I think some of the challenges that exist, they're real. I think they're widely telegraphed, so you know, I won't rehash them here. I'd say we saw some challenges starting in 2023 and continued into 2024. You're probably lapping now some of the kinda the part where the business started to struggle the most, so I think there are some real issues around consumer demand, and I don't know exactly when those will change, but I would tell you that I continue to be like very excited about the long term. You know, China is, and I think will continue to be, one of the biggest markets in the world.
It's the second largest QSR market in the world, and I think that with time, things will get better there. That's why we've been focused on just working on the fundamentals of each of our businesses. We took over control of Popeyes earlier this year. That's one we are incredibly excited about over the medium to long term. We'll start to grow that faster as we get into 2025, and Tims, we've gotten more involved. We've improved the profitability of that business quite a bit over the course of this year. As I said, BK, we've got work to do still, and we'll keep working on that. But for me, I think China's one of the most exciting places in the world, even if there's some short-term bumps in the road.
Yeah. Really. Maybe we talk about Burger King U.S. Obviously, this still gets a lot of attention. You now have Carrols, you know, in-house. Obviously, value's been a focus. I think it's fair to say that that still will be the case in 2025, right? What in that context, sort of, you know, what do you think drives momentum at this brand? What are you most focused on in that context?
Yeah. So I think if you zoom out a little bit, I think Tom and his team have done a fantastic job over the last couple of years with Burger King. If we were sitting here two years ago, things felt very different, and I don't think we would've imagined getting as far as we've come in the last couple of years at that time. So I have a ton of respect for him and his team and what they've done. Again, they're doing all the fundamentals right. They're driving results with it. So with same store sales and traffic, we were trailing the market significantly a couple of years ago. We brought that back to positive. We had a little bit of a softer quarter last quarter.
But as I mentioned in early November, that we've already seen that improve. They're improving operations significantly. Our operations were one of the kind of it was a big drag on our business back in the day. And we've already moved that in a material way such that, I think our franchisees and our restaurants are performing much better. We're starting to remodel restaurants. You'll see a big group of restaurants being remodeled this year. And the returns have been quite good. You know, some of the remodels are beautiful and I think really transformational to the business. So I think they're doing everything right. And I think that's why I think we're gonna keep doing better next year.
If you look back on what's worked and what's not for us over the course of the past year, I think we do best when we focus on the Whopper and we focus on our core equities. We do need to have value offerings, whether it's a $5 Your Way Meal, or anything else. It's an important part of the business, but it can't be the central focus of the business. I think this brand does well when it has a reasonable value offering, but when it focuses on its core differentiating equities. I think that's the lesson that we've sort of learned as we look back on what's worked well. It's a strong theme of what worked with Addams Family that we did.
And it's been obviously a focus in the Million Dollar Whopper, that we did, just, you know, these last few weeks. So I think that's what you'll see us focus on. We'll keep having value, but we're gonna focus on those core equities and really hammer what's differentiated about Burger King and what makes people love us, not chase people down, you know, down a race to the bottom with value.
Right. The remodels there, I mean, you know, will next year have? I don't know how big next year will be or is that gonna kinda build over time? I mean, how should we judge that you've talked about some of the sales impact, but, you know, for us on the outside, will we sort of see that in comps or how should we judge the success of that?
Yeah. I think you'll see a big step up in remodels this year already. We said we'll do around 400 remodels. And importantly, those are large-scope remodels. We're doing, you know, full remodels that are of entire overhaul of the building. In some cases, we're actually scraping the building and rebuilding it from scratch. You should start to see that impacting sales as you get into next year. I'd really encourage people to go, if you can, and see one of our new Sizzle models. They're beautiful. It's transformational to the business. We just had our whole leadership team in one that we just did actually downtown in Brickell, in Miami for those of you who spent time there. I'd encourage you to check it out there.
It was an old restaurant, actually, that had been around for a long time, and we remodeled it to a, a Sizzle image, and it's been absolutely transformational to the business. We were in there at 2:00 P.M. on a Wednesday or something. It was packed. You couldn't find a seat. It was full of families and kids. You know, I, I think that is the vision of, of Burger King in, in the future. It looks a lot more like the European Burger Kings. It's entirely digital. You walk in, there's six kiosks along the wall. Everybody's ordering digital, and so I, I think when you go and see some of these Sizzle restaurants, I think you'll see where Burger King is going, and for us, as, as we're seeing that, it's a very exciting and I think very compelling version of, of the future.
So I can't wait to see some more of the ones that we're getting done. A lot of them are under construction right now, and I would hope to see it impact our sales next year.
Franchisee transitions, right? I mean, it seems like you're pretty determined on that as well, right? When do we kind of see that play out to a greater degree?
Yeah. So Tom and team have been pretty open and I think have a pretty clear vision on what they wanna do in terms of the franchise base. We've said that we wanna go from around 300 franchise groups today to something more like four or 500 over the next few years. And we'd like to create more small franchise groups, you know, operators who have five to 10 restaurants who are in their restaurants hands-on every day. We think that that's sort of the magic of the franchise model is where you have owners who are owners who are really operators who are in the restaurants more often. So, some of that will take time. We'll do some of that through Carrols refranchising. We've actually already started, so we've been doing a number of these refranchisings already.
It's really exciting to see the enthusiasm of some of the new partners who are getting into the system. I'd say some of the biggest things that we've had to do are already done. You know, Carrols, we've already been clear about where that's going. We've been through a couple other workouts. There will be a couple of others, but they're not as big as some of the things that we've done in the past, and we're very close to them. I would say the thing on my mind is, some of those are a part of getting to a better place.
I think if you look at some of the workouts that we've had to do, you know, over the last couple of years, usually they lead to a cleaner balance sheet. They lead to a cleaner portfolio. And they lead to smaller operators who are really engaged in their restaurants. So if we have to work through a couple more of those, you know, that's okay. That's part of the job. And that'll be part of our journey to getting to the vision that Tom and I have, which I think is really exciting for the franchise base of Burger King.
Okay. Makes sense. Maybe on Popeyes, one question I had was sort of just about the chicken category, right? I mean, it does seem more crowded. There's a number of very good chicken competitors, right? I mean, how do you think about the competitive position of Popeyes, sort of the variety of fast-growing brands there?
Yeah. If I can, sorry, Brian, if I just one last on BK. I'm gonna come to the Popeyes one. Sorry.
No problem.
One thing I forgot. Yeah. You might ask why are we trying to make this push towards smaller operators? And I think there's one really compelling point here is that our A operator so we grade our operators A, B, D, and F. The A operators in the system are already doing $300,000 of EBITDA. So we have this target. Everybody wants to know how do you get there. The folks who are operating these restaurants really well today in existing state of the business without everything remodeled are already doing $300,000. So it can be done. And we know what it looks like. And that, that's what gives us so much conviction that this is the direction that we need to go and that we need to take the system. And I would say not all those A operators are 10-store operators.
There are 100-store operators who are A operators. And we love that. What's important to us is driving consistency of experience, consistency of execution in our restaurants and a Burger King that we're really proud of and how we interact with our guests every day because we know that that will lead to a more successful system, a more financially viable system. So that's why we have that push overall.
Yeah.
Sorry. So coming back to Popeyes, what's going on in the chicken categories? You know, we got involved with Popeyes seven or eight years ago now. And a big part of that was just how excited we were about the chicken segment, not just in the U.S., but globally. It's one of the biggest segments with the most compelling, I think, kind of secular growth directions out there. And then when we thought Popeyes was an incredible brand. It had a wonderful product and an amazing story and roots to it to go and address that segment of the market. And I would tell you, if anything, we're more excited about that today. That global opportunity continues to be very clear, and Popeyes' space in it even clearer.
I think the fact that there are other people going after that there are other chicken chains chasing it, it just reinforces the theme that this is a great place to be that has a lot of secular growth dynamics for a long time. You know, we've been doing well with Popeyes in the U.S. We've been doing fantastic with Popeyes in international markets. There probably is more competition in the chicken segment in the U.S., I would say in particular recently. I think we have a product that I think is incredible. It's unmatched. We're so proud of the product. I think where we can do a little bit better is on delivering the consistency of service.
And I think that's where some of the newer entrants or the folks who are growing really quickly, they've raised the bar, I think, a bit in the segment. And I think we need to move with that bar.
Yeah.
That's a lot of what's behind the Easy-to-Run movement, but also some of us kind of raising the bar in terms of what we expect out of franchisees in the consistency of their execution at the restaurant. So I think we've gotta embrace that challenge. I continue to be super excited about the segment in the U.S. and very much in the international markets where it's sort of a blank slate. I think there's a little bit less competition in some of those markets.
How has that easy-to-run kinda design gone? It sounds like you're going to visit some soon, so you can tell me more later. How has that gone so far?
Yeah. I was telling Brand, I'm going tonight to visit one of our next, kind of areas where we're developing some of our Easy-to-Run kitchens in Orlando. So I'll share more after that. I think there's been a lot of encouraging learnings. We're seeing movement in some of the things that we most wanted to see. So things like order accuracy, which is really important to delivery, that's where we're seeing a big movement in that. We're seeing more efficiency in labor hours. That's one of the things we wanted to see from the new kitchen configuration. So we're testing all those things and then trying to figure out what's working, what's not, and then what's the best path to deploy all of the different features.
You know, I think you might have seen at some point there are a lot of different components to our view of where we wanna go with easy-to-run. So we're trying to figure out if there are some that we can deploy sooner and more comprehensively and some that we let happen over time. And that's sort of the discussion that we're working on right now.
Okay. Sounds good.
I'll let you know more later.
Yeah. More to come. Just on G&A, I mean, you know, do you see leverage in that line going forward or would you say it's sort of at the right level? I mean, there's near-term puts and takes, performance-based comp, etc. You've delivered some efficiencies this year. Obviously, there's kinda like tech investments and whatnot. But I mean, you know, how should we think about that going forward?
Yeah. I think Sami, since he took over as CFO, has done a really nice job, taking a look at costs and adjusting some of our cost base this year. And, but I think some of it you sort of referenced. Some of it was taking a hard look at some of the things that some of the projects we'd been working on, some of which weren't working as well as we wanted, and moving to quickly rationalize those. So I think he did a really nice job on that. And that's a lot of what's driving our G&A spending, which should probably be around flat this year. There's also a component of that, though, which is incentive compensation, which will have to come back next year, you know, if we're accruing at full bonus.
That's probably about $15-20 million, just to give you a rough order of magnitude. So when you think of what happens from this year to next year, you probably need to put that back, and then probably just some amount of normal inflation is how I think about it directionally. But Sammy will give everybody a more specific range like we usually do on our February call. So in just a couple months, we'll have a more specific guidance for you for next year.
Right. And, to that, just generally, obviously, you have an algo out there, right? As we think about next year, you know, maybe you hope that unit growth is better, right? Maybe it's a better sales environment. Hard to say right at this point. You'll obviously have a full year of kind of owned stores. G&A, we sort of just spoke about, obviously, $60 million of ad spend goes away. So I don't know if that drives sort of above algo growth to some extent. I mean, how do you think about how all the pieces of that shake out next year?
Yeah. So I'll kinda go down the list a little bit. On same-store sales, you know, we very much do hope to see an improvement next year versus this year. I think we're encouraged by what I mentioned, some of the momentum we saw in October, and some of the underlying drivers of that, which are things that we expect would persist into next year. So I think some of that makes us feel good about where we're going on same-store sales. Net restaurant growth, I talked about all the kinda different drivers. There are some headwinds, places like China. There's a lot of other things that we're working on. I think that's the beauty of our business. I mentioned growing in 110 different brand market combinations around the world.
There's a lot of places we can look to drive an improvement in restaurant growth. We're gonna keep being disciplined on G&A. You saw us kinda adjust a little bit there this year. I think Sami will continue to bring a lot of discipline to our expenses. As you mentioned, we have about a $60 million tailwind as we come off of that additional ad spend. That should help us to give a lot of cushion to be able to drive our AOI above our system-wide sales next year.
Okay. Makes sense. Maybe just one more before we wrap up here. I mean, talk about the delivery channel a little bit and just how that's held up for you across the different brands.
Yeah. It's still been a good performer for us, more so, I would say, think about, like, our Firehouse, Popeyes, and BK businesses in the U.S. It's less relevant to the Tims business in Canada. Just it hasn't been a huge focus. Not as big of a mix. We're probably a little bit too convenient at Tims for people to need to order delivery, but the delivery channel's been working pretty well for us. I would say where we've been focused there is just getting smarter at it, trying to improve our performance on those channels, really focusing on everything from driver wait times to cancellations to some of our the order accuracy issues.
It's going from just, you know, turn it on and grow it fast to try and get smarter about the channel, how we manage it and how we perform, how we're rated on those channels, and then how we invest behind it. So I think there's a lot more intelligence now going into where we deploy discounts, where we deploy marketing, to get more visibility on those platforms. I think we're more in that phase, whereas a couple years ago, we were just in the turn it on and get all the restaurants up and running.
Makes sense. I'll finish with our lightning round here. These are the standard questions. Demand, just thinking about demand backdrop for the year ahead relative to recent trends, do you think it will accelerate, hold, and decelerate?
I'd say we're cautiously optimistic that it will accelerate.
Sure. Okay. And thinking about margins for the year ahead, up, down, neutral?
I think biggest structural driver there is to the point we just mentioned, the BK ad fund spend.
Right.
So that's gonna help us a fair bit. That's about $60 million. So that's the biggest structural thing that I think will change from this year to next.
Okay.
That helps.
Capital allocation, maybe just prioritize CapEx, buybacks, dividends, debt pay down, any of these kinda moving up or down in importance in your view?
I think we'll continue to invest heavily in our core business. We've outlined a bunch of these different investment programs that we have, whether it's at BK in the U.S., Carrols, Tims remodels. So I think that will be number one. And we'll continue to invest quite heavily behind all the programs that we've already announced, some of which ramp a little bit into next year. Next, our dividend. We've kept and grown that since we started, you know, I think probably 12 years ago now. So we'll plan to continue to grow our dividend and work that down towards something in the 50%-60% payout ratio. We'll announce what the dividend change is, I expect, on our Q4 call. So that continues to be a huge priority. We've been focused on deleveraging.
So we laid out that we wanna get down to four and a half times by the end of this year. And we said we're on track to do that. And then from there, we said we'll be in the kind of the three to five times range over time. And I think with all of that, buybacks have been less of a priority recently.
Yeah. Okay. I think we'll leave it there. Thank you, Josh.
A wesome.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Brian. Pleasure.