Thanks so much. I am Lauren Silberman, I'm the Equity Research Analyst here at Deutsche Bank, covering restaurants and food distributors. Thrilled to be here today with Patrick Doyle, Chairman of Restaurant Brands International. Patrick, thanks so much for being here.
Sure.
We'll start a bit high level. You joined RBI about two and a half years ago as Executive Chairman. A lot's happened over the last few years, given a pretty volatile backdrop, a lot of changes at RBI. Can you talk about what attracted you to join RBI in the first place, that thesis? What's been the most surprising to you, some of the biggest accomplishments, perhaps?
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Two and a half years ago, I mean, I really came at it as an investor, right, and looked at what the opportunity was in the business, the changes that I thought might be able to be made, the value that I thought could be created. It was interesting because, I mean, I really did look at it as an investor. What I saw was, first, there were questions around Tim Hortons, which is our biggest business. I thought those questions were just flat out wrong. The business is amazing. The team has done an incredible job. We've had the same leadership there for six or seven years. They laid out a plan to really just improve everything up there. The food's been improving, the speed of service, the restaurants are in great shape, and it's just performed incredibly well.
My degree of confidence in that gets higher and higher, and they're doing a spectacular job. Our second biggest business is international. It's been outperforming our peers. The team is doing a terrific job there. You know, you're always going to have issues, and I'll talk about BK China in a second, but, you know, there are always going to be things that you're chasing. Overall, our performance on the international business has been great. I think the biggest new thing there is that, you know, you're going to see going forward probably as much growth from the other brands, particularly Popeyes, as you do from Burger King. That's just continuing to accelerate. I feel great about that business. Third biggest business is BK in North America. That's obviously been the fixer-upper. That's the one where, you know, the team had already started on it.
Frankly, the fact that they clearly recognized that the brand needed serious work, they had already announced "Reclaim the Flame". As I was looking at it, and my view was, yeah, they're right. This is what needs to be done. There are no great performing restaurant stocks that are not, you know, part of an amazingly well-run restaurant brand. Burger King was not where it needed to be. The assets were getting old. You know, we had franchisees that were not making enough money, some of whom were not in their operations the way they needed to be. There were more owners than operators. That one is, you know, it's a longer-term fix, but very excited about the progress we're making, getting great returns on remodels. All of that is going in the right direction.
We've had relative outperformance, I think, five out of the six last quarters on Burger King. You know, moving forward there, Popeyes is fantastic. Amazing brand, growing fast around the world. I was checking the other day, I think we're making four times the EBITDA that we made when we bought it in 2018. It was making about $90 million. You know, if you add the North American business to what we're doing in international, I think we're kind of 4x. Great brand. And then, Firehouse, early, relatively small, accelerating unit growth. You know, happy there as well. Overall, for me, it was, you know, I think really just about a recognition issue on Tim's. I think international may not have been appreciated enough, but doing incredibly well. You know, Burger King, a lot of concerns about that.
I looked at it and said, "Look, this is pretty straightforward, what needs to be done. We need to get the assets fixed. We need to run them better." If we do that, you know, I think we're going to get on the right track, and we're seeing that.
Great. One of the biggest changes that you brought to RBI from my seat is a focus on franchisee profitability, the transparency around that to the financial community. Having established strong cash-on-cash returns in your previous role at Domino's, what are some of the insights that you think RBI can leverage to improve those cash-on-cash returns? Any internal target that you guys have?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, our job as a franchisor is to create an opportunity for entrepreneurs, for operators to make a great return on their investment of capital and their investment of time. Some of our brands are in great shape on that. Tim's is a terrific return. Firehouse is actually very good. Popeyes has been improving. You know, you've got to be able to generate, you know, more and more demand for your restaurants. That's what's going to generate growth. It's what's going to allow you to upgrade franchisees where they need to be upgraded, get better owners in. It's what's going to allow the franchisees to reinvest in their restaurants, to, you know, attract the right people to run them, all of that. We basically set goals.
We're north of $300,000 in cash flow for Tim's in Canada. Our goal is to get to $300,000 with both Popeyes and Burger King. Popeyes is well on the way. Burger King is progressing, but still has a few years to go, I think, before it's going to get there. That gets you, for those two brands, to kind of five- or six-year, probably six-year paybacks, which, you know, that's okay. I mean, that starts to work. It's an attractive business. You need to still grow from there. You know, that's kind of the midterm target on both of those. Tim's amazing. I mean, at $300,000+, the operators buy the equipment for the restaurants. We basically do the build-out. You know, you're looking at a three-year payback on a Tim's in Canada. You're at about a four-year payback for Firehouse.
I think that's going to work down over time. You know, we're in good shape there. For master franchisees, kind of a different deal. Got to have a longer-term view on the business. They've got to invest in supply chain and, you know, bigger teams and that sort of thing.
Great. Let's talk a little bit about the consumer. You have vast experience in the restaurant industry. You've seen different cycles. What are you thinking about the state of the consumer from here?
As long as employment levels stay healthy, then we're in good shape. And so far they are. We've seen a little bit of weakness with employment in Canada. You're really not seeing any in the U.S. yet. That's really the key, because at the end of the day, you know, we all look at the relative gap on food at home versus food away from home, kind of pricing there, and the relative value of that for people. That's going to drive a lot of the health of the restaurant industry over time. But, you know, overall, people are willing to pay for the convenience of prepared food, of restaurant food, if they're employed. If they're unemployed, they're just not going to do that anymore. You know, we saw that certainly during the pandemic.
You know, some of our businesses, particularly Tim's, you know, when you're still, you know, half of our business is before noon, we're selling a lot of coffee to people on their way to work. They weren't going to work. It's obviously going to hurt the business. The employment level is really the key determinant of the health of the category overall. And so far, that's looking okay.
Great. Let's shift a little bit to development. You recently updated your long-term outlook and now expect to build to 5% by 2028. I guess, first, if you could just talk about the shortfall relative to your prior expectations. I think Burger King China is really the primary piece, but any impact from other key markets causing some near-term pressure. Kind of where are you in the Burger King, I'll say, portfolio optimization and cleaning up that?
Yeah. China really is the variant, right? I mean, that's the big thing for us. And, you know, we've taken that on ourselves. We're going to get that going the right direction. If you look at, as we kind of lay out the path to that 5%, we need basically three things. Over the next three or four years, we think we can get to 400-unit net growth in North America from the brands. That's going to come from growth in Tim's, which we have not had in a long time. We actually think we can penetrate more deeply. There are areas of Canada where we are underpenetrated, as remarkable as that seems for a business that's already got, you know, almost 4,000 restaurants up there. There is actually an opportunity. Canada has grown 20% since 2010.
You've got about seven million more Canadians in the last 15 years. And we've fundamentally not grown our footprint. We think there's a real opportunity there. You're going to see Burger King stabilize. You know, we're kind of to that net, you know, plus or minus zero range now, which is better than it was the last couple of years. You know, may still be a little bit under, but we're getting close to that. At some point, we'll get back to growth. Right now, just getting it solid would be good and an improvement from where we've been. Firehouse is accelerating. That's great. I think you're going to see Popeyes kind of stay around, you know, 130-150 range, something like that. At some point, it can accelerate. We've put a lot of focus on making sure it's the right franchisees opening restaurants.
Slowed it a little bit, but the returns are great there. The momentum of the brand is great. Four hundred out of North America, 1,100 out of the rest of international, which is more and more, as I mentioned earlier, going to come from Popeyes. You know, if you look back five years, 2019, I think 90% of our unit growth was coming from Burger King. Burger King is doing great. It is really that you have got these other brands now growing. I think we are going to be to that range pretty easily. The big variance is China. We had a number of years, five years ago in a row where we were kind of 300+ in China. We need to get back to that.
We've never had all of the brands, all three of the brands that are currently in China, clicking at the same time. We've got to get that fixed. It's a small part of our overall business today. Obviously, as the second largest QSR market in the world, we've got to have a strong presence there. You know, one of the things that we look at is on any scale business, we've got to have a path to greatness. There was not a path to greatness there. We took it on. It's performing nicely. We've got a team in place. We're moving the right direction on the business. We've hired Morgan Stanley. They're going to help us find a new partner for the BK business there. Popeyes is new, but performing very well.
We have just got to get China back to kind of where it was. If we can get all of the brands clicking, it can probably do better than that. If you have 400 North America, 300 from China, 1,100 from the rest of international, you are at 1,800 restaurants. I think that is almost 6% right now. Not all of that even has to work to get us to that 5% +.
Great. Let's dig a little bit deeper onto the BK China side. You recently took control of it, as you talked about. What was the rationale for that transaction?
Yeah. At some point, we got a partner there, had a partner there that is our partner in Turkey for Burger King and Popeyes. They've done a great job in Turkey, continue to. We're the number one burger brand and the number one chicken brand in Turkey. They actually did a very nice job of building our Burger King business in China for a long time. COVID hit. They chose not to go to China for about three years. I get it. It was very complicated. The owner not being there and not being present meant that the business drifted. Ultimately, you know, their incentive, when we all agreed, you know, it was time to make a change there. Their incentive is to get the highest price possible for the business. Our incentive is to find the best long-term partner for the business.
We finally decided that the best way for us to do this was to come to an agreement between us. You know, we would take the business, we'd get a team in place, we'd get the business performing, you know, better than it had been performing. We're seeing early green shoots on that. It's heading the right direction. We would take our time to find the right partner. You know, we've kind of committed that, you know, we want to get that done within a year. That's certainly our goal. Process has started. We've got a team fundamentally in place at this point. We just decided it's too important. We can't wind up in a position where we're not thrilled about who the partner is going to be for the long term. We took control of it ourselves.
Kind of looking at this from the BK U.S. perspective, you also talk about, you know, operators on the ground being close to the restaurants. How have you transformed that BK portfolio to get it into the hands of, I'll say, smaller, more engaged operators? Your thesis and thoughts behind that?
Yeah. I mean, we want great operators, period. You know, the bias may be for smaller, but if they're larger operators and they're doing a great job, we're okay with that. We just want the restaurants to be really well-run. You know, what we see and what I've seen, you know, previously in my career is there is a very direct correlation to how far the restaurant is away from the person who owns it. You know, having local ownership is incredibly important. You know, see China with Turkish partners as, you know, as example A, a little too far away. Even Burger King in the U.S., it's still the same answer.
We have been working through that, looking through all of the franchisees, looking, you know, kind of grading them on performance, A, B, D, and F, and making sure that they're engaged, that they're operating the right way, that they're committed to getting the remodels done. If they're not, we have a tough talk with them and say, "Look, we're going to give you a chance to improve your performance. If it's not improving, then we have to have a different conversation." Kind of the ultimate example of that was Carrols. You know, Carrols actually very good operators, above-average operators in our system, do a really nice job. We looked at it, and as a public company with 1,000 restaurants, we looked at what they were going to have to do to remodel that portfolio on the time frame that we had set as the goal.
They were going to have to spend at least 100% of their free cash flow to get that done in five years, which they're never going to do as a public company. We ultimately decided, "Look, if we're really going to do this, we're going to have local owner-operators. We're going to have beautiful remodeled restaurants. We've got to take control of the situation ourselves." We did that. We're getting the remodel work done.
The other thing that we realized as we got into it, originally said, "Look, we'll do this years three through seven." We looked at it and said, "Look, we've got a great operator who's ready to take over restaurants, whether it's an existing operator, whether it's somebody from within Carrols who's going to move from being a, you know, regional director or a district manager who we think would be a great owner, and they're going to have the capacity to get the remodel done and they're committed to it. Let's do it now." We are going to get that process started. We are very committed to being a franchisor, not an owner and operator of restaurants. We're always going to have some. We think it's important to be in the game. We have far too many right now.
You know, we're going to get Burger King China, you know, into the hands of a new partner. We're going to get Carrols refranchised. We're going to make the story a little bit easier. We realized it's been a little complicated as we took both of those on. You know, I think that's going to make the story a little more simple from an investor standpoint. In both of those cases, those were key to our being on kind of a path to greatness with those businesses. Burger King, domestic, really important, number one market, obviously, for Burger King. Number two QSR market, China. We had to take control of the situation. Going to do that, get them back out again. In both cases, we're making good progress.
Great. Let's stick on the Burger King side. You guys have obviously made significant investments in BK U.S. over the last few years, a lot of focus on that asset base. Can you walk through the strategic rationale for the "Reclaim the Flame" piece and where, like, what ending we are in terms of the turnaround today, where you expect that portfolio to go in the future?
Yeah. So making really good progress. So we're, you know, north of 50% remodeled now in the portfolio. We're right on track for where we wanted to be, which is to get to 85% remodeled by the end of 2028. You know, we bottomed at, I think, trailing 12 months, we were at about $130,000 in cash flow for an average Burger King in the U.S. That doesn't work. That's just not a sustainable model. And those franchisees with those economics weren't going to be able to remodel those restaurants. At the end of the day, we had to step up to improve the returns for them as they did it. We needed to have the franchisees know we were side by side with them to get this turned around. You know, the system had shrunk a bit. So our advertising spend was down.
We went in and said, "Look, we'll go first if we'll all agree on, you know, on some commitments for more advertising over time tied to the performance of the portfolio. We'll commit some advertising dollars. We'll subsidize the remodels of the restaurants." I'd repeat, all of that was in place before I got here. It was part of what got me excited. I looked at it and said, "Yeah, this is the right thing to do. This is the commitment. This is how you get this business back on track." We're seeing it. The returns now on the remodels are really good. We're very pleased with how those are performing at kind of mid-teens plus the sizzle format is doing even better than the previous new image. We're really happy with the progress we're making.
You've made significant improvements on the franchisee profitability side, and you guys are doing a good job with aligning with the franchisees. How has sentiment changed amongst the franchisees?
It's dramatic. It's really remarkable. I mean, the, and, you know, particularly the franchisees who have been doing a good job, and it's the majority of them now, are looking at what we're doing, and they're saying, "Look, keep doing it." Some of them very vocally publicly, some of them more quietly to us behind the scenes, but either way, they're saying, "This was the right thing to do. I'm running my restaurants right. The restaurant down the road is not being properly run. It damages my brand and my business. And thank you for finally dealing with that one way or the other, either by, you know, working with them to improve or by finding a new owner for that restaurant." The franchisee sentiment is really, really positive and aligned at this point.
We made very quick progress early, you know, with the category being a little tougher the last 12 months. We kind of got flatter on the, you know, on the improvement and the profitability. To me, that was frustrating to the franchisees, remarkably. They kind of look at it like, "No, look, we know you're doing the right things. We're progressing. We may be moved quicker year one than we expected. And, you know, we're there and aligned." We are focused on how we continue to do that. We're continuing to leverage our scale to buy better. You know, ultimately, you know, it's going to have to come from top-line growth. They're seeing it with the remodels. They're seeing it with our relative performance. If we could get a little tailwind in the category, that'd help.
The relative performance has been strong. They've outperformed over the last several, most of the last several quarters. What are the.
Five out of six.
Five out of six.
Who's counting?
We all are. What do you see as the primary drivers of that relative outperformance? Is it operations? Is it how you're approaching menu innovation, marketing?
You know, if you're losing, it's really simple to figure out what you need to do. And it's interesting. If you're doing really well, it's harder to figure out what you need to do. And Burger King was losing, you know, three, four, five years ago. What needed to be done is we needed better-run restaurants, and we needed better-looking restaurants. We've got the best food. So, you know, that's ultimately how we win. But growth for us is coming from running the restaurants better and, you know, and the effect of the asset base, you know, the restaurants looking better and better for our guests. And that's what's really driving it. You know, there are things that are happening in digital and AI that I'm excited about. You know, we've got a new CMO in now who, you know, we're very excited about.
You know, the marketing, you know, ought to kick in. There are good things happening on that. Getting the fundamentals right is driving the relative outperformance right now and should drive relative outperformance for a number of years if, you know, we continue to improve it.
Great. Let's shift over to Tim's, which has had some really nice performance over the last several years, sometimes a little bit underappreciated. What's going on?
Always underappreciated.
Talk about, like, what are we missing? What's going on at Tim's? What do you see from that business?
It is, you know, the brand is extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. The love for that brand in Canada is absolutely amazing. You know, we sell over 70% of coffee in the morning in Canada. I mean, that kind of market share is amazing. You know, we've still got a little bit of tailwind from people returning to office in Canada. That happened, I think, a little bit more slowly than it did in the U.S. You know, it's come from, you know, a few fundamental things. First of all, the team has worked through everything on the menu, and all of the food is better. We're improving the quality of the coffee. We're doing great with extending out into cold bev and, you know, other things around the beverage platform. And then PM.
You know, 80% of Canada has done business with us in the last 30 days. You know, the core of the business has always been the breakfast day part. If you're getting them at breakfast, talking to them about what they can get from you later in the day is pretty efficient. You know, we think we've got an enormous opportunity. Half of our sales now are afternoon at, you know, at Tim's. We are making great progress on growing PM food, on growing the PM day part overall. It's interesting that the analogy that I always use is, you know, McDonald's 30 or 40 years ago, now probably 40 years ago, going into breakfast.
You know, I was not in the restaurant industry at the time, but I remember when they did it and people kind of looking at it saying, "How is a burger and french fry company going to drive a, you know, build -a -breakfast business?" It turns out they did it pretty effectively. They've got a great breakfast business. That's harder to go from later in the day to morning than it is morning to get them to come back later in the day. Our brands in Canada, it's better than McDonald's in the U.S. It's better than any brand anywhere in the world.
You know, the love for that brand, the trust in the brand from consumers, getting them to believe that this is a great all-day option for them, you know, we're proving we can do it, and that should generate growth for a long time.
Great. You've talked about expectations to re-accelerate growth in Canada for Tim's and get back on to net positive unit growth, which you haven't done for a while. What's changed in terms of why?
More Canadians. More Canadians. There are two things. I mean, you know, Canada has had a lot of population growth. I mean, and, you know, it's funny, I, you know, early in my career, until I really started focusing on it hard with this business, I hadn't realized how much it had grown. The rule of thumb has always been Canada is one-tenth the size of the U.S., kind of 300 million in the U.S., kind of 30 million in Canada. It's now 41 million in Canada. It's about one-eighth the size of the U.S. now. It's had a lot of growth. There are really two geographies where we are relatively less penetrated. Ontario is pretty penetrated, but there are actually some real pockets of opportunity as the population has grown. The Maritimes are relatively penetrated.
We are less penetrated in Western Canada and Quebec. The opportunities there are different. In Western Canada, it's been an amazing business for a long time. We just do not have enough restaurants. The returns are fantastic. The sales and profits are above average. We just need to fill in, you know, opportunities there. Quebec has trailed, but it has been outperforming the last 18-24 months. Tim has done a terrific job there. There, I think it was a little bit more of a, you know, we have got to improve the business, get it on the right trajectory. Tim has done that. Over time, I think there is going to be growth opportunity there. Probably still a little more work to be done in the near term on that. It is definitely trending the right direction.
A little bit of fill-in in Ontario, a lot of opportunity in the west. And then Quebec comes on as it continues to perform well.
Great. Let's shift a little bit to international, which has been a bright spot for the business, outpacing, you know, some of your key peers.
All of them.
Yeah. Fair. Why do you think that's been the case, such an area of strength for you, and any key learnings that you're bringing back from the U.S.?
Great partners. And it's really as simple as that. The team has done a really good job of finding the right people, insisting on the right partners. You know, we're sitting here in France. We had zero Burger Kings in France in 2013. We opened the first one. We now have a $2 billion business in France. I mean, it's extraordinary. I've never seen a business grow as fast as this business has grown. And this is probably the single best McDonald's market outside of the U.S. I think it's a $6 billion business for them. So we've done it despite the fact that, you know, our competitor, our primary competitor here is very, very good. They do a great job in France. And we found a fantastic partner here. Olivier Bertrand and his team have done really well.
You know, I know some people are going to tour with us, and those that aren't, you know, walk to your nearest Burger King here. I mean, it's remarkable. Frankly, it inspires us in the U.S. We look at what we've done here, and it's like, yeah, just do this. You know, our restaurants are 80% plus new image and international, so they're where they need to be. We just do that on a regular cycle. Digital is 60% plus. In France, it's much higher than that. I mean, it is a very digital business here. The food quality is terrific. Restaurants look great. I mean, it's just an incredibly well-run restaurant business. That's, you know, it's as simple as that. I mean, around the world, we found partners that are committed to doing the right thing.
Our team is driving that and insistent on finding those great partners. We've got a modern asset base. We've got great operations. More digital kind of doubled the digital penetration of the U.S. It's just everything is kind of clicking. We still have better food. That is ultimately how we win. We just need to make sure that we're running it as well as our peers are. In international, on average, we're doing that.
You're accelerating growth in international across your other brands, not just Burger King. To what extent can you leverage the RBI network?
Very much so. Yeah. I mean, I can tell you from my old days with that pizza company, you know, and I ran international myself for about five years there. We'd be going into a new market. You know, I'm calling anybody to say, "Hey, we're trying to find a partner in Malaysia. Do you know anybody?" I mean, going through partners, going through Coca-Cola, going through accountants, attorneys, you know, other franchisees, can you introduce us to anybody? Because of the scale of our Burger King business, we already know all of the logical buyers in most markets. You know, we've talked to them at some point about Burger King. We know who they are. We go into a new market, you know, with Popeyes or Tim's or Firehouse now, just opened in Brazil this week, going very well.
You know, and so we know people. It makes a big, big difference. We've got a great team and a scale team, you know, based out of Switzerland, but offices in, you know, Singapore, Miami, Mexico. I mean, we've got a team around the world that already knows the logical partners, makes it a lot easier for us.
You're certainly in categories that appeal globally.
Turns out that hamburgers and chicken and coffee and sandwiches, we've got the four best. I mean, it works. Yep.
Let's shift over to Popeyes in a very attractive chicken sector. Chicken category seems to be getting a bit more competitive with new entrants, other peers just getting into chicken. How would you frame the near-term versus medium-term opportunities to improve Popeyes' performance?
Yeah. So, you know, the unit economics are good and getting better. It's the best brands, best food in the business. Love Popeyes. The food quality is fantastic. We need to run them better. We need to be faster, more accurate. You know, I think the biggest opportunity at Popeyes domestically is execution in the restaurants. We're doing that. It's been improving. You know, we've got it's very different than Burger King, where, you know, the unit economics weren't good. We were in a bad place there. I think growth from Popeyes is also in the U.S. is also going to come from running the restaurants better, better service, you know, more accurate service. Tim's doing a great job. Launched chicken wraps this week, maybe off to a good start, only a couple of days in.
If you look at social media, certainly getting a lot of buzz. And, you know, so I mean, we've just we've got to execute on that. And, you know, frankly, we've got a couple of competitors domestically who are executing at a very high level. I mean, Chick-fil-A has set the standard for running at scale, you know, really, really great service restaurants, you know, good-looking restaurants, you know, and we've got to be as good as that. And, you know, I think our food is better, but their service level and execution is better. And, you know, so that's really where the opportunity is for us.
Great. RBI is a platform brand. You acquired Popeyes in 2017, Firehouse Subs in 2021, or coming up four years later. You've made what you've done called temporary acquisitions with Carrols and BK China. What's your appetite to bring on another brand to the portfolio, perhaps in a different cuisine?
Any near-term basis, kind of zero. You know, we've got plenty to work on with the four brands that we have. We've got to prove that this platform is creating more value in these brands by them being together under the RBI umbrella. I think we're doing that, but we've got years of value creation that we're going to be able to generate by just running the ones that we already own better than we are today, continuing to grow them, having the market, frankly, give us recognition for what we're getting done. We don't need to do it with five.
I'll follow up with that. What do you think is most underappreciated about the market or about the story, and what's misunderstood?
Yeah. I mean, look, I think in terms of the performance of the stock over the next couple of years, there are really two things today that, you know, I would say that we've got to do. First, you know, we're out there. We've reiterated the 8% operating income growth, you know, 8% or better. We've got to do that for a while, I think, before people are going to say, "Yep, they can do this consistently." I think that's just on us to perform over time so that everybody can get comfortable that, yep, they've got this and they're going to do it. That is purely about our executing on that. I think there are still questions around Burger King in the U.S.
I'm pleased with the performance, the relative performance, but, you know, the category has not been what any of us want it to be. If we were relatively outperforming in a burger category that was growing 3% or 4%, I think everybody would be very excited about what's happening at Burger King. When you're outperforming, you know, a category that's, you know, basically not had growth for the last year or so, it's harder to get excited about that. You know, I think that's still a question mark for people. I get it. We've got to, you know, we've got to show more progress there. You know, we need to see the category help a little bit. I think that would move it along.
I think the biggest thing is if we just do the 8% plus on a consistent basis, then I think people are going to get excited about the story.
What gives you so much confidence in the 8% operating income growth that may not be fully appreciated?
Yeah. You know, it doesn't take heroics to do that. You know, we've talked about 3% comps around the world. That's extraordinarily achievable. If you look at the shift, you know, as you move from analog to digital, you get natural ticket growth, not price. You know, it's just people who are paying more on digital channels, as you know, from every restaurant. To get a 3% comp, 2%-3% ticket growth, flattish to slightly positive, you know, order count growth, and you're there. You need energy and, you know, kind of laid that out, how we're going to get where we need to go. Though interestingly, you know, what's been missing is China. That's not going to be a huge cash flow contributor, right? Those are lower AUV units, you know, just because of, you know, currency and when to translate it back.
Really doing what we're doing, accelerating the platforms that we have on the NRG side is all we need to do. Then being efficient with our cost structure. You know, we grew our G&A a lot from 2019 or 2020 until a couple of years ago, maybe two years ago. You know, Josh and Sami and the team have done a great job of kind of looking at the growth and saying, "Where is that growth in G&A getting us, you know, the returns that we need versus where can we be more efficient?" We're getting that to a good place. We've talked now about being just over $600 million this year. You know, you do that, you can grow that on a conservative, you know, basis from here on. I think that's kind of our new foundational level.
You grow the top line faster than that. I mean, it's not hard to get to the 8%.
Great. With time pretty much up, anything else you'd like to leave investors with today? I know we talked about a lot.
Yeah. I mean, just very excited, very positive on what we're getting done. You know, we're committed to, you know, delivering against what we've said to the market around kind of the comps and the operating income growth. I think if we do that, it's going to be a great story the next few years.
Great. Thank you so much, Patrick.
Thanks, Lauren. Appreciate it.