Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Restaurant Brands Asia Limited Q4 and FY24 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants' line will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Naveen Trivedi from Motilal Oswal. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Yeah, thank you so much. So on behalf of Motilal Oswal, I would like to welcome you all to the Restaurant Brands Asia's Q4 FY24 earnings conference call. From the management today, we have Mr. Rajeev Varman, CEO and Whole Time Director; Mr. Sandeep Dey, Brand President, Indonesia; Mr. Sumit Zaveri, Group CFO and Chief Business Officer; Mr. Kapil Grover, Chief Marketing Officer; and Mr. Prashant Desai, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations. Now, I would like to hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks. Over to you, sir. Good morning, everyone. This is Rajeev Varman, CEO of RBA. First of all, thank you for joining this morning. Really appreciate it. Today, actually, this year, November ninth, as a company, we will complete 10 years in India, which is, you know, again, we keep saying this, but extremely young. If you look at the industry, which has been here for about three decades, we are just going to be completing one decade at the end of November or November ninth. So that as a company and, you know, the plan for the 10 year, what we kind of put together and moved forward, those plans continue, and then we continue to kind of take, take them forward. See, last year was a tough headwind year for most of the industry. In this environment, I think, you know, our, you know, Burger King India at least continued to deliver positive, same-store sales every single quarter. Every single quarter, we delivered positive sales, and we ended up, you know, being 2.9% positive, which, you know, if you look at our guidance initially, in the first, quarter or so, our feeling was we would be somewhere around the number of 8%-10%. And if you look at the industry, which is sitting at about -4%, -4.5%, and with a 3% guidance, you know, if the industry was even flat, we would have probably been close to where, our guidance was. So, having said that, you know, we continue to kind of talk about few pillars of what we are doing here in India and then what are we doing in Indonesia. So I'll first, you know, address India. So last time we talked, told you that we are going to continue to be laser- focused on profitability. So we have continued to do that in this tough environment. We have doubled our, you know, company-level EBITDA from previous year, and, you know, Sumit will talk all through the numbers. But even in this, tough environment where we did not see, sales rises as much, we have doubled our, company-level EBITDA, and that's to focus on our, line level P&L, integrity, right? So we have been very focused on that. We will continue to be focused on that, as we continue into the next year. So profitability, not just in the dine-in business, but now we have taken up several steps to move the profitability on our delivery business as well. So combined effort in moving pro-profitability forward, and you will see that in both here, in India as well as in Indonesia. And I'll talk Indonesia in a minute. Now, if you look at, you know, our growth pillar, we continue to grow. We built 75 restaurants last year with 11 closures. That's about 64 NRG, net restaurant growth. So we continue to do that. We continue to do that along with cafes, and we continue to build the cafe business and a rounded business from every opportunity, every restaurant that we build. Now, you know, one of the things that we keep talking about is traffic, right? When you look at the same-store sales that we have delivered last year, it is on top of increased traffic. So for those that are wondering whether traffic is, you know, moving away from QSR or we had a headwind on, on, on traffic, traffic continued to grow in RBA this entire last year and into this year as well. So on the top of traffic, we are driving this. And how are we doing this? We have always talked about two leadership positions that Burger King has taken. One is product leadership, to make sure that our product stands tall in the industry. It's one of the best received products. It's one of the best tasting products, quality-wise, you know, quantity-wise, value for money. All those things, we have always held that our product will be superior in this industry, and we continue to hold that, and we continue to work on that, and we continue to test that theory every year. The second pillar that we have always spoken about is value for money. And you've seen that, you know, since our inception in 2014, we have continued to provide value, whether it was 2 for INR 50, 2 for INR 59, the INR 99 menu. You know, now we are at 2 for INR 79 menu. We continue to provide a gateway for, you know, consumers to enter into our business. That gateway will continue. Kapil will talk more to it in a few minutes, but that value pillar of ours will continue to get energy from us, and will continue to grow in that direction. Digital is the other thing that we started this last year. Digital, as in, you know, complete experience of a consumer in our restaurant, from walking into the restaurant and leaving the restaurant, will completely be digital very soon in all our restaurants. We've already got in the neighborhood of about 100 restaurants that are doing this. We call this, you know, table ordering, we call this kiosk ordering, we call this, you know, app or, you know, digital-driven ordering, table service, where people can just walk in and sit on their table, place the order from there, get their food over there. This is something that we are very serious about, and we continue to push that, and you will find that very soon all our restaurants will be delivering a digital experience to our consumers. This helps in many ways. You know, it helps in, in growing business, it helps in understanding the consumer, it helps in, you know, our checks, it, you know, helps in, you know, the money going directly to the bank, so cash handling and everything else. It is just purely a very good route that the industry is taking. We are definitely taking a leadership position in that. The other pillar, as I was talking about product and menu, you know, we continue to build menu that is relevant to India, right? For example, we launched, you know, nuggets. Now, we did not launch nuggets that are sold, you know, industry or, worldwide by Burger King, but very specific nuggets to India. And they've got raving reviews back, saying these are really good nuggets, and they're very specific to our Indian audience, and they're really working well. We also introduced the Wraps. We have just got the Puffs off the ground. Those are rolling out. We continue our improvements on the premium menu, and then our focus on the Whopper. So Whopper, you might have seen our commercials last year. Kapil will again speak to that, but our continued focus and emphasis on building the flagship of our business to Whopper. So relevant menu, continue to grow on that, continue to focus, spend money and energy around that, that will continue. And the last piece of, you know, what we started a couple of years ago was the BK Café, and we continue to grow that BK Café. We continue to grow that in terms of menu, in terms of, you know, locations. We continue to grow that business, and we will continue to be focused on that to, you know, widen, you know, the experience of our consumers coming into the restaurants. So these are the top pillars, and, and between Sumit and Kapil, they will address, you know, all the results as well as what we are doing under each of these pillars. But overall, in India, if you, if you ask me, what is the company going to focus going into the next year, is basically a great emphasis, a focused, emphasis on profitability and to continue growth through traffic, responsible growth through traffic. We want more people to come into the restaurant, not, you know, grow through check. So you will continue to see those two focuses as we go into this next year, as we have gone into this next year. Now, a little bit about Indonesia, and Sandeep, he is here. He's a brand president for our business in Indonesia, and he will go into the details of what our laid out plan is. Now, I've shared this plan with you, and it's not nothing new. It's just an update on status on where we are on this plan. So I'll first talk about menu, right? So we were running this business when we acquired this business on the back of just burgers in a market that was driven by chicken, right? So we did, you know, as I've told in the past, an investment in our assets, which is brought our restaurants up to, you know, good standard, whether it was air conditioning, whether it was furniture, whether it was paint, whether it was signage. We invested money in the last two years on bringing our asset to a very good level. So that exercise has been completed. We continue to improve on it. We will then, in the future, you know, years, get that also on speed on digital. And so the entire experience will continue to be to improve our assets, so that the assets are more relevant in the environment they are in. So that focus will continue. Now, on chicken. So we obviously took all our menu items on the burger range, and we improved every single, not just one item, every single item on the menu was improved. It was tested and then relaunched with training of all the crew. And that was done in the last two years, and this last year was specifically heavy on training and execution of the product. But the introduction of the chicken was a big one, right? So we started selling chicken where we were, you know, just, you know, very small quantities of chicken. We have now built that portfolio. In fact, Sandeep will talk to you about the introduction of the spicy chicken as well, which is phenomenal work that he's done with his team. And those two products are now kind of driving, you know, additional traffic into those restaurants. So you will, you will hear, more on that. And then the last piece is, something that, he's passionate, Sandeep is passionate about, which is co-branded, desserts, and he will, he will tell you how he's working on it, how that is moving the entire experience forward, right? Now, with, with the Indonesian business, you know, we, we were- we had planned to break even last year in terms of, you know, cash, profitability, and we spoke about this at every, every call, and we were well in line t o kind of move in that direction to be at or about kind of a breakeven number, even until about October, when, you know, these geopolitical headwinds hit certain countries, Indonesia being one of them, which was kind of stuck in this geopolitical environment. And there was, you know, some, you know, anti, you know, U.S. brand sentiments that kind of grew. I think we're kind of leaving that behind as we go into, May and June. I think those are more or less kind of leveled out. But what did that do is it gave us a lot of, you know, headwinds in both Q3 and Q4. And instead of, you know, kind of gaining momentum, which, you know, we had reached ADS level in October as per plan to go over 20 million ADS per restaurant, 20 million IDR per restaurant per day. But that got reversed in the Q3 and Q4. It's now coming back, and we feel good about it. Moving forward, it might take another couple of quarters to kind of completely eliminate that, but we feel good about that. But while we were sitting and doing that, you know, kind of working on the products and getting everything in line, we also took two steps, which are very prudent. And now looking back, these two steps will define our results in next year. One is we went around and looked at our portfolio and closed 26 non-performing restaurants. And that has significantly impacted the profitability moving forward of our business. And the second is we also looked at our G&A, and we rationalized it to the tune of about 20%. So these two steps that we have taken, which are concrete steps, which are not, you know, relying on potential market improvements in the future, but concrete steps today that we have taken, that will have a positive impact on our business next year, are already taken and in Indonesia. Sandeep will again carry you through that. We continue to build our delivery sales over there, which has significantly improved, and he will address that as well. We continue to drive traffic into our restaurants through better products, increased product portfolio, better assets to walk into, and then in future, going into the digital mode. So with that said, I'm going to turn it over to Sumit, who's going to actually carry you through the numbers for this last year and as well as the Q4 quarter. So over to you, Sumit. Thank you, Raj. So what I'll do is that I'll just kind of, you know, continue from where Raj left. Raj clearly laid out our focus areas. And if you really kind of look at it and reflect back into what we've achieved during the year, Raj focused about saying that growth is one of the key pillars. And we've kind of added around 64 stores net of closures during the entire year. We focused on value strategy, which kind of ensured that we deliver positive SSSG. And if you really look at it quarter-on-quarter, we've been in the range of 2%-4% positive SSSG all across each of the quarters. There at the back of very strong focus on growth, very strong focus on value strategy, value leadership, introduction on new categories. We've been positive at 2.9% on SSSG for the full year. Both those factors put together, we grew revenue at a pace of 22% for the year, leading to an overall revenue INR 1,760 crores for India. If you look at it from the perspective of EBITDA, our EBITDA for the full year was closer to 10%, 9.7% to be precise, for the year. One of the other key drivers, which we've always been talking, we've also been talking in our guidance, that we will continue to focus on our margins. We will not let the ball on the margin drop while we continue to push the value strategy forward. For the full year now, we reported 67%, gross margins. Quarter four was marginally higher at 67.7. It had one-off, but we should be able to improve for the coming year. We would continue our journey forward, and you'll see it in the later part as well. As promised, 2% improvement over the next 3 years is something which we will continue to kind of focus on. We will see on a year-on-year basis improvements going forward. So that's literally the growth summary as far as India is concerned. If I really go into the Indonesia part of the business, Indonesia we started seeing the recovery in October, and Sandeep will cover a little more in more detail as well and kind of get into details of it. But right up to October, we got to an ADS of INR 19.5 million. And then with further investment that we had planned on chicken and all, we felt positive that we would have got to what we had been talking about, to cash breakeven, towards quarter, Q4 in Indonesia, but external factors really kind of pulled us back. We are back on track as far as Indonesia is concerned. And we've started at least going back to higher ADSs than what we did last year during quarter four. So that's it, it kind of just gives us confidence. Early days, but we will continue to build on to that factor. So we've, as far as, the year is concerned, we did a revenue of INR 677 crores, as against INR 650 crores. These numbers will get baselined a little bit because we have, shut down some stores during the year. On BK side, we are at 150 stores, and, you know, when we really look at it from the perspective of, other cost lines on depreciation and all, we will see, you, you will see the impact of that appearing in Indonesia financials, for the year. Our focus, again, like in India, is going to be value strategy, drive more traffic, focus on delivery, and that is also one of the reasons why we've seen, a drop in gross margins as far as Indonesia is concerned. But this is—we strongly believe that this is for the good, to make sure that we are able to drive more people into the stores. Overall, at the company level, excluding some of the costs that we took on account of closure of stores, we were positive at a restaurant EBITDA level and substantially reduced cash loss at the company EBITDA level. Last year, we had a loss of almost around INR 95 crores. We brought that down by INR 40 crores to INR 54 crores or INR 55 crores. Our endeavor is to make sure that, you know, if this improvement or journey that we are taking, we do believe that we should be able to achieve what we plan to achieve this year in the coming financial year or the ongoing financial year. So that's broadly from my side on the overall performance, and then we'll take more on the Q&A side. So I'll just hand it over to Kapil to take us through the key priorities on the business side, and then Sandeep can talk about Indonesia. Thanks. Thanks, Sumit, and good morning, everyone. So today, as we discuss the Quarter Four performance of the Company, let me just give you the full year perspective. There are four things that I've always sort of shared with you in every call that we focused on that helped us deliver positive outcomes here. First and foremost, our value proposition. This is what we launched in April of 2023. We focused on satiating needs platform with Tasty Meals at INR 99. This really helped us gain momentum and attracted more guests into our lobby, which is evident in our traffic, as Raj mentioned. You know, while the industry saw some, you know, headwinds on discretionary spends in the last couple of quarters, we continued to offer our guests great value and get them coming back to our brand. You know, it's not just value that we focused on, as Raj mentioned, we also continued to focus on Whopper, which is our signature product. Last year, we came up with a new campaign on Whopper. The insight behind the campaign was that our guests had given us feedback that they want the product to taste closer to their palate expectations, and we had made that change in the recipe, right? We then crafted the insight into a multilingual campaign, which was shot in three different languages, with a unique cast for every language to make a deeper cultural connect with our guests. The idea of Swaad Aisa India Jaisa is rooted in a very deep cultural insight, and we will continue to use this platform over the long term to build Whopper love, you know, amongst our fan base. During the course of the year, we also continued to innovate, and offer our guests exciting new products. We launched the Chicken Snacking Favorite Nuggets. Now, it's a crunchy nugget. It's got a twist on a typical nugget that you see in a QSR. We also relaunched the BK Chicken Burger with 50% more chicken, so it's not just about new products. We go back and improve our existing products also based on customer feedback, right? And that's now available at 50% more chicken at the same price, so even better value for the consumer. We also added premium wraps with the soft paneer and the fiery chicken. Now, these premium wraps have been nationally launched at the INR 199 price point and as a part of the King's Collection menu. Lastly, we also relaunched the softer, fluffier muffins, which have now been added to all our BK Café outlets. Now, on slide number 18. Now, BK Café experience is now available at 351 restaurants across the country. It continues to sort of offer consumers more choices on beverages, you know, with coffee-based beverages, shakes, now muffins. So it's a great new addition to our menu, and we continue to innovate. Like recently, we've added the Iced Americano to our menu, and we'll continue to build this layer over time, and gain more occasion share. So while we drive traffic through the value proposition, while we build Whopper, while we offer new innovation to our guests, and while we continue to build café, we are continuously engaging with our guests on every occasion, whether it's a trending moment, it's festivals, it's movie releases, it's cricket. Any, you know, moment marketing, we make sure that we are always in touch with our guests and keep having the conversation to engage them with the brand. Last but not least, I want to share an update on the King's digital rollout, where our guests are offered a fantastic experience through digital ordering kiosks, through BK app, app-based ordering, through QR code ordering on the table, and eventually, you know, they don't need to queue up for their food. We serve the food on the table, right? So that's the new experience we're rolling out. As of today, we have almost 100 stores that offer a 100% digital experience. So you can order on the kiosk or on the app or on the table, and your food will get served on the table, right? And we're expanding this as we speak. The table service is available across almost 250 stores, which are all our dining locations now offer table service to our customers. This will certainly help us improve our guest experience over time. And just in the end, I also want to share the brand was recognized with several sort of global platforms. This only encourages us to strive harder and, and do a better job in the future. So that's it from my side. I'll now hand over to Sandeep to share the Indonesia update. Thank you, Kapil, and a very good morning to all of you. Well, this year actually has been an absolute rollercoaster for us. We started the year on a great note. The first two quarters, we delivered double-digit growth. You know, the quarter one, we were 10% higher. Quarter two, we were 13% higher. But the third quarter actually has been quite challenging for us. Even in the month of October, as Sumit and Raj was mentioning, we were 17% higher in sales compared to same period last year, which is unfortunately when the entire industry witnessed a major setback due to the geopolitical crisis. Our business also suffered and guests stopped coming to our restaurants. The dine-in business actually dropped by more than 30%. However, we quickly pivoted our strategy to drive sales through the delivery channel and covered a large part of that drop through a very strong performance in the delivery side. As a result of which, the quarter four, we again bounced back and delivered 11% year-on-year growth in ADS. During the year, as Raj was also mentioning, we took some calls and, you know, closed some of the underperforming stores, and as a result of which, our ADS also improved further by another INR 0.8 million. So the average has gone up from INR 18.5 million to INR 19.3 million. The next few minutes, I'm gonna share with you the work we have done this year and also our go-forward plans with respect to our strategic pillars. So let me first quickly recap what are those strategic pillars. First, build relevance and credibility of our chicken menu. Second, establish leadership in burgers. And third, building a comprehensive dessert menu and drive incremental locations through that. And most importantly, we will continue to provide strong value propositions to our guests across the menu layers and across all the channels. See, Indonesia as a market is a very strong fried chicken market, and having a winning product is a key motivator in this category. We identified that gap in our menu, both, you know, with regard to the taste as well as with regard to variety. And as Raj mentioned, the team worked very hard to improve the quality and taste of the Classic Crispy Chicken, and we also developed a spicy variant. Both these variants performed very well in consumer research, and then we launched those two variants, June of last year. We also supported that with a comprehensive 360-degree marketing campaign, including TV, digital, influencers, outdoor mall branding. We also, in fact, offered at a very aggressive trial price of IDR 25,000 for a meal. Basically, a piece of fried chicken, rice, and drink at a price of approximately INR 140. The results were phenomenal. The volume grew by 50%, and it's so good to see that the results have sustained over the last three quarters, and now it has become a part of our everyday value offer. But that was phase I. We also understand the market has a demand for two types of spicy chicken. One is dunked version. Basically, take the crispy chicken and dunk it in a spicy sauce, which is what we have been selling now. But there's a market for a breaded spicy version as well, right? And that is where we have worked hard now in the last few months and developed that product, and we are going to launch that in the next couple of months' time. And through that, we are going to strengthen the chicken portfolio even further. Our next strategic priority is to establish burger leadership, and we continue to focus on a two-pronged strategy here. First, you know, we call it as a value and tier strategy, where we offer some of our flagship and preferred products like Whopper Jr., at a very attractive price, and that is helping us drive trials, helping us drive frequency and building the Whopper equity. The second part of the strategy is to actually provide new excitement through taste innovation and branded collaboration. Like last year, we launched a co-branded Whopper as Mexican Whopper. That was a branded collaboration with Heinz. Then we also launched something called a Cheese Dunk Whopper, which was inspired by local favorites. The volume growth for this burger was more than 35%, and the result is sustained over the last couple of quarters. We stay committed in continuing to build the Whopper equity going forward. Anyway, this is a very strong cold dessert market as well, and we see a big opportunity to gain share in this category. Our strategy has been to offer our guests new and indulgent dessert every quarter, and we have done that work consistently throughout the last year, and we have seen a volume growth of dessert almost 2.5 x. Our ambition is to actually double that volume next year. Now I'm on the next slide, which is slide number 25, and I'll give a quick update on Popeyes. This year we opened 15 stores, and now we have a total of 25 stores portfolio. So what is our going forward plan? Number one, we want to ensure that we provide elevated guest experience through delivering great quality product consistently and provide 100% table service. Number two, building awareness of our brand, building awareness of our products, and then generate traffic. Each of our stores actually have kiosk, which is used for primarily ordering, and we are using the digital menu board as our ad board and building product awareness through various video assets. Every store has a video wall also, which runs brand videos, which runs product videos. Number three, we are, by the way, the only QSR to have a grilled chicken in our portfolio, and that is a unique differentiator. Guests love this product, and it almost contributes 30% of our overall chicken, volume chicken portfolio. So going forward, we are going to strengthen this layer by adding further products into our menu offering. Number four, continue to provide digital-first experience to our guests. 95% of our dining transactions are through kiosks, and we are also going to launch our own app in the next couple of months' time. This is going to help us driving a very strong CRM program in the times to come. So that's from my side on the Indonesia business, and I will now hand it back to India. Hi, I'm Gaurav. I'll I'll just run you through the guidance. Our guidance for FY24 for restaurants was 400 and w e've beaten that guidance. We have 455 restaurants as of March 31, and our outlook for FY 2027 continues to remain the same. We are targeting to open 700 restaurants. For gross profit, we had given a guidance of 67%. We've achieved that for the full year. For FY 2024, our gross profit is 67%, and over the next three years, we want to take this up by two percentage points to 69% approximately. For Indonesia, as Sumit mentioned, you know, we were targeting a cash breakeven for FY 2024. Unfortunately, this recovery has been delayed due to the geopolitical headwinds that we've spoken about extensively. And now with the current situation, we're expecting to be cash breakeven in FY 2025. So with that, I'd like to open up the floor for Q&A, and, you know, please ask us whatever questions that you may have. 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 their 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 Dhiraj Mistry from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead. Yeah. Congrats on good set of numbers and improving profitability. So my first question is on what Rajeev highlighted, that you are working a lot on improving profitability on delivery channel as well. So I would like to know what kind of measures you are taking in delivery channel to improve profitability? So I think that, hi, this is Kapil. I will, you know, take that question. There are a couple of things that we're doing. You know, it's a combination of product mix. You know, you make sure that the menu that you offer on delivery is designed in a manner that it is a profitable proposition for the company while offering great value to the guests as well. Number two, we've recently taken some, you know, price hikes on our delivery offerings. These are keeping in line with where the industry is, and we're making sure that they are still value for money for our consumers. And these measures are helping us drive better profitability despite, you know, offering great value and continue to grow our traffic on delivery. Okay. Okay. And, historically, we have seen that pre-Ind AS and post-Ind AS, EBITDA margin has always in a range of 10%. And, the difference between both of them, how we should look forward, once you start focusing more on profitability now? Hi, this is Sumit here. So as far as we are concerned, when we look at profitability, our focus would continue to be on generating cash. That's literally how that is going to be our key matrix. That is what we've literally been talking about. So we will see an improvement in the store and the company level EBITDA as we go along. Between pre and post Ind AS, we've seen a difference of around 6%-7% on account of rentals. That would virtually continue to be there, because we continue to add stores on an annual basis. So that gap will continue, but our focus when we talk of profitability will continue to be company EBITDA improvement. Got it. it. Got it. And, I just wanted to add to that, Dhiraj. You know, if you look at the P&L from last year and this year, when you put them side by side, you will see the line items on the P&L, everything has been scrutinized, right? They've gone through and, you know, looked at all the numbers, all the services, the cost of the services. We have rationalized everything, right? So today, even though let's not look at the percentage, because percentage is driven by volumes. Once we reach those volumes, all those percentages will look fantastic, right? They will be in line with the industry. Today, as I told you in the onset, we are a company that is just going to complete 10 years in the next few months. You know, 455 restaurants in less than 10 years we have built, right? So, so this is where the company is. And if you look at the unit cost, without looking at the percentages, whether it's utilities, whether it's labor, whether it is, you know, other services, you go line by line, and I, I invite everyone to kind of study what, what's there that's sent out. And you will find that this operation in the last year has become extremely efficient, extremely streamlined. And we continue to do that on the top of driving traffic into the restaurant, right? We're not positive 2.9% by check. We are positive 2.9% with the higher traffic growth into our restaurants. This is basically the formula, is to continue driving more people in restaurant and continue to focus laser on our, you know, our P&L line items. Got it. No, we certainly appreciate that very much. And, can you highlight what is the demand environment right now. Historically, if I see that Q1 versus Q4, we usually see 10%-15% increase in average daily sales. Are you witnessing the same? And is there any material difference which has happened? Sir, there is a background noise from your end. Can you please use your handset? Yes, probably- Can you hear me now? Yeah, yeah, much better. Much better. Yeah. So, I understood, I understood your question. I'll just to save time here. Look, we you know, the entire year last year, we have been positive on traffic, we have been positive on sales, on SSSG, right? We continue to, on top of building new restaurants in existing markets, in many cases, we have continued to drive positive traffic into our restaurant. More people coming to our restaurant, more people coming through our delivery system, right? That we haven't seen a dent since we started into April, May, and going into June next month. We continue in the same route. You know, there is apparently, you know, headwinds that are kind of softening, and I think you will see that, that we feel, anyway, that the Q1 and the Q2 numbers will reflect that. So I think that's where we sit on. We haven't—we don't want to guide people because, you know, we did that last year, and we learned that, you know, there is sometimes headwinds that that kind of come very sharply and very quickly. But we feel good. I mean, we have been positive on traffic. We continue to be positive on traffic, and we do see no reason that that would reverse in the immediate future. Got it. Got it. And last question, if I may, the post price hiking, what would be the margin difference between delivery and dine-in channels? Is there a material difference? Yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't break up the P&L that way for competitive reasons. We kind of keep that in-house. Just what Kapil was saying, you know, we, we have, we have, we have got a lot of data. First of all, we drive the highest number of traffic numbers in delivery in India, right? We already shared that with you every single meeting that we get on the call. We are optimizing that, right? We are trying to make sure that that is, you know, traffic that we are driving with profitable kind of margin numbers. So that optimization through product mix, through entry-level pricing, and through offers that we do, we have kind of optimized that, right? So, we will continue to work on that, and the growth margins and the contributions will continue to improve in that area. That is the effort of the team. Got it. Got it. Thank you very much, and all the best for the future. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Yes, sir. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, our store guidance implies about 80 stores per annum over next three years. Do you foresee this addition to continue in FY 2025 as well, or there may be some moderation on this trend? So right, right now, you know, we're kind of guiding, you know, 700 restaurants, by FY27. We continue to stay put on that. Look, yeah, we, we, we have always believed, and we will always continue to behave like that, is that we have to responsibly grow, right? If in, if in any particular year we see that, you know, maybe moderation on growth rates, is required, we will look at those, right? We, we don't want to be those, the company that just, you know, is a cowboy approach to growth. Responsible, disciplined growth is what we believe in, and we will continue to do that. Our guidance will remain 700 restaurants, FY27, as we have given already, as Gaurav has already given to you. Great, Raj. Can we follow up to this is: Can we make any additions in line with internal accruals and whatever cash we have on the balance sheet, or you will be open towards capital raise to pursue growth? So, as far as India is concerned, we will continue to grow using the cash that we have on balance sheet plus internal accruals. As we've said in the past as well, that if there is a need to raise some short-term debt to fund any part of the growth, then we will be open to do that. But at the same time, you know, and I'm just adding on to what Raj was saying, o ur end at the moment, our goalpost is 700 stores by December 2027, and that is what we are really focusing on, with very clear understanding on profitability as well. So, as we go there, if we have to kind of re-adjust any of the targets for you, we will always keep taking that, taking that call, there. But no, no plan for any capital raise at the moment. So maybe two bookkeeping questions. There is an increase in non-current liability of about INR 48 crore, as well as there is other financial liability increase of another INR 52 crore as well. Total, it is about INR 100 crore. So what is the nature of this increase in liability, and when are these liabilities due for payment? So these are largely on account of the stores that we opened during towards the later part, later part of the year. So those would kind of get paid as, as they due. They're current in nature, there. But that's something which is more like we are negative working capital business, so we will always have business and expansion-related negative working capital cycles that we will continue to have. And what we are seeing is in that sense really normal levels as which link to our levels of business. Okay. So this INR 100 crore will be paid out, right? Yeah. No, normal, normal course of business. Normal course. They are current in nature, but at the same time, as I'm saying, that it's not that the levels of liabilities that we have at the current levels will see a reduction. So it will continue at these levels because we are negative working capital business. W hat is the quantum of one-off in the gross margin that you mentioned, Sundar? Well, that's a very small number. We roughly around 0.2%-0.3% impact for the quarter. And that is the reason why we feel that this will not have an impact into our journey to 69% going forward. We will continue to see improvement from the full year exit of 67 as we get into the current financial year and a couple of years from here on. Got it. Understood. Thank you so much for taking my question. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ram from Cycas Investment. Please go ahead. Hi there. Good morning, and, congratulations on the profitability. I just want to ask one thing. I want to understand the relationship between the RBI and, RBA, the international parent company and the Indian Indonesian company, aside from the master franchise agreement, in obtaining the 700 outlets. So did you see any assistance from the parent company or, is it otherwise? See, first of all, you have to understand that the parent company is also part of our company, right? They are shareholders in our company. They're just not a franchisor, they are also part of the company, right? So they sit on our board as well. We make our plans, we approve our plans together, right? So you have to have that comfort as you ask that question. So, you know, again, there will be headwinds, there will be nuances, there will be things that will happen, but I think we make decisions together. We do it for the greater good of the brand in the long run. Our focus has always been that we are not running this brand for 10 years or 15 years, we are running this in the long term, a long-term kind of basis, right? So we do this together. Now, you know, RBI is the franchisor, it's the biggest company that is housed outside of the continent. But it is not just a franchisor, but also participates as a shareholder in RBA, which is registered here as a public company in India. I hope that answers both the question. Prashant, yeah, if you want to understand the nature of the relationship between RBI and RBA, you will, you know, it's extensively mentioned in our DRHP when we went public. It will give you further details in terms of the nature of relationship. Beyond that, there is no change from there. All right. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shirish Pardeshi from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead. Hi, team. Good morning. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations for the margin expansion story continued. I'm on slide 9, and I'm reading four numbers. From quarter 3, quarter 4, our gross margin has improved almost 200 basis points. Our ADS is cut down by 2.8%, QoQ. SSG has moved from 2.6 to lower 1.9. When I look at our marketing expenses moved to 5.2. So when I read these four numbers together, and on top of it, our restaurant EBITDA has also come down about 400 basis points. So how we should think on the gross margin and restaurant margin in next four quarters? As I said, as far as gross margins is concerned, we exited the full year at an average of 67%. We should see an improvement in line with our gross margin journey that we want to take at 2%. Generally, we would, we would really see a very similar equated growth on an annual basis. That's what, how we really kind of work, towards the gross margin, journey is concerned. As far as, you know, there is obviously for us, there will always be a direct correlation between the level set, level of ADS, versus the restaurant EBIT, EBITDA. And that is why you see a drop from 12.2 or 10.7 that we did in earlier quarters to around 7.8. Very partially, there is a drop because we spent higher on marketing, which will kind of come back. And the second one is also because we opened substantial amount of stores towards the later part of the year. It's not that we start on on negative journey, but we start on a lower store level EBITDA margin. So that there is some of the impact that we are seeing in quarter four. We believe that as the ADS comes back, w e should see the store level EBITDA numbers that we saw in quarter two, quarter three levels and and better. So that's how really we see the journey. We will see the margin expansion continue as we've kind of seen from the 67% exit for the full year. As the ADS improves, which is through traffic, we will see going back to the early double digits in terms of store level EBITDA. As far as marketing is concerned, on an average, we spend around 5%. We might see variations, slight variations on quarter and quarter, but on annual basis, you will see that it will average out at 5% of revenues. Okay. I'm just asking and trying to infer, is there any mathematical correlation, 100 basis point improvement in SSG will have 250 basis point improvement in restaurant EBITDA margin, something like that? No, while we would always have leverage on account of fixed costs that will come into play, but there are also, when you really try to refer it quarter-on-quarter, there are also these seasonality variations that really come in. So, we would always feel that it's always better to kind of then see on an annualized basis, so that the seasonality variations gets kind of taken care of. Like, I'll just give you a simple example, like variation, a simple like of utilities between summers and winter. And I'm saying I'm not getting into the details of it, but I'm just kind of kind of explaining or marketing for that matter, which we would decide the way we would really want to invest behind on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So we would always feel that the best way to look at finally is on a full year basis, because then that takes care of the seasonality variations there. And if you look at it from that perspective, and I, I'll just kind of use the slide that we have on 8, where you will see that we moved up from 8.3% to 9.7%, while overall ADS was the same, purely on the back of same-store sales growth that we kind of achieved. So really, I would expect you look at it more on an annual basis rather than quarter-on-quarter basis. Okay. That's helpful, Sumit. My second question to Raj: Can you share what is the footfall or maybe like, what is the MAU, monthly unique customers? Some numbers to understand, I'm not asking about quarter, but for a full year, if you can share some qualitative improvement on the traffic and footfall. Yeah. We, we actually don't share traffic numbers, so we will not share those, on the call. But I can tell you that, you know, we are the entire FY, this last year, FY 23-24, we have continued to increase SSSG numbers based on traffic improvements. Because it stands as a central core pillar for us, and any improvements we want to do is not on the back of, you know, trying to drive more gross margin or, more sales through higher pricing, but more through traffic. I can tell you that we do drive one of the highest traffic numbers on delivery, and on, on dine-in, given our intensity of, you know, 9-10 years, total operation, if you look at the average restaurant tenure, it will be somewhere in between 4-5 years, right? That's the average tenure of a restaurant that has been open. This, you know, obviously continues to grow, and you will see that from the industry itself. You don't even need to look at the Burger King numbers. The traffic continues to grow. So at a given point of time, if we are driving more people average for the portfolio into the restaurant incrementally, then you will find that the whole portfolio at some point, you just got to kind of assume that at some point, if you're not going to build any new restaurants, your ADS, ADB, everything of existing portfolio will keep rising dramatically, right? Because then there is no new restaurants to bring the ADS down. I think that's probably the real question underneath your question. Yeah, I'm just trying to make one more attempt. Are you trying to say that top two delivery platforms, your traffic has grown for FY24 in terms of traffic length? Yes, I've said that three times now on the call. Absolutely. Okay. And just last question, on the SSG, we have not given any aspiration, number for FY25. Is there any particular reason or, are you in future is going to re-renew the number and give us? Look, here, we give you guidance on things. We absolutely have a hardcore belief that this is something we'll deliver, and we can move forward, and we have a good understanding of. And as we see that, you know, last year, you know, the guidance was at, you know, 10% SSSG, right? We all stood corrected as an industry at the end of the year. So we are cautious in the way we are approaching this. But, you know, look here, general guidance over the next two, three years is good guidance. Because we are planning on that basis. We are not planning restaurants on a quarterly basis. We are planning restaurants and growth and EBITDA and sales and traffic, including delivery, on a basis of next 2-3 years, right? So we are giving that kind of guidance. I think that's the best way we want to interact with our investors and as well as analysts that are kind of measuring us. Sure. Thank you, and all the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sakshi Chhabra from Swan Investments. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. So my question was actually on the Indonesia business. I wanted to understand that what has led to the major drop in the occupancy and other expenses in this quarter versus last year and as well as last quarter? Yeah. So we spoke about, you know, the fact that we closed and rationalized a whole bunch of restaurants, right? We closed down 26 restaurants that were not profitable, right? And, as Sandeep was saying, closing these restaurants not only, you know, reduced our losses, but also raised the ADS of surrounding restaurants. So not only that, we've removed a chunk of, you know, restaurants that were losing money, but we made the surrounding restaurants that were there more profitable. Those are two things that happened, which kind of reflected in the PNL that you're looking at. Okay. The reason I'm asking that is because, there's an asterisk, and it says that it excludes store closure expenses, expenses and loss on termination, and there is a drastic drop. I mean, the closure of restaurants that happened was throughout the year, right? It's not that all the restaurants closed in the last quarter. So that is why I just want to understand that, because last year the number was INR 484 million, sorry, INR 597 million, and last quarter it was INR 484 million, which has now gone down to INR 135 million. So going forward then, is this INR 135 million number going to be maintained, or how do we look at it? Sure. Sakshi, I'll just kind of, I’ll take it the exact, so as one is, what we've excluded as far as store closure is the cash expenses that we incurred at the time of closure of stores, which included, effectively, you know, severance and various other related expenses of around 10-11 stores. The reduction in occupancy and other expenses line that you are seeing is largely on account of, the depreciation line and, you know, realignment of all the leases that we've had, we kind of few leases that we realized. And, and there was a one-off, one-time impact that came in into that line of occupancy and other expenses. So that is impacting the post-Ind AS number. When we really look at it from the perspective of pre-Ind AS numbers, at a cash generation level, and that is the reason why we kind of segregated it and shown restaurant EBITDA and company EBITDA numbers. We are seeing a substantial shift if you see it at a company level, from INR 95 crore to INR 55 crore. And that's really the number that, we should, look at it from the perspective of saying or how do we really benchmark it? Saying, what would the journey, begin from? I would really take the journey beginning from the, the INR 55 crore of company EBITDA loss to, trying to achieve, towards the breakeven in the current financial year. So that's how I would, I would really look at this, this number, from that. There is—this is purely on account of post-Ind AS adjustment. It does not have any cash-related adjustment that is sitting under occupancy and other expenses. Okay, got that. Thank you. And what is the number of stores in Popeyes that we are looking to increase in the next year? So currently we are at 25 stores. At the moment, as we've been saying, that we are focused as far as Indonesia is concerned, is going to be, really stabilizing the entire portfolio of both the portfolio as far as business is concerned. So the capital allocation on both the brands is going to be literally, close to, close to nothing. We are not going to put any capital allocation on expansion, at least in the current financial year, as far as both the brands is concerned, because our concentration this year is to really go and work towards stabilizing the overall improvement of business for both the brands, BK and, Popeyes. Okay. BK, we've got around 150 stores, and Popeyes, we've got 35 stores as we, as we speak. Okay. And there are no more store closures expected in BK, right? No, at the moment, I think we've now taken a very hard look, so we feel that this, at the moment, this is the right scale of business that we have as far as BK is concerned. Okay. Thank you. All the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mayur Gathani from Ohm Portfolio Equity Research Private Limited. Please go ahead. Thank you for the opportunity. I'll just continue on the previous question. Do you not intend to open more stores of Popeyes in Indonesia? Yeah. At the moment, our current year's focus, so it's not that we are moving away from growth as such, but our focus at the moment is going to be really, stabilizing both parts of the portfolio and improve the overall performance. For that, we want to also kind of, you know, relook at our overall, portfolio in terms of products that we offer in Popeyes and BK. We've got a reasonable size for it at the moment, 35 stores in Jabodetabek is back. So the concentration will be towards improving, there. So it's just, it's just more like relooking at what we have on ground, and then once we've kind of, made relevant improvements or changes, we go back to growth on Popeyes. Yeah, Rajeev? Yeah, just, you know, if you reflect back to when we spoke about these, geopolitical winds that came in, into, you know, the industry and complete industry in, in Indonesia. And, you know, there was impact of that significant to the industry, ranging anywhere from 30%-40% decrease in some of the brands and in sales and so forth. So it's proven, you know, for us to make sure that, that stability comes back and the growth curve that Indonesia was pre-that, you know, comes to realization before, you know, we continue to, you know, grow. Right now, you know, it makes no sense for us to continue putting capital this year, while we kind of want the business to stabilize and, you know, overcome all the losses and make sure that this becomes a profitable business, at least from the cash basis this year. I think that's the goal. The goal is to bring the business to cash flow positive or flat, and then, you know, we'll continue the investment post that. So you are saying that the geopolitical tensions, starting from H2 of FY 2025, has led you to the decision where you rather not open stores and focus more on profitability, cash profitability this year, and then come back to grow? Because for quarter two onwards or quarter three, we spoke about opening at least 25 stores of Popeyes every year in Indonesia. Yeah, that's correct. So this, this, you know, what we saw was, you know, post-October. So November, December, we started seeing a decline. We thought, you know, the decline would be very short-lived. It continued for, you know, longer than we expected, and we just are being prudent with the, the responsibility of allocating capital responsibly. Thank you for that. And, continuing previous participant's question, the occupancy and other charges have dropped significantly. So, quarter-on-quarter, we should see this number from INR 13.5 crore to, like, INR 25 crore. Is that the general number that we should take forward? Because 10 crore was the, 10 or 11 crore is what someone mentioned. Yeah. So on a cash basis, one-off is INR 10, but that is not included in occupancy and other expenses. And the adjustment so there will be a reduction quarter-on-quarter because we have reduced the stores. So that, that's what I would feel. As far as occupancy and other expenses concerned, I would use quarter three as the benchmark for us to kind of look at how the numbers would look like on a state-by-state basis rather than looking at quarter four number, because there is an adjustment that we have on account of more on account of an accounting adjustment. So stable state, I would look at as 48, 45-48 crores on a continuing basis. Okay. And coming back to India, the ADS has significantly fallen, like, from 126 in September to 105 now. How do you see this, you know, going ahead? So you've been saying that, you know, volumes have been coming, customer flow is good for BK, but ADS has been falling. Is it because of your value proposition is the reason? Yeah. Hi, this is Kapil. I'll take that question. It's not the value proposition. There is seasonality. Quarter four, January, February, March, typically does have low seasonality. And we do see improvements coming through in April, May, June, as seasonality kicks in, you know, school holidays, malls, mall events, all of that. So just part of seasonality. I think we continue to stay positive on growth even in quarter four, as Raj and Sumit shared. And we are hopeful that this trend on traffic will continue with us. Great. Thank you very much. All the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jay Doshi from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My question is on we're seeing unprecedented slowdown in mass consumption and QSR for the past six quarters now. Is there a possibility that you can go back to RBI, get a waiver or concession on store openings for a year, focus on profitability, try to get to 8%-10% pre-Ind AS company- level EBITDA margin in India, and then resume store growth? Because right now, your profitability, EBITDA level assumptions, you know, expansion assumptions are hinging on improvement in ADS, and which I think, you know, at this point of time, nobody in the industry has that visibility or confidence that it will improve meaningfully. So in that, you know, in that context, are you even considering going to RBI? This question is also from the perspective, because we've seen a lot of franchisees of RBI globally struggle because of, the growing. Sorry to interrupt you, sir. May I request you to please use your handset? Sure. Is this better? Yes, sir. Have you considered this possibility? How, how is the board thinking about this? Yeah. Thank you for your question. I got your question. Look, I will not comment on the, you know, the global market, RBI. I think you probably need to go to them. But look, yeah, we made a decision not to put restaurants in Indonesia this year with a prudent thought process, right? So there's a thought process. There were specific, you know, issues there. We're calling them geopolitical reasons. It's industry-driven and so forth, right? Here in India, I think we have to take a long-term view. We cannot, you know, just take a planning based on quarterly, quarter-over-quarter. And we have taken all these considerations. We have had conversations. Like I said, RBI actually sits on our board. They are investors in our business here. They're shareholders in our business. And we make good decisions based on all these factors that you're saying. All these factors were considered on what we are planning in terms of FY 27 to 700 restaurants and our decision in Indonesia to kind of, you know, take a pause, not a halt, but a pause for the year in terms of growing. So all this was considered, right? We are making those decisions based on all that factors that you've just shared with us. That, that's helpful. In fact, I appreciate your decision in Indonesia. My only request to you is shareholding structure has changed a lot. If you could take feedback or inputs from your key minority investors, whether they would like to see the EBITDA margin grow from 4% to 8% or another 70 stores in the next 12 months. So maybe, perhaps, you know, discuss with investors. Sorry to interrupt you. Your voice is breaking. Can you repeat your question again? Sure. I think, my suggestion was if you could take inputs from investors in terms of, you know, whether to focus on EBITDA margin improvement or store openings in India. Exactly, Prashant. Yeah, we consistently and every quarter do that as we meet our investors. Along with that, we pass on the information to the board, and the board then appropriately takes a decision. You've seen the first segue of that this year, we're choosing to kind of take a pause on Indonesia, but it's a, it's a fair point, and just to answer, we'll be very consistent with it. Sure. Understood. Thank you so much, and wish you the very best for FY 25. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you, everyone. Prashant here. Thank you for the call. Just one small announcement from our side. I am, I'll be moving on from RBA to RBI, and in my absence, Gaurav Agrawal has now joined as the new head of strategy and investor relations. So any further queries that you may have, please direct it to Gaurav. Thank you so much for all the support that you've given to us right from the IPO to this time, and I hope you'll extend the same to Gaurav and the team. Thank you. Gaurav, you want to say a few words to close out? Thanks, Prashant. Looking forward, you know, to continue on this fantastic journey. My contact details are given on the last page of the presentation. If there is anything that I could help you with, please do feel free to reach out to me anytime. Thank you. Thank you, guys. On behalf, on behalf of Restaurant Brands Asia Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect.