Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Deepak Jajodia. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Hi. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Jubilant FoodWorks' Quarter Four and FY 2022 Earnings Call for Investor and Analyst. We are joined today by senior members of the management team, including our chairman, Mr. Shyam Bhartia, our co-chairman, Mr. Hari Bhartia, our CEO, Mr. Pratik Pota, our CFO, Mr. Ashish Goenka, and our group CFO, Mr. Arjun Chugh. We will commence with key thoughts from Mr. Hari Bhartia. Mr. Pratik Pota will follow him with his perspective on the JFL's progress on the quarter and year ending 31st March 2022. After the opening remarks from the management, the forum will be open for the Q&A. A cautionary note, some of the statements made on today's call could be forward-looking in nature, and the actual results could vary from the statements. A detailed statement in this regard is available in Jubilant FoodWorks results release and earnings presentation. I would now like to invite Mr. Hari Bhartia to share his views with you. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Thank you, Deepak, and good evening, everyone, and welcome to our earnings call. This is our 9th quarter of reporting results under the backdrop of pandemic. I'm incredibly proud of the way our teams have come together, not only continued to innovate to serve our customers, but accelerated our growth and delivered on expanded plans. The operating context during the year was marked by a lot of uncertainty, periodic disruptions. On the other hand, a high inflationary environment, which led to significant cost pressures. The relentless focus on driving productivity and calibrated price actions helped minimize the impact of inflation on our business. Thanks to our timely investments and the spirit of all our partners, we have set an all-time revenue, profitability, and network expansion record in FY 2022. In addition to the remarkable progress registered in our core business, we have made significant strides in investing in avenues that will become additional growth drivers for the company and create a substantial value for our stakeholders. During the quarter, the delivery channel registered a robust growth on a strong base of last year. Dine-in and takeaway channels combined reported a moderate growth. However, we continue to see a sequential improvement in dine-in and takeaway channel, and the delivery momentum continue to be strong. We opened the highest ever 80 new stores in a quarter for Domino's India and entered 17 new cities, thereby enhancing our reach to 337 cities. We added 230 new stores and entered 48 new cities in FY 2022. We intend to continue with this new phase of network expansion and plan to open around 250 new stores in the FY 2023. Popeyes, which serves Bangalore consumers across its four stores, received a very enthusiastic response. We are confident that Popeyes will help us build yet another profitable, sizable, and scalable business. In the medium term, we see a potential of opening around 250-300 stores. Our quarterly and full year results were also particularly strong for our international markets, where we delivered healthy system sales growth and expanded our store network. In Sri Lanka, despite the tough geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, our operations were uninterrupted and we delivered a strong quarter. In Bangladesh, we moved decisively to increase our stake in Bangladesh subsidiary to 100%. This will significantly help us to accelerate the pace of our business expansion. As most of you know, Pratik has decided to pursue an opportunity outside Jubilant FoodWorks Limited. I, on behalf of the board and all our partners, would like to put on record our sincere appreciation for his outstanding contribution by leading our company to scale new heights despite recurrent challenges in the operating environment. He has been instrumental in laying a strong foundation for the company to progress towards a vision of becoming a multi-brand, multi-country food tech powerhouse. On behalf of the board and all our employees, we really wish him a super success in his new endeavors. As all of you already know, the board also approved the appointment of Sameer Khetarpal as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Sameer has 25+ years of experience with companies like Amazon, McKinsey, GE, and Hindustan Unilever in various leadership roles. He comes with a deep understanding of customer in emerging economy, and has enormous knowledge and experience in delivering large scale diversified e-commerce businesses and solving complex business problems through technology. Apart from strong technology experience, Sameer has had a good success in building partnerships and also building partnerships through investments, which is good for any businesses in organic growth opportunities. He's a strong, dynamic, and value-driven leader with impressive track record of delivering consistent high quality performance in top consumer businesses. He brings in passion to serve customers and build businesses by leveraging technology. As we look to further our investments across our portfolio of brands to become a food tech powerhouse, Sameer will be a great addition to this journey, and I'm confident that his leadership will bring immense value to company, investors and shareholders. When he joins us in the first week of September, he will be working with an impressive set of leaders who are presently running our businesses and functions. The board welcomes Sameer to the role and wishes him every success. With that, let me turn over to Pratik to share his perspective for the last quarter. Thank you, Mr. Bhartia, for your very kind words, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining the call today. The quarter and the full year results once again demonstrate that our teams are executing well against the key business priorities, and that we have positioned the business well to deliver growth despite the prevailing challenges. Revenue from operations was, in quarter four, INR 11,579 million, up 12.9% versus the previous year. In Domino's, the like-for-like growth was at 5.8%. We faced and continue to face intense and broad-based inflationary headwinds across commodities, fuel, and other costs during last quarter. This was offset by driving business efficiencies and productivity, lower and more targeted discounting, and calibrated price increase. As a result, EBITDA was INR 2897 million, a growth of 16.2% and at a margin of 25%, which expanded by 73 basis points year-on-year. Profit after tax was INR 1161 million, up by 11.3% with a PAT margin of 10%. We continue to expand our network rapidly with 87 new store additions for India for JFL. We added 80 new Domino's stores to close the year at 1567 stores. Progressing well on our fortressing strategy, I'm happy to report that more than 70% of our orders are now being delivered in under 20 minutes. Without, I must hasten to add, any compromises, any dilution of safety or other traffic rules. Our Domino's app installs were 7.7 million during the quarter. We continue to be the highest rated app on both iOS and Android. During the quarter, we rolled out a number of small changes to the app Ui/ UX to make the experience even more intuitive and seamless for our customers. For instance, we reduced the number of steps for onboarding a new customer from five to one, thereby reducing the time and effort required to order their favorite pizza. We added seven new stores to emerging brand portfolio during the quarter, with four stores for Popeyes and 1 store each for Dunkin', Hong's Kitchen, and Ekdum!. On Popeyes, we are enthused by the response we have received from our guests in Bangalore, with sales being significantly ahead of our expectations. Our endeavor is to significantly scale up our presence first in Bangalore and then progressively in other markets across the country. Turning to our international business. In Sri Lanka, despite challenging macro and high inflation, the company registered system sales growth of 80.6% during the quarter and opened three new stores. In Bangladesh, system sales grew by 44.5% and we opened one new store. The Bangladesh market has very low QSR penetration and is one with tremendous promise, and we are well-placed to leverage the opportunity to grow with a wholly owned subsidiary. Before I conclude, if I may be allowed to strike a personal note. This is, as you know, my final earnings call as the CEO of this incredible company. I wanted to place on record my deep gratitude to the chairman, the co-chairman, and the board of directors at Jubilant FoodWorks for having entrusted me with the responsibility of leading this company over the last five years, and for their support, their encouragement, counsel and guidance. I also want to express my deep appreciation to all of you for your support, your encouragement and constructive feedback that you have extended to me over the last five years. I must say that I learned a lot from your questions, your reports and our interactions, and I drew into some of that while driving the transformation here. As I leave, I feel confident that we have the right growth levers and the right leadership team for JFL to evolve into a vibrant multi-brand, multi-country food tech powerhouse. I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sameer Khetarpal and warmly welcome him as the incoming CEO. I wish him all the very best to take this wonderful company to greater heights. With that, I would now like to turn to the moderator and request to initiate the Q&A session. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Nihal Jham from Edelweiss. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you so much, and congratulations on the strong performance. Three questions from my side. First, is it possible to give what was the recovery specifically in the dine-in channel and the delivery channel separately? I'm not sure if that has been given this time. Nihal, can you please back up on the question, please? It wasn't very clear. I'm so sorry. I was asking that could you give the specific recovery in the dine-in channel and the delivery channel for this quarter? Got it. No, thank you. Thank you, Nihal. As I mentioned in my remarks, and as Mr. Bhatia also mentioned in his opening remarks, we had a strong recovery and strong growth last quarter. The growth was both on delivery, notwithstanding the robust base from last year. The growth in delivery was on the back of a strong order growth, as also growth in ticket. In dine-in, we saw a strong and a sustained growth, and we saw sequential improvement. Of course, as we imagine, January was a little soft for obvious reasons of Omicron. Thereafter we saw a strong recovery in dine-in and a sequential improvement in dine-in channel as well. The growth was across channels. It was on the back of both orders and ticket. We see dine-in also improve sequentially. Sure, Mr. Pota, that is helpful. The second question was you've obviously laid out the split store that you've added this year and the medium-term target of 3,000 stores is something that we have been highlighting. Would it be possible to give a sense that how will this 3,000 look in terms of the number of incremental split stores that we are looking at going forward, and also the kind of city that you expect you will be in? That'll be my second question, and maybe I'll come to the last one after that. Got it. Nihal, you're absolutely right. We see a very clear and a very exciting runway to add 3,000 or more Domino's stores in India. The expansion of our network will come from a combination of three broad themes. One is fortressing existing markets and therefore, like you said, splitting stores to improve the speed of delivery, improve customer service levels and become even stronger in existing markets. Number one. Number two, opening up new virgin territories in existing markets as suburbs evolve, as new micro markets evolve. That'll be the 2nd big driver of store expansion. The 3rd one, of course, will be entry into new cities. And as you know, and as you've noticed, we ventured into 17 new towns last quarter. Our expansion will come from a combination of this. As to what precisely that combination will be and what the split will be, it's hard to tell, but it will be a balance of all of these three themes. I think the other thing I wanna mention, since you asked about new towns specifically, is that it's important to also call out that our performance in new towns, including the ones that we entered last quarter, has been very strong, very encouraging. New towns are markets where there is already a high awareness for Domino's and for the brand, and there is therefore anticipation when the brand enters the market. Our revenues are strong. We start off and sustain a high level of revenue. We also have a strong flow-through into store level margins. Entry to new towns is also profitable and does not come, you know, with any dilution. Sure. Thank you so much. Just one last question, and this was to the promoter, that with the new CEO coming in, while you did highlight certain attributes that he brings on the table, are there any specific two, three key factors that we'll be looking at or would be a part of his KRA? I'll be done. You know that we have in the last four or five years, we have built a very strong digital backbone through our strong operations in food services business. We want to continue to build on that because going forward, technology will continue to play a very important role. One of the agendas for the new CEO would be to, of course, focus on our multi-brand, multi-country approach, but bring technology to solve productivity, but also use digital to have better interaction with the customers and better understanding also. Sure, that's helpful. Mr. Pota, congratulations to you and best wishes to you all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nihal. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vivek Maheshwari from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, good evening. My first question is, can you just talk about the demand environment, you know, in the context of macro, high inflation, you know, some reports talking about pullback in discretionary consumption and on top of that, the fact that you have also taken up prices as have other QSR chains. Can you just talk about how do you expect demand to shape up in the next few quarters? More, you know, particularly the next couple of quarters, I would say. Well, thank you for the question, Vivek. As you mentioned, and as we called out as well, we are seeing significant inflation pressures. We have attempted to absorb some of those through our productivity and our own initiatives, but we have passed on some of that through a price increase. Both last quarter and otherwise, this price increase that we've taken has gone down well. Our growth last quarter, as I mentioned, came on the back of both orders and tickets. I think it's also important to underline that even after the price increase, we remain the most affordable pizza brand in the country. Our value for money scores, which we keep monitoring very closely, also remain very strong. We haven't seen a moderation in those. As of now, I think we recognize that there are inflationary pressures, but we are not seeing that translate into any constriction of demand. Got it. The other bit is, sorry, how many stores you have guided for to, you know, for FY 2023, the new stores number? We haven't yet given the guidance. If your question is, yeah, our guidance for FY 2023 for Domino's is around 250 stores. Right. That's what I wanted to confirm. You know, if I go back to the cycle of 2013 to 2017, when SSS was slowing at that point of time, particularly 14 to 17, you accelerated those stores and then, you know, then you had to reverse a lot of that. How do you ensure that the same cycle doesn't get repeated this time when SSS is slowing, you are obviously again expanding, very aggressively. You know, so that 250 number is something you haven't ever done. How different it will be from the cycle of 14 to 17, for example? No, I think that's a fair question, Vivek, and I think we've spoken about that in a couple of calls earlier as well. I think we have a very, very strong and rigorous metric and yardstick for new store evaluation. While we give you a guidance, you can be sure that we do not chase numbers internally and we not open and approve a store till it meets all profitability yardsticks and milestones. I think all the stores that we've opened in the recent past, both in the last financial year and even preceding that, most of these stores have met our profitability goals and guidelines. Our store payback remains well under three years, between two to three years, sometimes even lesser. As you have seen, in FY 2022 and more recently in quarter four, despite inflationary headwinds, despite opening 230 stores last year, our margins have been robust. You can be sure that the learnings from last time are very clearly etched in our mind, and we will make sure that we use all possible rigor to ensure that our margins hold up even as we activate our network expansion. Leaving aside the inflation bit, you know, because which is beyond control, but are you trying to say that, you know, this 230 number will not impact your margins in any way? We do not see a material impact on margins of the network that we're expanding. No. Got it. The last question, beyond Domino's, you know, the other brands you did speak about, Popeyes. My question is, you know, the last two years you would have lost a lot of time due to pandemic, and I mean, everybody has, so or every other chain as well. Do you see a material change in the, you know, store expansion trajectory in brands beyond Domino's from a next 12 to 24 months standpoint? That is my last question. That's a good question, Vivek. As I mentioned earlier, we have an aggressive plan of opening 250 stores for Domino's in FY 2023. We are choosing to prioritize both Domino's and Popeyes for network expansion in FY 2023. For Popeyes, we'll open anywhere between 20-30 stores in the year. For Hong's Kitchen, we intend to focus on increasing brand awareness, increasing our online presence in the Delhi NCR market. For the next two to three quarters, we will be taking a pause on network expansion and putting all the energies behind Popeyes and Domino's. Ekdum!, we are focused on driving unit economics and establishing that, proving the model before we scale up. That is the very clear outline of our network expansion plan across all our brands for the next two to three quarters. Got it. Thank you very much. Pratik, wishing you all the very best for future. Thank you, Vivek. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Percy Panthaki from IIFL. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. My first question is on advertising. If I look at FY 2021, I think, for the full year, the ad spend as a percentage of sales was close to about 8.5%. It was higher than normal because the sales itself, the denominator itself shrunk, and therefore that ratio went up. Could you give me the number for FY 2022? How much is your ad spend as a percentage of sales? Percy, as you mentioned rightly, in FY 2021, both because of the revenue shrinkage on account of COVID, plus the fact that we chose very deliberately to stay invested in brand marketing through the COVID period, our advertising proportion was significantly higher than average. In FY 2022, that has got corrected. We are ensuring, however, that we make all the necessary investments in driving brand awareness, driving innovations, driving all our key priorities. The number is much more in line with what we have done in the past. What I'm trying to understand here is, in FY 2023, is there any sort of reduction here possible as a percentage of sales, obviously not in absolute terms, versus FY 2022? No, because that is, again, that's a fair question. I do not expect us to have any reduction in marketing spend in FY 2023. We believe we are at the right level where we need to invest behind the brand, we need to invest behind all our key priorities and invest most importantly in driving and stoking growth and stoking demand. We talked earlier about the fact that we are in an inflationary environment. It's very important to have the brand invested behind to drive demand, to drive new users, and to ensure that we support our key priorities. We don't expect marketing spend to reduce and flow through into the P&L in FY 2023. That's not part of the plan. Right. I hope that's clear. Right. Secondly, on Popeyes, can you give us a little more idea in terms of, you would obviously have some kind of agreement with the brand owner as to what kind of number of store openings you need to do over a three to five -year kind of period. While you've given us an idea on FY 2023, you said some 20-25 stores, but how much can we expect, let's say by the end of FY 2025, how many stores can we expect? Percy, let me go back and talk about a little bit more about Popeyes and what we have seen before I answer your precise question. As I mentioned earlier, we are quite excited to see the response to Popeyes in the first few stores in Bangalore. Consumers really love the Cajun flavors. And in chicken sandwich, which is of course the differentiator for Popeyes, we are a very clear winner. We have managed to, given our standing as JFL, we have got a very strong partnership going with RBI on advantageous terms. We are looking to scale up Popeyes aggressively across the country. Without putting a target for FY 2025, let me say that in the medium term, we expect Popeyes to have at least between 250 to 300 stores. It'll have a national presence in the medium term. Right, sir. My last question is, given all your expansion, both in Domino's as well as other brands, and also the inflationary scenario that is present in front of us, how do you see overall company margins for FY 2023? I don't expect you to give exact number, but what I was looking at is versus the full year FY 2022 margins, do we see any sort of downside to that number? Look, I think first of all, the premise of your question, even as we make the investments required to drive our growth levers, be it Popeyes or of course expansion into more Domino's markets and more Domino's stores, we are also making very careful choices. We also are tasking ourselves to drive productivity and efficiencies to ensure that we do not compromise and dilute on margins. We also are watching inflationary trends very, very closely, and we will do what is required to ensure that while we remain value for money, we also do not compromise on margins. That's a fine tightrope walk. I don't expect us to have any impact on margins in FY 2023, on a trend line basis. Okay, sir. That's all from me. Thanks and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Sachdeva from HSBC. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi and good evening. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations for good set of numbers. My question is just on Popeyes. My other question has been answered. Sir, Popeyes, you are talking about 250-300 stores, and you obviously mentioned that initial plan is going ahead of your initial target in terms of, you know, throughput, et cetera, the response customers have given. My sense is that, 40-60 stores a year, given the incumbent presence of, for example, Domino's all over India with, 1,570-odd stores, and you probably would have, you know, privileged relationship with, you know, landlords and the incumbent infrastructure that's needed for the store already. Isn't that 40-50 stores a year target very conservative you might say, or probably not aggressive enough? If you are happy with the economics which store is generating, is it too less a target? I'm just stressing it in terms of it's 250 stores in medium term. Is it like too conservative a guidance? I like that question, Amit, and I like the implicit premise of the question. Look, you have, you've seen us open 200+ stores on Domino's last year, 230. We're talking about 250+ stores next year. So you can be sure that we have the capability and the bandwidth, and of course, the capital required to accelerate our network expansion for Popeyes as necessary. We also don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Remember, we've got 4 stores right now in Popeyes, and therefore, we want to give a guidance that we believe is aggressive, yet achievable. If the numbers continue to play out the way we are seeing it right now, we have the capability, we have the wherewithal to go fast on the expansion. I think let's start running before we can fly. Sure. No, that's very helpful. I was just wondering that it is probably lopsided towards the current thinking extending to long-term rather than I probably hazard a guess that it is the 250-300 is a bit of an open number, and based on your success, that might be sort of looked at each year how it could be, if I'm correct in thinking that. That would be a fair statement to make. I mean, this is an outlook that we have as things stand today. We'd be happy to be proved in hindsight a little bit conservative in estimates. Of course, we can, if we can grow faster, we would love to do so. Sure. Pratik, just if I may check, what kind of, you know, I know it's too early days, but this format has a certain gross margin and basic economics that we have our targeted economics, you know, in some sense. I know that's too early, but what could be the typical, you know, gross margins that business will operate at? Could you also share your vision of dine-in versus delivery mix for that format? I'm not saying reality today, but what would be the optimum reality for it, this format? Let me answer in the reverse order. I think this format certainly and this brand certainly will have a slightly, in fact, a more elevated dine-in mix as compared to what we see at Domino's, for sure. We are seeing that already, and we expect that to sustain in the future as well. On your first question, rather than talk about gross margins and, you know, you're aware, you do the benchmarking across the category, so you know of other players in the space and what gross margins they have. Rather than talk about gross margins at this stage, I think it's important to talk about overall profitability at the restaurant level and at the business level. On that, we do not expect in the medium term to be any difference from what we see at Domino's. Okay. Sure. I think essentially you're saying is EBITDA margin level. It should not be not much different from what the format is on a sustainable basis. That's right. Okay, great. No, that's very helpful, Pratik. I'll probably take the rest of it offline. Thank you so much for being with us for all these years, and wish you all the best for your future endeavors. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Amit. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gautam Rathi from CWC. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Pratik. This is Nishit. Most of my questions are answered. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you. You came in at a very, very difficult time and have helped the company and all of us through those times. Just wanted to place my heartfelt gratitude towards that, and thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Nishit. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for all the support that you've extended to me and all the value adds that you've given me during our interactions. Thank you. It's been a pleasure, Pratik. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tejash Shah from Spark Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Pratik, my first question pertains to a loyalty program. It has been in the works for a while. Of late, as a consumer, I can see some activity on my app, on loyalty side. If you can elaborate if you have made any progress there. Yeah. No, thank you, Tejash. Thank you for the question. I was wondering when it would come or not. No. First of all, I think, let me reaffirm what I alluded to last time as well, in that we are extremely excited about the loyalty program. We believe it would be a significant driver of growth and of retention for us, and growing customer lifetime value over time. As we had briefed, on an earlier earnings call, we were testing various models of different loyalty program constructs, to see which one would be the most effective. We've done A/B testing around that. I'm happy to report that after having tested two different models, we've arrived at a winning model. We have scaled up the loyalty program nationally in quarter one. The reason why I didn't talk about it in the opening remarks is because it's technically in this quarter, not the last quarter. We had tested two different models. One was a Cashback-based model. The other one was a Milestone-based model, which earns the customer a free pizza over time, similar as you know, to the U.S. loyalty model. That construct won out in our A/B testing, and that has been now scaled up and branded as Cheesy Rewards. It's a very simple construct. For every purchase, a customer earns one slice of pizza or 100 points. After completing six transactions, six purchases, the customer can redeem those six slices for a free pizza. This is now scaled up nationally. Of course it's happening as we speak, so it's too early to talk about the impact. We are confident about its potential value to us over time. Sure. Very interesting. Pratik, second question pertains to the kind of ramp-up that we are doing on the front end. Historically, we have always supported this kind of a ramp-up with an ample investment on supply chain. Even in our opening remarks or the press release, we have actually called it out on the supply chain focus as well, integrated supply chain. If you can elaborate that the kind of ramp-up that we are seeing on the front end, will it entail any additional CapEx on the back end, at least this year? No, that's a really good question, Amit, and you are absolutely right. One of the biggest reasons for our success over the last 25 years has been our very prescient and a very proactive investment in supply chain well ahead of others. That has helped us grow the Domino's network. It's helping us grow our new brands as well. We intend to sort of also invest in the back end in supply chain and in supply chain capacity even as we grow the front end. We are putting up a larger commissary in Bangalore and in Mumbai. We're also in the process of expanding our network in Kolkata and in the western part of the country in Ahmedabad. Apart from Greater Noida, where we have a large commissary, which we had set up four years ago, we will now have a new expanded commissary in Bangalore, in Mumbai, in Kolkata, and in Ahmedabad, and a ramped up capacity in Mohali, near Chandigarh. All this will happen in FY through FY 2023 and FY 2024. You can be sure that this is one area where the board focuses very, very closely and ensures that we are investing to stay ahead and to make sure we have headroom to grow on the front end. As we expand our Popeyes network, these same supply chain centers will be multi-brand supply chain centers and therefore allow us to expand and grow other brands as well much faster. Thanks. That's very detailed. Last one on Russia. We are seeing that many U.S.-based QSRs are not allowed or they are withdrawing from the country for political reasons. As a franchise, where do we stand? Do we have any advisory from Domino's Global whether to continue operation or withdraw from the country? On Eurasia and especially on Russia, I want to first of all say that I think you are aware that we do not have operating control of the business. We have a board presence, and we work with the DP Eurasia team very closely. I think there's a trading update that was released as recently as last week, and which will tell you that I think the performance has been very strong in both Turkey and in Russia. We are very confident about the longer term prospects of the business of DP Eurasia, both in Turkey and in Russia. If we step back on the temporary headwinds that we've seen in both these markets, there has been no advisory or no update at all from Domino's vis-à-vis Russia. Therefore there is no change. Business continues in Russia as usual. Thanks, Pratik. Thanks for all this year's very detailed answer and insightful answers. Best wishes for your future endeavor. Thank you, Tejash. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Latika Chopra from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Hi, Pratik. You know, my first question was on these 250 Domino's stores, you know, you're planning to roll out in FY 2023. Would it be possible to give some sense on this, on how much of these will be in the existing markets in form of big stores, and how much of them will be then in the new cities? My second question was any broader thoughts on inflationary trends on wages and raw materials and rentals, you know, that are emerging in industry today? Thank you. Inflation on the. Inflation on labor. On labor. Okay. Labor, rental and? Commodities. Commodities. Okay. Got it. Latika, now thank you for the questions. Let me answer your first question. I think I had sort of called it out earlier also in one of my responses, that we have a plan to have these 250 odd stores that we're opening next year be a balance of new towns. Where, as I said earlier, we are seeing a very strong and a robust response, both on top line and on bottom line. Combination of that along with split stores in existing markets in line with the fortressing strategy. Of course, entering new markets and new micro-markets in existing towns. We are working through what the split will be, but you can be sure that it will be a good balance of these three. It'll be probably more a combination of splits and new towns and less so of micro-markets, but that number we aren't able to share right now. On your second part, yes, we are seeing inflation trends continue this quarter as well on commodities. We are seeing some pressure on labor and on manpower. Nothing that is unmanageable, but there is some inflation on manpower as minimum wages get revised. On rentals, however, while I think there is with you know, we're expanding more rapidly, we are yet to see material pressure on rentals. All right. Pratik, just to clarify, when you said that, you know, you don't anticipate any pressure on operating margin, you are taking into account the investments that will be done behind Popeyes. Is that fair understanding? Yes, Latika. That's right. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Pratik. It was good interacting with you always, and I wish you the best. Likewise, Latika, and thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Avi Mehta from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Just a quick clarification. Would it be fair to say that the need to take further price hikes is now behind us, given the comments that you made on margins and inflation? I think I'll request Ashish to take this question. Avi, as you would be aware, I think the situation is quite dynamic. However, recently we have seen some stabilization in commodity prices and some moderation also came through in fuel prices post the government reducing the excise duty. If things were to stand as they stand today, we will probably be able to hold at the current level. However, we are watching the situation very closely, and as Pratik has mentioned earlier, we will take the necessary steps as and when required. Perfect. Just two bookkeeping questions. A, if you could share the CapEx number that we can expect in FY 2023 on back of these store additions and investments. Avi, Yeah. Sorry. Go on. I think CapEx would follow the store guidance, Abhi, because a large part of our CapEx that we spend are for the store expansion. As Pratik has mentioned, we are looking at about 250 stores for Domino's and about 20-30 stores for Popeyes. You could expect the CapEx to be in line with that. Apart from that, we would also be stepping up our investment in commissary to build our back end and supply chain capability, which also Pratik alluded to the previous question. You could, we could see CapEx to be moving in line with these two investments that we are making this year. Sir, any number there, which you could share? Abhi, difficult to give a number, and we normally don't give a guidance or number. Directionally, it will be slightly higher than what we expected in FY 2022. Lastly, sir, I don't know if this was discussed, but is there any growth number that you could share on how delivery growth has been versus dine-in growth? Just, was it larger in this quarter, per se? Or, has dine-in kind of seen moderation quarter-over-quarter? Some understanding, sir, on that, please. Thank you. No, thank you, Abhi. As you're aware, we don't share numbers and a drill down of how the numbers were specifically. Directionally, we had a strong growth in delivery on the back of order growth. In dine-in, after the blip in January on account of Omicron, we are seeing sustained recovery of dine-in over the previous periods. Okay. Perfect, sir. Thank you. That's all from my side. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I wanted to check if you can quantify the blended price hikes taken towards the end of Q3. Devanshu, sorry, can you say again? Oh, price hikes. Yeah. In Africa. Yeah. Blended price hikes towards the end of Q3, if you can quantify the amount? In Q3. In Q3. Got it. Devanshu, I think you're re-alluding to the price increase we took at the end of Q3. Is that the question? Yes. Yes. I think it was in the range of about 5%-6% at a menu price level, which we have seen flow through in quarter four. As you would be aware, we had also taken another round of price increase towards early April, which was in the similar range. Sure. Pratik, I also wanted to check your comment on Q4 seeing both volume and realization growth. Was this at the company level or the store level? Yeah. This was at the store level and at the company level. We saw growth in orders combined and we also saw an increase in ticket. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you want me to clarify any further, but it was a combination of ticket and orders. If I may just add on that, Devanshu, I think as you would have noted, our overall system growth was at 12.9%. We also had a strong like-for-like growth, which is 5.8%. Therefore, we did see a very good growth in our stores. As Pratik mentioned, a combination of growth driven by both volume and ticket price, ticket size. Sure, sir. Thanks. That's helpful. That's it from my end. Thank you. Thank you, Devanshu. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shirish Pardeshi from Centrum Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, good evening, team. Thanks for the opportunity. Just two questions, first on Popeyes. You have said that you want to use the understanding in the Bangalore market. Right now we have about 4 or 5 stores. What maximum stores you will open in Bangalore and then expand in all India? Or if my understanding is that this learning at Popeyes stores in Bangalore is good enough for us to expand in India. Shirish, I think certainly there's scope for us to expand the network more in Bangalore. I would not like to give specific numbers because that's privileged information and competitively sensitive information. We see the scope for us to expand more in Bangalore and then scale up across other markets as well. Pratik, let me reassemble the question. Is the learning for Bangalore good enough for us to go pan-India? Look, the way learnings go, I think it would be false to say that learnings are ever adequate and ever there's an end to learning. Learnings evolve, they're organic, they will increase over time. Do we have enough learnings to drive expansion? Absolutely, we do, which is why we are scaling up, starting from this year. The learnings will continue, and we'll keep learning and evolving as we get more incremental inputs and stimuli. My one follow-up on Popeyes example. You said you were overexcited. In the initial remark you said that we have seen the parameters crossing our thresholds. Is that the operational metrics you are referring or is it that the growth metrics you are referring? Sorry, is it what metric? Are you looking at the growth metrics or the growth of top line, which you are excited seeing the brand acceptance and all? Or you're looking over on the store metrics which you have seen surpassing your expectation? We are looking at the overall delivery and overall experience of Popeyes, both from the point of view of customer experience and customer feedback, our own operations, delivery on the ground, and every other metric that we use to monitor a normal store performance. On all of those metrics, we are quite encouraged by what we see on Popeyes, and that gives us the conviction to scale up the network, you know, from this year. Okay. My second and last question, I'm referring to slide 3, where we have showcased our aspiration to move to 3,000 stores in the medium and short term. Aspirationally, I mean, I'm not saying from the guidance perspective. Aspirationally, at 3,000 stores, what is our comfort level in terms of either gross margin or EBITDA margin we would like to work? This is in the context of the incremental competition and QSR penetration in India. Yeah. Shirish, I mean, look, I think first of all, let's talk about the fact that our outlook, we are right now 1,600 stores odd. We're talking about doing almost 2x of where we are right now, and that's the potential that we see, 3,000+ stores. I think that itself is a sizable and a very aggressive and a very confident outlook that we are spelling out, number one. Number two, in response to a couple of earlier questions, I've mentioned very clearly that our expansion of the network is not margin dilutive. We are seeing our new markets and our new stores perform very well. Our new store payback is between two to three years. Our new markets where we entered have very strong revenue and very strong bottom line performance, and we are therefore not expecting any margin dilution. Now, what precisely will be the gross margin in, you know, when we go 3,000 stores? I think that would be premature, and that would be, I think, speculative. The outlook that we are spelling out here on slide number three is one that we'll get to with sustainable profit margins and sustainable growth. Yeah, I think that's. I would leave it at that. I got that, Pratik. My only worry at this time is that we are trying to expand the footprint. In the medium to short term, in the wake of chasing the top-line growth, are we also trying to look at the margins stability and sustenance? Of course. Absolutely right. I think, which is why I called out the point that we are looking at growing sustainably and growing profitability. It's not, I repeat, it's not a question of either/or. It is an and question. We will grow, and we will grow profitably. Sure. We will expand a little profitably. Sure. Thank you, Pratik, and all the best to you for the new assignment. Thank you, Shirish. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Pratik Pota for closing comments. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining the call and for your questions. We hope that we were able to answer them. If you have any follow-up questions, verifications, please feel free to reach out to the investor relations team. Thank you, and au revoir. Thank you. On behalf of Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.