Okay. It appears that most of those participants have now been included into the room. I will remind our participants tonight that this session is going to be recorded, so you can watch it again on the Investor website after this session is concluded, as well as you can watch the presentation and download the PDF, the slides that our speakers have presented tonight. As is our custom, we will not be providing a trading update tonight. We provide those three times a year at our half-year, our full-year, and at the AGM. I'm going to dive straight into questions. Please, if you have a question for the panelists, please add them at the chat button at the bottom. So just click on the chat button and type your question into that rather than sending me an email as I may miss it tonight. The first question tonight is from Shaun Cousins, and I'll hand over to Don Meij. Don, the question is, the European store network, the growth the fiscal year to date has been modest. Is it getting easier or harder to open stores? councils backlog with issues that are delaying store openings, especially in the key growth markets of France and Germany, and has COVID increased the availability of sites, and how is DMP attacking these opportunities? Thank you, Shaun, and welcome, everybody. Yeah, we have started slower than last year. I'd like to highlight that Europe is one of those businesses that if you look at our historical averages, that July and August, most of our team are on holidays, and then we're back at it in September. Last year was the exception because we were in lockdown, and as a result, our teams are working because there was really not the same level of holidaying as we experienced this year with the great reaction. Confirm is that with all of our pipeline, that we're highly confident that everything we talked about in August will still be delivered. It's just always remember for any of the more nervous Nellies that December and June will be when we open a lot of stores. It's just historically the way things work, Japan being the exception to that. We all admire Japan and their consistency in opening stores, but for the rest of the business, you're going to see a much heavier weight in December and June, and because of how big Europe now is in our business, the second half will be bigger than the first half because of the July-August element. Yeah, there is site availability, and we're going hard after that. We talked a lot about the investment we put in people, but I might even hand over to Andre to Andre. What else can you add to Shaun's question? Yeah, no, specifically on store openings, and Hello, everybody. There's some delays with councils, but then there's more availability of locations that we find, and it differs per market, so it's hard to give you one question. We have great visibility on pipeline, and that looks really good for this financial year. Hey, Peter, temporarily lost Andre. Perhaps if I, while we've lost Andre for a moment, if we hand over to Stoffel to talk about your store pipeline? Yeah, thank you, Nathan, and good evening to everybody on the call. Our store pipeline, we've opened seven stores so far, which is a bit slower than last year. Some delays also, some COVID-driven from local councils, but our focus is the same, and we see no issues in getting to our planned openings, just a bit later than expected. We probably were a bit over-enthusiastic for the first couple of months of this year, and as Don said, we see a very strong pipeline, especially when you compare this year's pipeline to where we were same time last year. There's a significant difference, and even with last year's pipeline, we've opened a lot of stores in the second half, so I'm bullish on that. Okay, thank you for that. The follow-up question is, and I've had a few people already ask this question on labor access. So is it easier or harder to get access to recruit staff? What's the advantage? Domino's enjoys being vertical compared with aggregators. It is third-party labor. It has been an issue that's been called out across the Domino's system and indeed the industry generally. So is this a challenge for the DPE in Europe, and what are the implications? Yes, it definitely, yeah, the labor market's tightened, and we talked about that in August, and we do expect that to continue to tighten. One of the things that was the trend pre-COVID, and now as we've reopened, is that more and more things are going to be delivered, and the access to team members will continue to get more challenging. So that's something that's talked constantly about in our business. One of our strategies is how do we widen the pool that we can access? For example, the delivery business has historically been male, and it's mostly been on scooters or in cars. Electric bikes dramatically increase our access to the number of female riders that we are able to bring to the business. We also get a slightly younger audience because we're also providing the vehicle. It also expands the access to a wider audience. And then we're continually focused on our efficiency and making sure that we continue to remain the most efficient operator. But I might even hand over to Misja, who might even add some color from a Dutch perspective on his market just to give you some more granular view. Yeah, thanks. Hello, everybody. For the Dutch market, of course, we have challenges for the labor market as well, but it's not another challenge as we've seen earlier in 2008 and 2012. And as Don says, a big part of our competitive advantage should be that we are far more efficient than competition, and that'll help us to be able to pay people more and therefore attract them easier. So it is a challenge, and it will be a challenge, and it'll stay a challenge for the next couple of years. But as everybody, there is a tremendous amount of people on the road nowadays to deliver food packages and everything in the Netherlands. But yeah, we will take the challenge, and we will overwhelm there. Thanks, Misja. I'm delighted to hear a couple of questions in the chat on dough tonight. What are our plans to build dough-making capacity in the country? How does profit unit economics vary when dough is made back of house versus centrally? And do we need to invest in a German commissary to align dough with other markets and drive cost efficiencies? I'll start from a bigger picture, and then I'm going to hand over to Andrew Bradley, who's doing a lot of projects, and one of the bigger geographies is France. We won't be building a commissary in Germany. The German model is almost identical to the Australian-New Zealand model. It's a back-of-house pan dough-style market. Pan dough is a very light product, and it's far more suited to a back-of-house model, and it's very, very efficient and builds almost exponential capacity into those stores. The hand-tossed market or the hand-stretched market, which is more the Benelux, France, and Japan, of course, Denmark, the hand-stretched market as well. Yes, commissary so far has been quite efficient, but one of the ways we're staying ahead of that is in Project Golf and a new 12-day yeast project. But I'll hand over to Andrew Bradley, who's heading that up, and he can talk about our capacity today. Thanks, Don. Good evening, everybody. Yeah, on the dough project, I think you saw in the film earlier on some of the robots and things in the commissaries that we've used. Originally, all those things were done manually. So we've done two stages, really. One is to increase the efficiency as we've gone from manual to automated and been able to increase the speeds a lot. In France, we've always done the commissary model. We have two commissaries in France at the moment. And the idea now is to say, okay, in terms of some of the, as well as the ESG issues, as to how can we deliver that more efficiently. And so we've done what we call the Golf Project, where we've gone from now having six or eight dough balls in a tray that we deliver. We'll be moving to that in early calendar 2022 to getting 18 dough balls into the same tray. So obviously, in terms of the efficiencies, in terms of distribution, there are some big advantages in going with that model. And then, as Don mentioned, we've got a project a little bit further out to have a longer shelf life on that so that we can then reduce the number of deliveries to stores. So this is a big multi-year project to optimize the logistics and the production facilities for the commissary, but that's our model. There is, as Don said, this other model in Germany or Australia where the back-of-house store is common. Both work, both are profitable. It just depends on the background of the market, I think, and then the question of geography as well. In terms of commodity supply, given the numerous countries that we're in, what stocks can and can't you centralize, and how would that cost structure evolve compared to Australia? I'll even hand over to John Harney. We're very fortunate to have John on the call as our global head and based in Europe. Yes, thanks, Don, and good evening, everybody. Yeah, in terms of stock management, it does follow a very similar pattern to Australia in that hub-and-spoke where we have multiple suppliers around Europe. They're storing at their own facilities, then they're storing at possibly intermediate facilities, and then we're storing at our facilities. So that's how we're sort of ensuring that supply. As I said in my presentation, our stores themselves can't store a lot of product in the store, so we actually store it upstream in the supply chain. So it's a mix of in-house facilities and commissaries, and we have quite a lot of stock, our security of supply in that supply chain. And I probably want to think of joining both questions, Nathan. Is that because the Paris commissary and our new commissary just outside Utrecht in the Netherlands are relatively new? We've got many, many years ahead with capacity. So the two biggest facilities that we've built in recent times. I'm literally talking to you from our Dutch facility, and fortunate enough for the first time to see it since it was constructed, and oh my gosh, what it's significant. So few team members required to operate it. It's just something special. I remember back to the first commissary when we arrived in the Netherlands, and you had one truck bay. So trucks are delivering food to us, and then we're going out of that same bay and exiting. Well, the Dutch commissary today, which also serves Belgium and Luxembourg, is 25 truck bays, robots in various parts of the business. And the size and layer of equipment and the redundancy for the equipment, there's always a backup piece, which we couldn't afford back in those days. Now, the cost of those redundant pieces is such a little cost in the whole facility, and so there's just, yeah, so much more depth, so much more ability to expand. So yeah, we're going to be forecasting 800 stores for the Benelux, and this facility here will well and truly see it well into the future. Of course, Misja and Ringo intend to do more volume, so hopefully they'll put that commissary under pressure over time beyond just the store count. But we're very, very fortunate that the one place that we think about is the south of France for the future because it is sub-economic for us to be servicing into the southern part. So we think about that and other strategies of the future. That's not imminent, but it is on our long-term roadmap. Thank you for that. Just in terms of, and again, I reiterate that we're not providing a trading update, but can you provide some comparison about the stages at which Europe is in relation to COVID? The unlocking or the locking, it's sometimes, I think, difficult to get the context from Australia as to how Europe is faring with COVID. I know Andre can add some color, but I might even wrap around and start from the north with Kellie talking about where Denmark's at. It's probably the most open, and then we'll go through the rest of the businesses. So just a very quick reflection starting with you, Kellie. Thanks, Don. Hi, everybody. Yeah, for us, there isn't any more COVID in Denmark apparently. We have no more restrictions at all, no masks, no passports. They've just recently dropped the color coding for traveling between countries, so we are 100% back to normal in Denmark. Over to you, Stoffel? Yeah, the Germans are a bit different than the Danish when it comes to COVID. We're a bit more, probably unlock a bit slower. So we've got corona passports. Restaurants are open. There's a choice for a restaurant operator or a bar operator if you can go 2G or 3G. 2G meaning that somebody's either recovered or has had the shot, the vaccine. Then there's a bit more liberty. If you go for 3G, you can also let people in who have been tested. Then there are still the distance rules and all these. Public transport and shops, we still wear face masks. So yeah, and then the other thing probably to note is that it's arranged not on a national level, but on city level. So if on a city level, COVID numbers peak, there might be more restrictions than in other cities. So yeah, very locally managed. And Misja? So for the Benelux, it's even varying among the countries. So the Netherlands, most of the restrictions gone. There is a limit to what time restaurants and bars and nightclubs can be open. So you have to drink everything you can before 12:00, but no masks. There is a vaccination pass. Then if you look at Belgium, Brussels has a vaccination pass. Flanders doesn't. Wallonia doesn't either yet, but they probably will have by November 1st. And then in Belgium, there is still a mask obligation in public transport. So as you can see, there is a lot of different measures around the countries. I'll hand over to Andrew now. Thanks, Misja. Yeah, pretty similar to Germany here. Basically, you need to have the passport to be able to get into restaurants, bars, or cinemas, and in fact, big commercial centers as well. So that's pretty much needed, but 85% of the population is vaccinated. Masks, as in Germany, on all public transport and inside any buildings, you need to wear it. There's still quite a lot of restrictions on the offices as well. You have to keep certain distance between people. So I think for the moment, it's kept things under control. I think overall, if we look at the situation in Europe with the autumn coming on here, which is more, let's say, open to COVID, traveling around a bit more. I've seen in the U.K. where they've recently had a spike in the U.K. So I think the impression here in France is so far so good, but we're not out of this yet. I think I could sum it up like that. Maybe, Andre, I think one of the questions relates to that, the movement in pickup and delivery. Are we still living with COVID with all of these things that are varying? Maybe give some color for investors. Yeah, so we definitely see that customers feel more comfortable going into our stores, but I wouldn't say things are back to normal. Universities are still restricted with the number of people they let into their college halls. The bars and restaurants in some markets still have to close at a certain time in Netherlands, for instance, 12:00. So saying it's back to normal, that's just not the case. In various countries, there's still a lot of pressure on the healthcare. But we're seeing a movement back to what the percentages that we used to have in the business, but still delivery is still high. But that is in line with what we are saying about the age of delivery. So that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with COVID. We've stated this before. Delivery customers and carry-out customers, I think the number for the Benelux is that there's a 12% overlap to the two. So they're a very different customer base, and then there's the bigger cities like Paris and Amsterdam where tourists are just not there in the amount that they were there. Still, lots of people that live there choose to go outside of the country, outside of school days and stuff, so it still is materially different than before COVID. Thanks for that. Got a lot of questions. I'm going to race through them. So the next one is from Craig Woolford. Is Domino's changing its view about the ideal store size in Europe? For example, stores in Germany are smaller and more suited to delivery. Are smaller stores the preferred path for openings across Europe? And then the associated question with that is, can you talk through its payback period for franchisees by country in Europe? Where are they at, and what steps is Domino's taking to improve it? Perhaps over to Andre for that one. Yeah, thanks, Nathan. Yes, we do have a different view on the size of stores. As we tell you, we think that we're in the age of delivery, and we act accordingly also with store build. What we don't compromise on is on location of the stores. We still want visible stores. So our experience is that if people know that we're trading, that we're open, that the stores look good, that's pure marketing. So we're not going to the back streets and cul-de-sacs to open stores because we don't think that works, and people need to see that we exist, even for delivery. And as far as return, I will hand over to the individual CEOs, and I'll start with Stoffel because Stoffel has the bragging rights of having the best returns. Yeah, so our franchisees are now having a close to three-year return on their investments. So that's also one of the reasons why I'm bullish on our pipeline because there's a lot of demand from franchisees because over time, the investment has got a lot better for them. In the early days, they were used to building Joey's, most of them Joey's or Hallo Pizza stores, which were way cheaper than our stores because there was less equipment. They weren't set up for the volumes we do. So we first had to show them that you can do the volume and what the return on that is in profits, and that's what we've done. So that's where we sit today. Handing over to Misja, if he's still there. Yeah, still here. I'm kind of in the shade of the big guy, but same as for you, Stoffel, close to a three-year return and also a big appetite. We are still growing a lot of franchisees from within the system, and our current franchisees are also willing to grow. So yeah, no worries on that part, but we have to keep it that way. Andrew? Yeah, similar situation here in France. We ended on the three-year. I think there's a couple of points. One is we're doing bigger openings than we did at one stage, and I think this is coming just from the power of the brand. We're going into some smaller places and getting really big volumes out of some places, which we've been surprised, to be honest, at the size of some of the launches we've done. I think that's just the power of the brand growing, which has also shown us that there's a lot of places we can go, which probably a couple of years ago we wouldn't have looked at. I think the point about the store size is a good point. I think you can get carried away when everything's sort of working well and everything. And some of our franchisees were wanting to kind of build the Taj Mahal, and we've said to them, "That's not what we do. We don't want these massive everywhere." You can have some sort of symbolic big stores in places, but you've got a lot of workhorses. We're a delivery company. We don't need a huge delivery and carry-out. That's what we do. And for that, you don't need a big footprint, and that obviously helps as well get the better turnover. As with Misja, the vast majority of our stores that we're opening this year will come from existing franchisees, plus our emerging leaders, the young people coming through the business, which go through our preparation program to be franchisees. So it shows there's an appetite because they are getting the returns they want. Okay, thank you for that. Let's talk competition. A question from Ben Gill. What's your view on New York Pizza entering Germany via a quick roll-up of three chains in the past few weeks led by an ex-Joey's exec? Do you think they could take prices lower, and how do you respond? An associated question just for some general commentary on our approach with aggregators at the moment, what we're seeing in terms of both competition and working with them. Can you hand over to Stoffel? Can I get Nathan? Yeah, if you hand over to you for the New York Pizza question first. Yep, thank you and thank you, Ben, for the question. As you wrote, it's a competitor we know quite well, New York Pizza from the Netherlands, and it's led by a person we know quite well as an ex-Joey's executive and also an ex-Domino's executive. So we know how to deal with New York Pizza. We welcome any sort of competition. So it makes the whole category stronger. We haven't seen New York Pizza take their prices lower than ours. I wouldn't see how they would do it in Germany because we are very competitive. We are running high-volume stores, efficient delivery territories. We've been ongoingly making our delivery territories a bit smaller, a bit more efficient so that our customers get great value and I wouldn't see any need for a change in our strategy there because it's proven to work well. That's also why we're number one in the Netherlands. Misja, you've got anything to add to New York Pizza since you've been working with them the longest? Yeah, thanks, Stoffel. New York Pizza, of course, they're around for a long time. As already when I was a franchisee, they were around, and I always liked to get one of their stores closed. But when DPE entered the market in 2006, we were a little bit smaller than New York Pizza. So they had like 10 stores more, I think, or maybe even 15. And if you see what we've outgrown to now, then we are practically 100 stores bigger. I think it's very good to have competition. They are a little bit higher priced, which makes it for us easier to deliver better value. But yeah, we need competition to stay sharp. So therefore, I think it's good that they're around. I know them pretty well. And yeah, they're doing a great job, but we have to be better than they are. Handing over for aggregators to maybe. Probably before you dive into that, Andre, one thing to add there is, because you've probably all read the announcement of the chains that New York Pizza has bought, and I highlight this also in my presentation. We have, especially when we bought Hallo Pizza, we really put a motor on our business in terms of our store count and the number of pizzas we sell. So even if somebody comes in and buys a few smaller chains, it still makes them a very small version of us, where we are still a very small version of who we will be because we're an infant in the massive pizza market that Germany is. And our track rate of opening stores is higher for a year than any of these individual chains that have been bought. So that's where the numbers game is also in our favor. On top of that, the businesses that we've built, we now have higher volumes, higher sales volumes, significant higher sales volumes than those businesses that are bought. Andre? Yes, on aggregators. The question was, is it competition or a partner? Well, obviously, they're both. We play to win within the aggregators. Once a customer has entered the aggregator, we would love their business. But it's the same if once a customer enters Google, we want their business too. So we make sure that our ranking works, and that's exactly the same thing we do with aggregators. We stay close to them. We work together with them, and they deliver sales. Also there, I talked about the difference between carry-out and pick-up. Also there, we see a little overflow of customers from aggregators to Domino's and vice versa. It's a different customer base. What we've seen in all markets is that they have their struggles, struggles with getting staff, struggles with legislation. They now have to pay normal wages in most of the markets, and they have to earn that money back, and they've increased fees everywhere. Prices on the aggregators are compared to our prices really, really high. We see that their strategy sort of is the normal prices are really high, but then they're really aggressive with getting you back on the aggregators. If I've gone to France and then I'm not there for four weeks, during those four weeks, I will get a lot of emails and messages from the aggregators saying, "Come back and we'll give you EUR 15 discount or 50% off your next order." So they're really playing the game of keeping those customers and enticing more customers in. We see that they are aggressive in media spend, various types, sponsoring of football clubs, sponsoring of leagues, TV commercials, outdoor. So very aggressive. They all play to become the biggest. We've seen in France, for instance, Uber Eats was the dominant player, but we now see Deliveroo being very aggressive and growing. We haven't really changed our strategy there. We still play to win. If a customer goes to an aggregator, we would love them to buy from Domino's. We've put a lot of money into getting a better integration. It's a digital integration with the system, so it's easier for stores, but also quicker for the customer. Not a lot changed. I can imagine that they struggle. We see if the weather's bad, they struggle getting staff, and that is actually better for us then because we have staff that is just rostered and will show up. Not a lot of big changes. Our strategy there is still the same. Thank you for that, Andre. My question, we talked briefly before about labor prices, labor costs. There are signs of emerging significant food cost inflation globally. DPZ also called out similar issues the other day. So is this becoming a significant challenge for DPE? Yeah, thank you, Nathan. Yeah, so we will see inflation in ingredients in the first half of next year. One of the benefits of having long contracts is that we've got pretty good visibility into what that's likely to be like. And I'll get John to add a bit more color to that. But the way we see this, combined with labor, we look at three different strategies. Because labor's longer, the long strategy is continuing to invest in 3-10, which continues to help to make us more efficient. But in the near term, we look at two other things. So one is optimizing our basket because price isn't simply about just you get a pepperoni pizza and charge $ 1 more tomorrow. If you keep doing that, then the whole category shrinks and you drive people into other categories. So instead, we look to value-add the basket. Ultimately, if the customer feels that they're getting more in that and can justify that, and that will become more evident as we roll out a number of products and basket promotions next year, we'll be able to point more directly at that. But one of the benefits of having 10 markets is that we're constantly sharing all the learning around that basket optimization, and I'm highly optimistic about the success of that. And then if we said that if basket optimization is more of one of the near-term strategies that we can apply, and one of the mid-term strategies is better yield through our software. So using we've got a number of different projects to use cognitive thinking or AI to optimize also our orders. And once again, that'll become a lot more evident next year. But that's not something we turn on from January. That will be more into, well, into the second half of testing, so basket optimization, using technology, and then ultimately 3-10. 3-10 is the decade-long strategy because it isn't something that is overnight. It's constantly working through a number of initiatives, getting them implemented into the business, and that continues to help to make sure that the most efficient player will be Domino's, and that will be one of the reasons we win over this coming decade. But John, more granularly, just talking about soft commodities, anything I've missed there? Thanks, Dom. Yeah, no, you've probably covered it really well. I think it's that total value chain that we're focused on to continue to deliver value to the consumer. Just in that commodities area, there is absolutely no doubt that we're heading into a pretty challenging inflationary period for the first six months of next year. As you rightly pointed out, the ways we look to insulate ourselves as best we can is with those partnerships we have in place. We have long-term relationships, and that not only, I guess, protects us from some of the volatility of the market, but in the example of, say, our cheese manufacturer, because we have the long-term relationship, they can invest in the latest technology. That was a Brexit play, in all honesty, but it's also brought to us a whole heap of efficiencies in the dairy space. So that mix of long-term partnerships tends to take us out of that full exposure of the commodities market. And the saying is, "We're all in the same boat." Actually, we're all in the same storm. We're just trying to build a better boat than everybody else that drives efficiencies in our business. And then, of course, internally, as Andrew commented on, we're driving projects like Golf to optimize the efficiency of our distribution model. So we're pulling all those levers as well. Thank you for that. We'll spend a little bit of time on M&A because there's a number of questions I've got to get through on this one, not surprisingly. So the first question from Alexander, who said, "Andre's very last sentence in the video was to say there may be opportunities in Europe outside of the six markets you're currently in. Do you feel management capacity and the time to take on these new markets?" Yeah, we definitely have the management capacity. So that's one of the things. I mean, I think hopefully what shareholders get a window into is the depth of leadership. And even in the rare times when we've seen an executive retire, we're fulfilling that role with another veteran in the business. An example is when Andre stepped up to replace Andrew Rennie just a couple of years ago and so on. We feel very confident that we've got a really good depth. All M&A for us requires, besides the fact you've got to have willing partners and so on, and that it's an acquisition target that we've been approved for. But you need to be able to have that leadership that's front and center for Domino's Pizza in the U.S. to feel confident, as well as our board, of course. We've got to have a strategy. Every market, as much as it's high volume mentality, we can apply OneDigital and all of these sort of things, our buying power. We've got a lot of good things working for us, but each market does require a different strategy, a different look. I still remember today that France and the Netherlands are 200 km apart, and in French food is feminine and pizza is life. At that time, food was fuel, although that has now changed in the Netherlands. It's a much more different food market than it was back then. Food was fuel and it was more masculine. Yet they're neighbors as countries. We do have to come out with a different strategy. I can say that we've never been more active. That's a genuine statement that we've got more irons in the fire than we've probably ever had in our history. Of course, it's still opportunistic and you've got to get them over the line. We're hopeful, but we can't obviously guarantee until the deal's done. Yeah, we have the people, we have the strategies for each of those. Of course, the last piece is capital, and that goes without saying on the conservative nature of our balance sheet today and the facilities we have. The acquisitions, by the way, could be a brand new market. We talk about something like Montreal primary, but we're still also active inside markets with potential conversions of chains. So Andre, anything specific on Europe you want to add to that without, I suppose you can't really say the target? No, no. Maybe I'll hand over to Stoffel because he's been close to the acquisition in Germany that we've done. And obviously, he has something to say about the three acquisitions that New York did and whether we looked at that and why we didn't buy that. So Stoffel, over to you. Yeah, thanks, Andre. Yeah, I saw that question posed. That's why we didn't buy those chains. We are open to any sort of acquisitions, whether it be countries, new territories, or within our territories. We've looked at every single one of these chains, and for various reasons, they didn't make our shortlist, which tells you there is a shortlist, and we're always open to this, but my main focus, as I said before, is organic growth, and I'm always open to speak to others, especially since in the massive pizza market in Germany, a lot of these chains are a bit smaller, a bit more regional. They could be really good bolt-ons to us in territories where we aren't that penetrated yet, so I've got an open mind to these sort of things. I'll probably connect and answer your question, which is somewhat related to this conversion because we are kind of the experts on this. There's a question asking, is it harder to put HVM into these stores, into these converter stores other than the new build stores coming from Alexander? It was one of our main focuses in our three-step approach where we said, one is physical conversion, two is get HVM into the minds and the souls of the people. What we see today, and Dom broke it out last year, that last year there have been several weeks where actually Germany had the highest sales per store for the whole group of DPE, which kind of tells you that HVM has arrived. Obviously, as in any country, there are early movers. Some guys get it from the get-go. Others take a bit longer. It's actually nice in the back of beyond out in Schwerin, a city in the north of Germany, where they're very good operators, but more conservative. It took them a bit. They've looked a bit at our strategy. When they switched it on, you could see how their market now is just red hot. There's no signs of that stopping yet. You can see how HVM is working. Yes, in this case, it's Schwerin. It took a bit longer, but a consistent message from our side. We've seen that this is what's made us successful in other markets. Then obviously, the best thing is that we see your colleagues inside of Germany be successful with HVM. That's probably the number one reason for people to really get invested there. Thank you very much, Stoffel. The next question was from Craig. Is it still the case that the Netherlands is the most profitable market for DMP in Europe? And if so, how does it generate such a great profit when its AWUS' is slightly below the European average? Let's see some bragging rights for this question. Yeah, Nathan, let me take that because it compares all the markets. Yeah, Netherlands used to be there. What it tells you is that a very efficient, lots of stores in a small footprint market can deliver the highest returns. But as you know, the AWUS in the Netherlands are not as high as they are in Germany, for instance. So now Stoffel took over the bragging rights just because of the store efficiencies with high volume stores with high sales. So it used to be Netherlands. It just tells you how the more efficient. This is why all the things we talk about with fortressing and building out the markets. That's why this works. Because even with relatively lower AWUS, you can still be the most profitable market if you have the most efficient system and the most efficient network. Stoffel, maybe you can add some color on why you took over the bragging rights from Misja. It was always the plan that we should be able to make more money with a territory which is or a population that is more than four times bigger and people that eat more pizza. So that was always the plan. And I think that the Netherlands has done an amazing job bringing it where they were. And we've spoken multiple times about different markets overtaking. And we come from a past where Australia was bringing the vast majority of our profits. And the whole strategy to reach out into Europe and later into Asia was that we knew that we couldn't keep the growth at the same rate. And now we've seen over time other markets take over, whether it be the Netherlands, whether it be Germany. So yeah, it's part of the plan and it's part of the strategy that we apply in all countries. I'll take all the bragging rights, but it's not that we've done anything special. We've just executed on the plan that we created at the start and which has been successful in Australia, successful in the Netherlands, and is being successful in Japan at the moment and Germany at the moment. We'll be successful in any other geography where we go into if you'd ask me. Thank you, Stoffel. So you've had huge success in the Netherlands, a great start in Germany, but France has underperformed over the years. So has this been about execution or is it cultural? Why hasn't France performed as well as other markets? As you can already imagine, I don't like the word underperformed linked with France. So let's deal with that one. Now, I think, I mean, if we look back in the history of France, we had a pretty bumpy ride at some stage. I think the franchisee group here had been through a lot of stuff historically. It's quite difficult, and the job was really to settle that down. We've seen as we've settled that down, we are 95% we go through franchisees. So managing that network is really important. I think if you look in the most recent period, what we've done is settle that down, got it back on track. Got a lot of young franchisees coming in who are pushing, and some of these came from the Sprint acquisition that we made. So I mention that often, but we've got a really good base of young franchisees now coming into the business. And I think if you see last year with record openings and things we were able to do last year, I think we call ourselves perhaps a slower burn than some of the others. But this is still a massive market. It's very, very fragmented. We are still, even if we're by a long way the number one pizza brand, we're still a small pizza brand. Pizza is, as I tried to show in the film, everywhere here. We battle every day to do that. I think the brand today, as I mentioned, just with the opening, the brand has become much, much stronger. Relatively, we've had less media than places like the Netherlands, for example, where proportionally we've had less media. Now we're building that up. The brand's getting much, much stronger, and we're able to drive different performances than we were in the past, and I don't like somebody to describe us being underperforming, but keep looking in the future. That's not a word you're going to be putting against France in the future, I think, so we're fixing that. Thank you, Andrew. Question in terms of Denmark. Do you think the Domino's brand can ever be fully rehabilitated in Copenhagen? And then was there any contagion from the reputational damage in Denmark into neighboring Germany? So perhaps Kellie for that one. Thanks, Nathan. Yeah, I think that we definitely can and we are rehabilitating the brand. I think that I spoke about this in the presentation that the first couple of years have really been focusing on making sure that we are strong in our operations and that we are delivering what the customers expect. And we are definitely doing that. So now it's about getting that message out to customers, which is the next phase. We're confident in what we're doing and now we just need to share that. And our market research tells us that it is working. It's slow and it's very hard work, but it's definitely making a difference. And in terms of whether or not, Stoffel, you can talk to this too, but in terms of whether or not it affects Germany, I think one of the best and worst things about Europe is the fact that all of the countries are unique. And different languages always create a boundary that is helpful sometimes. In this case, it's been very helpful. In other cases, not so much. But people tend, Germans don't tend to speak Danish. So the Danish news doesn't filter through as much. So my feeling is that it probably hasn't made its way to Germany, Stoffel. Yeah, spot on. I think the language is a big part of it. And actually, Schwerin, the city that I broke out in the pack, is in northern Germany. It's more northern than Hamburg. So it's actually pretty close to Denmark where we're doing very well. We've got places like Rostock and Kiel where actually the boats towards Denmark go, where you see the biggest spillover. We actually celebrated Arno and Sandra, franchisees in Kiel, as award-winning franchisees for their success. Rostock is one of our most profitable and biggest markets. So actually, where we're the closest to Denmark is where we are the strongest. So I don't see any evidence of that in our numbers. So hopefully it will come the other way. There we go. I'll throw it over to you. You can help us. Thanks, James. The next question is in terms of can we speak to the benefits of scale, being able to advertise nationally because of that scale that DPE now has, and maybe some color around the kinds of sales benefits you get when you begin national marketing? Yeah, I'll hand over to Andre because Andre started our business in effect as our CMO and built the brand initially in the Netherlands. Without a doubt, for whatever reason you can still relate to today in a more fragmented digital world, still mass advertising is a differentiator. And if even more so in places like the individual European markets because you've got to buy national television. Unlike Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, where you can buy really regional small towns like Tamworth and you can have a television signal and just open two stores and be on TV, you can't do that in Europe. So it changes the whole dynamic and the whole perception of a brand, not only just for what it creates with our sales, but what it also does for employment, for our head office and the professionality of the brand. But Andre's our expert in the room. So over to you, Andre. Yeah, there's no question with scale we can afford more media, and we do. We're always really amazed by the very intricate media mix modeling that we do in all the markets. Things like national TV are still working so well, but most of the time, that's also because we are the only pizza brand on national TV. Yes, we compete with the burgers and we compete with the aggregators, but in most markets, we are the only one that can afford national TV. Even when we took over the two brands in Germany, we actually had to chip in ourselves to be able to go on national TV. That worked really well and convinced franchisees that this is a good model and it will work, but there's never ever been a competitor pizza brand on television in Germany because the threshold is so high. It's a serious, serious investment. And you need a lot of stores to be able to afford that. And the second part on that question, do we get benefits from operating in multiple countries? Yes, we do. But it's more in the sense that the Netherlands does a lot of marketing activities for Belgium. That is creating the leaflets and the message. And we share product shops and we share ideas. It doesn't work on actually buying media because buying media is definitely an in-country thing. And even with the bigger media groups like RTL here in the north of Europe, they don't have a European sales team. You can't talk to them like that, unfortunately. But for the rest, the way we share all the creatives with Denmark and with Belgium and Luxembourg, that is definitely a benefit for us. And in terms of, Andre, perhaps managing across the benefits of those businesses, how do you measure and manage performance in terms of leadership? So KPIs for country managers, how do you kind of look out over a long-term basis as to what people's performance is measured against? So just to make sure I get the question right, how do we look at this group of people, the leadership in the markets, and how do we judge their performance? If that's the question, I can answer that. Obviously, we look at customer growth, order growth, which translates into sales growth. That's our main focus because sales are a cure for a lot of problems that we have in the market. Everyone on this call is judged by franchisee profitability as one of the key metrics that we look at. Obviously, this is not a surprise. Store openings, growing the business is one of the key metrics. And actually, what we've added over the years is a couple of ESG targets these days. Every CEO has ESG targets on the various things that we look at, our people, our climate, our customers. So that's part of the metrics that we judge them onto. So I think I covered most of it. Not sure, Don, if you have anything to add. Well said. So unexpectedly and pleasingly, Don, as everyone has noted, has actually been able to be in Europe for this Investor Day. So one of the questions has been, how much, Don, of your current international trip is set to be spent managing the existing business versus exploring new regions which the company may look to enter? Yeah, thank you, Nathan. Yeah, the core reason for me to be outside Australia and to get permission from the government has been for acquisitions. And that's not exclusively in Europe. So I've been in other parts of the world. So that's the core reason for me to be away. But it's been an absolute bonus to be able to come into the Netherlands. On my previous trip to Europe, I wasn't able to get into the Netherlands due to COVID restrictions. And it's still the pan-European office. So being able to access far more of the team when I'm here. So for all the things that you can do over Zoom, nothing replaces the dynamics of conversations and seeing. I visited this big facility when it was under construction, but to now see it and see just gives you so much confidence in our ability to fill this big facility as well. So there's huge benefits seeing products, seeing over two years the change, seeing new competition in the delivery segment. One of the things that Australian investors wouldn't have seen yet is the huge rise in the 10-minute supermarket delivery business, which there's four players. And they're in the delivery business. So there's an immense amount of observation and learning that you can see firsthand. You can read about it, but watching it and almost participating in it gives you another level of learning. But in summary, yeah, the core reason for me to be away in the various parts, not just only Europe, of my trip has been around M&A potential activity. Thank you for that, Don. Next question in terms of store rollout, if there's any access to labor issues for store fit-out teams or any issues with accessing store fixtures or technology, for example, chips in kiosks, for example? I know there's been some supply chain issues in relation to chips. Perhaps Don first. Yeah. Look, we're under constant juggling pressures to keep ahead of it. I am going to hand over to John because I want to give John a lot of credit in that. It It hasn't stopped us doing what we need to do. And so for many of us, we're aware of the stress, but John's team makes it look a lot easier than it really is because sometimes it has added a little bit more cost as well for some of that equipment. On the relativity of getting a new store open, you'd much rather have that store open, but it has added a little bit of cost in the way we've had to get some of that equipment from different vendors around the world. But thanks to John, not only keeping all of our menus constant throughout the world and John and his teams, but also we've been able to open the stores we have and expect to open the stores if we will because of the way they'll be navigating it. Maybe, John, some of the challenges and how you've dealt with it. Yeah, I feel like a duck, a little graceful above the water but pedaling furiously underneath. Yeah, it's all the usual tricks. I mean, again, it's partnerships. We don't swap and change. We not only have some key equipment partners globally. We work with them extensively. We're big parts of their business. We're building stocks in Europe of things like ovens and makelines to pipeline through our store builds. As Don said, there are increased costs. Just getting things on planes, trains, and automobiles is costing more at the moment, but that really fades to insignificance versus an unopened store. So we're absolutely focused on getting those new stores open, and honestly, it's a team effort. Very kind words from Don, but we have very experienced teams in markets constructing the stores, selecting the locations, training franchisees. There's a massive pipeline of capability which allows us to open those stores. And then on the food side, we're keeping the food up to those stores. And that's again just working with those key partnerships. I know I keep banging on about partnerships, but it really is in these very, very challenging times, it all comes down to partnerships. And we've got good ones. One of the questions, Nathan, I can almost preempt from, what does the cost inflation look like for a store then? And just preempting that is that it's just time by coincidence that this has happened. But one of the early questions about the size of the store format, because we're shrinking the size of the store format, actually our costs were coming down. And so now with cost inflation and some of the equipment, we're still net net, in most cases, still at a lower build cost than we were just two years ago and a lower operating cost because one of the other benefits of a smaller footprint is lower utilities, lower maintenance, maintenance, not only repair and maintenance, but also operating maintenance. We've got large foyers that are customer foyers with tables and chairs and so on. They've got to be constantly cleaned and maintained. So we were fortunate enough two days ago to go to one of the 3,000 store opening series around the world. And to me, it was the optimum store for the Netherlands in most cases now. We took a shop which was our typical size, but what we did is we shifted the whole shop to the front of the shop we would have normally, and then we had a far bigger store room out the back. So smaller foyer. And then when I looked at that build cost, much lower than our averages three years ago, despite the fact that the equipment in that store cost more. And without a doubt, that store is going to be far more efficient from an operating cost, carbon footprint measure, and so on. So yeah, hopefully that helps to answer that. And also, my experience in Germany just a couple of months ago, some of the stores we started to open when we first did our first stores were the very big stores with these huge foyers. But the ones I got to observe that we were opening, the newer stores, yeah, far more optimized with this smaller footprint. And we're just driving down the total cost to build as a result of that. Thank you for that. I expect we probably can't take any more questions, but I've been able to secure the speakers for a little bit more time so we can get through the questions that we have in front of us. The next question, I know Mitch had talked about the very tight rush times that we have. With more people working from home, are we seeing greater appetite for pizza at lunchtime? Yeah, I think I can answer that, Nathan. We've seen a shift for lunchtime. So the appetite is as big as before. Earlier, we had more students, but now with the schools locked down due to COVID, we had less students in school and not being able to go to the store from school, but then they would order from home. So it has shifted, but it's not different at this moment. And I don't know how that is in other countries. Maybe Stoffel, you can add something to that? Yes, definitely. Thank you, Misja. For us, we've always had a quite strong lunch business. We saw a drop in that getting back to normal again, where not to where we were prior to COVID probably because we still have working from home. Some people obviously have their pizzas delivered to their houses. On the flip side, we also miss a couple of businesses that would place lunch orders. So general bit of a shifting, but way more normal than it was 12 months ago. Yeah, we've seen the shift too. We're doing less in the central business district areas. Obviously, there's less people spending time in the office, but it's kind of shifted out to the outskirts and to the smaller cities where we're seeing them. As with the others, we've seen a little bit more delivery and a little bit less carryout. But that business has been pretty consistent except for the city centers where it's been lower. Thanks, Andrew. Perhaps staying with Andrew. I mean, I know you mentioned ESG in your presentation today, and it was a theme through a number of the speakers in your presentations. So what do you expect the increased focus on a green, socially responsible supply chain to do to hike the prices from a consumer perspective? And how do you think about the risk of losing market share if competitors don't operate, don't adopt a similar strategy? I think we've said a lot of things. COVID has accelerated a lot of things, and one of the things very clearly here in France is this whole social responsibility and everything linked with the environment as well. I think the bigger risk is to not be on the wave. You can't miss this wave. You've got to be on it, be there, not too far ahead, certainly not behind. That's really our focus, and we're following very closely where the consumer is on that because it's moved quickly. What we're seeing is that we've made adjustments to our offering. You'll see a lot more made in Europe or made in France products. The whole animal welfare thing has been a big issue. We came under some pressure. With the help of John and the team, we made our engagements on that front. And we've seen that the people who haven't made those engagements recently, Burger King in these last few days, has been attacked by the same group of people. So I think actually it's more of an opportunity. And we've definitely moved our range along during the COVID period, and we continue to do it with this, what we call a path to quality. And quality stays transparency. The consumer wants to see the transparency, wants us to say what we're putting in there, what is the nutritional values, and things like that. So I actually see it as a massive opportunity. And I think we've got the plans there, the strategies there. We need to keep adjusting because the consumer keeps moving. It's moving very fast. So what was perhaps before a nice to have, I think in a lot of cases has been a must-have. Yeah. And I think in many of these projects that we're doing, investment upfront, but then the actual output after that is actually lower costs. So Project Golf and 12-Day Yeast are just two examples of material shift in carbon footprint, but then material savings to the stores because we're going to be visiting them a lot less. Or our electric oven project, electric ovens because there's not a lot of volume in those cost more upfront. But once you get to volume, they actually become less because there's less parts in an electric oven. They're more consistent in their bake. They break down a lot less because of the less parts and so on, more reliable model. So yeah, some of these things, they are a material investment upfront, but I think there's actually an opportunity here. We're going to create competitive advantages. On the research, what we're constantly monitoring is there's no question the customers are saying to us that things are worth more when we do good behaviors. It's just how much more. And that's something we can't answer yet. So where is that basket going to sit? And my own experience in research has been that often customers say they'll pay more when they actually come to activity. You've still got to be able to marry that up. And it doesn't always relate. Pricing is a hard thing to do in research. So we're also still conscious of that as well. So Andrew said it well, don't get way too out ahead of that curve. I need to be caught out. So you've got to make sure that we're constantly testing in this space. But my assumption is this is going to become a big competitive advantage if we do break away in this category. And it's an advantage, especially over the smaller operators. Thank you, Don. In terms of costs, have you been able to start to unwind some of the COVID costs as Europe reopens, or has that become embedded as standard operating procedure now? And similarly, are these three-year returns for franchisees flooded by COVID lockdowns, and do we see three-year returns as sustainable? Yeah. Nathan, happy to answer that question. On the COVID costs, we have sanitizers in store. In some markets, we still use masking in store. But the bigger picture, those aren't massive costs. We incurred the bigger costs in the beginning. So there's no unwinding. I think sanitizers are here to stay, even if COVID is gone because people are more aware of sanitation and how easy it is to something like the fluids. So they're here to stay. The second part of the questions, we don't think that the three-year return is flattened by COVID. COVID had a cost. It changed our business in what was the bulk of our business, sometimes from carryout to delivery massively. But in Germany, carryout wasn't that big of a business. So delivery just grew. And we see that coming back. Every week is different. We've never recovered from something like COVID in our history before, so we constantly are measuring, are talking to the customers on what changes in their lives, what different behavior do they have, and then we act on those things, so short answer to the question, three-year payback is our focus, and we've always been focused on that, and franchisees really like our focus on that. They understand that we're with them and trying to make sure that the money they invest in our business has a great return, and it will stay our focus, and like I said, franchisee profitability is one of the KPIs that we drive this business on and where we look at the different markets on where that sits. I don't see it being any better because of COVID, and it will not get any worse because of COVID. It will get worse because of our actions, not because of something like COVID. Thanks, Andrew. Now, just in terms of just keeping on cost for a moment, on the significant cost increases in the first half of 2022, do you see the need to put the prices up, or can it be managed by efficiencies where there's no net impact to DMP or the franchisee? Yeah. I think one of the important things to know for each of the leaders on this call and for our business globally is that franchisees are in control of the pricing. So it's up to us to convince them in these strategies as well that we're going to more than mitigate the costs through, as I mentioned earlier, the three different strategies. So we need to be compelling, not only for the customer, but compelling for our franchisees because we don't want them just to simply put up prices without giving the customer more because we are in the value game. So we're pretty confident in the strategies we've got. Of course, they've got to be continually executed. Our biggest risk is if we don't compel enough to our franchisees, then any individual franchisee can change their prices within their stores. We do have national promotions, which are national, but when it comes to individual menu prices, franchisees control that. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, the bigger one for our concern is the labor over a longer window. I think we'll get through this soft commodity window. We've been here many, many times. 34 years I've been here, it seems like it's every second year. And it just seems to be that ebb and flow. And yes, this is one of the greater ones, but it's not the first time we've faced this. So there's a lot of experience on how we should go about this. But the longer game, and that's what I think our long investors are focused on, the real one that we've just constantly got to be ahead of is this efficiency in labor. That's the one that I think many investors have heard me say in the past. This is an efficiency decade. The most efficient player will win because we'll be able to provide far better products and services at a much better price if we're the most efficient. And this whole team here are aware of the strategies to implement against that. And that's really the bigger game. This little window, I think, in the real scheme of things of 12 or 18 months is a window, whereas labor is not a window. It's a much longer picture if what we're saying is right. The biggest fear that we have is that if the whole delivery category outprices itself, then it actually tapers the age of delivery because what ends up happening is consumers move to other things like, for example, frozen pizza can become an alternative if prices get too high. We don't need to be growing other categories. As a category leader, it's just as much our responsibility to take that lead and continue to be that efficient player and create best value. Thank you for that. Can you provide an update on the loyalty program at the same time? Perhaps you could provide some color around the contribution of our own ordering channels, including our mobile apps. Maybe Andrew Bradley, if I hand over to you firstly on the loyalty question. Yeah. We've been on loyalty for roughly coming up to a year now. We're almost 800,000 people, just over 800,000 people already on it, which is actually well ahead of what we were expecting. So no, the loyalty program is working well. I think it's something as well we have to keep working on to keep reminding people it's there. But definitely, it was something consumers were waiting for. Franchisees were waiting for it as well. And very happy with the way it's moving along. Like I say, it's a program you need to keep alive, keep working. But yeah, thumbs up from our end. Loyalty is working for us. And I think Stoffel's just launching. So perhaps hand it over to Stoffel. Yes. As you've seen in the presentation, we're just going live with a well-known and flamboyant person in our ad explaining how a customer can save 10 points for every order over AUD 10 and then with 60 points collect a free pizza. We're actually going live today. So it's a very exciting day for us. So I can't really. Our test markets have been seeing the same positive results. Now for the global rollout and hope to beat Andrew's 800,000 in the first 12 months record. That's a good challenge, Stoffel. I'll hand over to Andre for the second part of that question. Just in terms of, can you maybe provide some color around the contribution of our own platforms, whether it's on digital and our mobile app versus, say, the aggregator apps? Yeah. We are largely, obviously, a digital business. What we've seen in all markets, at the beginning of COVID, we actually saw a little bit of a spike on our aggregator sales, but they've gone back to a stable percentage of our sales. It differs in markets, but the large majority of our orders still come in through our Domino's channels. And aggregators are on top of that. And that is a very stable percentage. It doesn't matter how much the aggregators actually are on TV. We really play to win within the aggregators to get the customer to decide to buy Domino's within the aggregator. But the percentage is actually really stable. Both are growing. Our channels are growing. Aggregators are growing in absolute numbers. But as a percentage of our total sales, it's remarkably stable. Like I said, we saw a spike in the first couple of months in COVID, but it's come back to the level it was before. What we see in France, not all stores are on aggregators still. And aggregators are not in all parts of the market as well. So the stores that can are connected, but not all of them are still. Percentages stay pretty stable. Thanks, Andre. If I just hand over now to Don for the final question. Europe has significantly lower margins as a percentage of same-store sales. Sorry. Yes. Than ANZ Japan today. Do you have any guidance for how that might evolve in the future? You know, we don't guide our margin, but really, it's just scale. We're reminded every day that when we look at all of the detail, also reminded by our chairman, who's also one of the most experienced people in this industry globally, that it's a race to scale. And with scale, it creates more media. We get our stores closer to the customer, which creates more consumer benefits. So we get more consumer benefits that we can tell more consumers about. We just continue to grow. So it's up to all of us to just get that scale. And with that scale, there is no reason that we shouldn't see similar margins. Australia does have an advantage today by 1% in its royalty back to the U.S. But that gets washed out when you look at how big France and Germany can be. And then just even, we've said before, the Benelux. In fact, the Netherlands, in many parts of our history, has had the highest margins in our business because you've got populations the size of Australia, New Zealand, in a place the size of Southeast Queensland. So just the real genuine benefits of those efficiencies being applied is in a micro way in the Netherlands. So this has always been, from day one, a scale business and for buying power, for media, for expertise, for experience, for creating talent in the business. And Europe's just, isn't that the same penetration of scale that we've now achieved in Japan on a relative basis? And because, don't forget, when I say that with Japan, in Japan, we can buy individual television markets. That's the competitive advantage for Japan in that, whereas Europe is still going to buy whole countries. So yeah, thank you, Nathan. Thank you for all investors that have been on our call today. Thank you very much, all. And I appreciate I've gone over time and I've taken more out of your busy schedules. I want to thank all of our speakers tonight, not just for the time you've given up for this presentation, but also for the time behind the scenes to prepare and film your presentations. I hope they've been of value to our audience. It's been my absolute pleasure to introduce you to the depth of management experience that we have, including introducing for our first investor call, Kellie Taylor, who I've already received positive feedback on how much everyone enjoyed the very distinctly Australian/Danish experience that was presented tonight. So we look forward to your feedback and to showcasing more of our European business. It's my sincere hope that the next one of these investor days will actually be held on the ground in person. Let's cross fingers that we get to come and visit sometime very soon. So thank you all very much. This recording will be on our website shortly. Good night or good morning.