Hey, good morning, everybody. My name's Brian Bittner, and I am the restaurant analyst at Oppenheimer, and I'm thrilled to help kick off the ICR Conference this morning by introducing BJ's Restaurants. BJ's, as you probably all know, is a polished casual dining brand with brewhouse roots, known for its fresh atmosphere and signature menu items such as the Pizookie. The business model operates 219 units and is closing in on impressive $6.5 million AUVs. I'm excited to be joined on stage by Lyle Tick, who has been CEO of BJ's since June of 2025, originally joined the company in September of 2024. We're also pleased to welcome Todd Wilson, who joined BJ's as its CFO just on December 15th. So welcome, guys. Thank you. Good to see you. Lyle, I'd like to start out the discussion at a high level. Since joining the company in September of 2024, you've quickly identified and implemented several positive changes that have really improved traffic, elevated operations. What would you say are the biggest foundational changes that you've made at BJ's to put the company on this better glide path moving forward? Okay. Good morning. Thank you. Morning, everyone. I think it's a couple of things. Probably the first one is around what I would say is alignment and accountability. We spent the first part of my journey as a leadership team and broader organization really understanding what we were good at, where we had opportunities, where we weren't executing as well as we needed to execute. That led to brand positioning work, which led to the four strategic priorities, which I talk about a lot, and we have been maniacally focused on those four priorities, and that's our team member experience, so creating a winning culture in organization, and so you think about the training work we've been doing, aligning our incentives, getting new values and behaviors established, the menu, so that's the category management work that we've been doing. You think about the pizza refresh that we've done, our wild hospitality, really focused at the beginning on table stakes and foundational things, and then having a fresh atmosphere and remaining really focused on that with kind of this governing principle of, are the things we're doing making things better or easier for our guests or better or easier for our team members? The second thing has been, I think, the sequencing of the work. We took a really honest look at the foundations, right? Which is when I talk about table stakes, 2025 was about strengthening our foundation. So from a hospitality point of view, that means you're greeted warmly, right? You're sat quickly. You get your drink. The food comes hot and fresh. We say thank you. Those types of things that maybe we weren't doing as consistently as we needed to. It's the foundations of great service and a great restaurant. We focused a lot on our table stakes. That was an outlier management program focusing on simplicity, aligning our incentives. We then looked at our Pizookie Meal Deal, our value platform. How do we make sure that we get that out there, that people understand that, understand that entry point into the brand? Stronger basic operations as we see coming through in our NPS scores being at all-time highs, team member retention being at all-time highs, our value scores improving because people can count on the Pizookie Meal Deal. You move on to product and experience innovation. In the second half, you saw a lot of work around seasonal Pizookies, and you saw the first menu category reinvention of pizza. Foundational operations, strong everyday value, and then product and experience innovation. That's a great overview, and Todd, I realize you're only in your fifth week on the job, so we're not going to sit here and pepper you with financial questions, but I'd love to give you a chance to explain maybe what attracted you to the opportunity to accept the position as CFO at BJ's and maybe any early learnings that you have since joining the company. Yeah. Good morning, everyone. For me, it came down to two things, really, which is the business and the people. And on the business front, you hit on $6 million plus AUVs. I imagine I saw what many of the people in the room see of high AUVs, same-store sales growth for the last five quarters through Q3. Importantly, that's traffic-driven sales growth, right, which is an accomplishment in this industry, growing margins, and a business that produces a lot of cash. And so the ability to continue to build on that, I think, is really exciting. I think it's a business that, as you look forward, right, that cash gives us the ability to invest, to grow, to return cash to shareholders as we did in 2025 with the share buyback program, right? All of those things create tremendous opportunities. On the people side, frankly, I had a chance to meet Lyle, had a chance to meet the leadership team, our board, and was impressed really at every turn. And I think when you put those two things together, a business that, to your point, has had clear traction and success over the last, really, all of our history, but especially the last 12 to 18 months with the opportunity ahead, that's a really exciting thing for me. I think we're positioned to really be one of the special stories in this business, both from a team member and guest side as well as the investor side. And so it's been a great start, I'd say, recognizing it's five weeks in. But I think the early learnings for me are really interaction with the team, a lot of the things that Lyle talked about in terms of how he approached the overall team. I'm doing those same things with my team of getting the right folks in place, building on the great building blocks that are already there. And it's really that structure piece that's a focus for me. And then I'll further engage with our operators, with the leadership team on other parts of the business. Great. Let's talk some more about the recent success. I think as it relates to traffic, the company's generated five straight quarters in a row of positive traffic, which in this industry is a big win. And when you talked on the third quarter call, you talked about traffic momentum continuing into the fourth quarter. You talked about traffic being up in the 3.5% range, which is really strong. So clearly, you've been building a track record of impressive traffic growth. And I realize there's a lot of drivers to this, but can you maybe just unpack, Lyle, what you believe are the most impactful drivers over the last 12 months of that traffic? Yeah, sure. Look, I think it goes back to the overview I gave, right? I think it's you continue to execute better operationally, right? And you look at your NPS scores continually improving. So intent to return, intent to recommend, value scores, you see those continuing to improve. We see our team member retention continuing to improve, and we know that's highly correlated to both sales and profitable restaurants. And those aren't immediate indicators. Those are kind of leading indicators, right? Because frequency and full service is a couple of few times a year. But you do that long enough, and you're going to expect that that's going to have a virtuous cycle. And then with Pizookie Meal Deal, we know that the Pizookie Meal Deal is giving existing guests that were already with us a reason to come back and maybe giving some new folks an entry point into the brand. And so we've seen that coming through with our frequency as well. And then as we've learned about the business in 2025, we're starting to learn more effectively the roles of each of these things and how do we pull those levers. So you started to see us move really quickly on the kind of LTO Pizookies in the second half. Well, in the first half, we removed two of our foundational Pizookies, so we had less everyday platforms on the Pizookies, but that left room to go for LTOs because what we realized was that these things are just, they're pieces of social currency. So if you hit them right and you align them to what either people are asking for on social or you align them to something that's going on in culture, you are going to move traffic. So we started to play with those. And those from a marketing point of view, completely social, completely influencer, buzz, word of mouth, that's where those play. Pizookie Meal Deal, as that value entry point, we don't play in huge broad media, but that's going to play a role in terms of our broader marketing where we do it to give a broader entry point into the brand based on value. So you start to see how these things play and you start to understand the levers. And then we layered on pizza with that first category refresh, obviously our foundational category, which starts to reinforce and build the foundational quality of your menu, which I expect to build over time. And that was another, from a marketing perspective, piece of content that went out pretty much all socially, right? All through buzz and word of mouth and influencers. So you get those foundations stronger again, and then you start to get onto the product and experience innovation. And I think over time, those things compound. And I think what we're trying to do is build a more sustainable and more durable BJ's that's delivering consistent growth and consistent profit expansion. So I feel really good about the guidance that we gave in Q3, sitting here today, going on that same path. And so as I get heads up and look at 2026, I mean, I wouldn't expect a lot of whiz-bang new strategies, right? These are foundational strategies that we're going to continue to build upon. If we focus on these strategies, the agility comes in where you have to flex, right? So if things aren't going exactly the way that we want, what I talk to the team a lot about is let's not reinvent what we're doing because all the signals we have suggest that we're moving the ball in the right direction, but how do we maybe pull something up, right? So in Q4, we were not originally planning to have the Dubai Chocolate Pizookie in Q4, but we said, "Okay, look, this feels like socially this is the right time to get that out." So we pulled that up and put that in Q4. Conversely, I wanted to have the pizza going in September, but we had some work to do on the way the large pizza was proofing, and we moved that to November because I'm trying to manage this over a longer period of time and make sure we're making the right decisions to build this business over time. That's a great overview of traffic. And I want to touch on average check because average check has actually represented a headwind to kind of headline same-store sales. I think greater traffic from the Pizookie Meal Deal, which is a value price point. And also just the whole industry has felt this headwind from less alcohol mix. As you look forward, do you anticipate any opportunities for average check, either just from the external environment or what you're doing internally to flatten out or for the headwind to dissipate that's kind of been on the same-store sales? Yeah. I mean, do I, yes. I don't know that I'd characterize it so much as by definition a headwind. Because when you think about the Pizookie Meal Deal, right, it's bringing in a lot of traffic, right? And our Pizookie Meal Deal checks during the week are actually quite healthy. You think about late night, we've had outsized growth in late night. That's a bit of a smaller absolute check, but that's great growth. So as a percentage of the total composition of traffic, it is more, right, because it's growing faster. I think about these Pizookies, right? They have been driving a lot of traffic, but with that, we've had a lot of Pizookie trial checks. But what a Pizookie trial check looks like is a cohort that is really hard to get coming into our restaurants. So that's like your high school and like young college cohort. And with these seasonal Pizookies, they're coming in to try the Pizookies. So in an absolute check point of view, that might be a smaller absolute check. The margin on the Pizookies are pretty good. I got a new person of a cohort that I want in my restaurant trying it, and a percentage of those people are going to come back. So I don't know if by definition that check compression, so to speak, is a headwind when looked at in its totality. But I do think over time we are very focused on how do we manage mix, how do we build basket, work through this category management approach. So I do think there's an opportunity there, but I'm not sure I'd characterize it by definition as a headwind. Makes sense. Just as it relates to margins, the BJRI earnings model has incredibly high sensitivity to restaurant margin changes. You've done a great job of expanding your restaurant margins over the last 12 months. And I think they're anticipated to be up nearly 100 basis points this year, at least based on our model. And that's allowed you to raise your 2025 EBITDA guidance where it stands today versus where it started the year. What have been the biggest drivers of the improving margins? Yeah, I think it's the foundational stuff. I think it's the table stakes work that we've done. So as we look at things that are better or easier for guests or better or easier for team members, that generally creates a virtuous cycle. But speaking very specifically, and I've given this on our earnings calls, a shout-out to our operators, it's been the hard work of running good restaurants, right? I mean, we got really clear in our KPIs. We drove accountability down through our DMs and our GMs. And so while I talk about our team member retention being at all-time highs, which is true, we've actually had probably more turnover at the GM level than we've had in the past, but that's been from our side out, right? Because we're holding people accountable to what we want. We've had a pretty robust outlier program. When you do the outlier program correctly, right, the bottom on all of your metrics starts to move up. So as the bottom on waste and overtime and leverage or deleverage moves up, the whole thing gets better. Then when I talk about the simplification work, that was looking at our comp food and beverage and understanding a third of our comp food and beverage came from ring in wrong or prepared wrong. None of our team members are coming in trying to ring something in or prepare it wrong, right? That's us making their lives hard. We talk to them and they tell us about it. We changed the way that we'd ring in margaritas. Lo and behold, food and beverage comps on margaritas come down 25%. We changed the way we do that on our burgers. We changed the way that food shows up on the KDS so that things are coming out tickets together more efficiently. All of those things create one less bad conversation for a guest, a better experience for that guest, one less food and beverage comp, a quicker table turn. So those things ultimately are a virtuous cycle. And the comp food and beverage, of course, flows directly through to cost of sales. So it goes back to that foundational table stakes work, all of which are things that we'll build off of going forward, right? If you ask me now, are we running at optimal efficiency and have we wrung the towel dry on this stuff? I would say no. More to go, but will it be at the same magnitude as it was this year? Probably not the same magnitude. As we continue to grow sales, more of our leverage will come through sales and traffic, but we definitely have more to go on our kind of efficiency in making things better and easier for team members and guests. Great. And just on the longer-term piece of the story, I think you're laying the foundation for a restart in unit growth. Unit growth has not been a part of the BJ story for a little while now. And you've talked about opening two units in the second half of this year to kind of get your feet on the ground and then accelerating in 2027 as it relates to unit growth. What's giving you the green light to think about becoming a unit grower again? And do you still believe as a company that there's an opportunity for 425 units, which is basically almost double what you have today? So when we talk about the, I don't know if there was ever like an absolute red light, right? When we came in, these are big investments, right? And so we wanted to look at a couple of things. We did an analysis first of our remodels and our remodel program to get really comfortable with what we're spending there and where we're spending that money. And so we did that and we've continued to push on the remodels. We then needed to do that same analysis with our NROs, right? Because we want to make sure that it's a good use of capital and that it's returning well. But when I look at our opening in Tracy, California, our opening in Queen Creek, Arizona last year, even if you look at something like a Brookfield, Wisconsin, which got out to like a slower start, but if I look at it now and I look at what's going on with sales and margin, that's a pretty good-looking restaurant, right? So it's a matter of kind of coming in and getting comfortable with where we want to put these. And that goes to what I've talked about, which is kind of the concentric circles from where we have infrastructure because it gives us management leverage, it gives us supply chain leverage. There's very few markets, if any, where we're overly saturated and therefore we have kind of headroom on the alchemy of awareness and consideration in terms of filling that out before we get to any sort of cannibalization. I just think we came to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to go greenfield by just putting satellites out there because that just makes things more difficult for us. How do we build out from where we have strength? The other part of it is the work we've been doing on our prototype because I believe it's all about the right size, right cost, right location, which means it might not always be a 7,000 sq ft BJ's, right? Are we more open to look at conversions and other things like that depending on the market we're in and where we're putting these to get the right cost for the right return model? When you go back in BJ's history during some of its early growth, it actually did a lot of conversions and it was really open to getting the right place and building it for the right cost and getting the right return. The one right by our office, HB2, used to be a Mexican restaurant. It's a $10 million plus AUV restaurant. It's got a lot of personality and is a great example of getting kind of that format flexibility in to make sure we're building for the right return. Just as it relates to the target historically of 425 units, do you still see that as a realistic target? So I have not done a refreshed piece of portfolio work, so I need to do that. What I would tell you is that there is plenty of headroom for BJ's. And as I said, if you look at most of our markets, we're kind of between clubs and multi-unit management, right? So there's plenty of room for us to fill in and grow. It seems like a reasonable number, but before I put my hand on heart on a specific number, I want to do my portfolio work. The BJRI model actually does generate a lot of free cash flow, $60 million plus based on our model going forward. Just how do you think about the optimal uses of your cash? You bought back a lot of stock this year, more than you have historically. It feels like that served you right so far. Where are we standing with the stock? What's the right, so what's the optimal uses of cash and what's the right baseline level of cash that you feel comfortable with running the business on the balance sheet? Look, I mean, I think we're in a good position because of the amount of cash that the business throws off, right? So we're able to largely fund our strategic initiatives. This year, we did do more buybacks than we've done in the past. But when you think about that program, that was something that Brad actually put in when he was here. And it's a very structured program, continues to be a very structured program as we go forward. And we'll operate it like we did. And the program obviously kicks in when we think the market is fundamentally undervaluing the stock. And the other place that you saw a lot of dollars going in this year was our remodel program. and then also, frankly, in terms of our capitalized R&M, making sure that our team members have restaurants and the tools they need to deliver what I'm asking them to deliver. Because if I'm going to hold them accountable, I need to make sure that our restaurants are in great shape for them. I think as you move over time and we deliver more consistency and you have less volatility in the stock and we get more into new unit growth, I think you'll continue to see the remodel program. I think you'll see more capital go into growth-driving capital and the balance of that be less towards share repurchases. But that would be natural over time and we'll keep that share repurchase process disciplined and in place. Like I said, I mean, for us, we're in a good position that we're able to fund our strategic initiatives largely on our own. With two and a half minutes left, you just said you believe the market undervalues your stock and trades somewhere around six times EBITDA, which I think a lot of people here would agree with you on that. Just in the final two minutes, what do you believe is the most underappreciated part of the BJRI story right now? Look, I think when I came into the business and I talked to some of you out here and a lot of folks, what I think I heard from folks was we're looking for more consistency. And so we're looking to build that. As I've talked about a lot, I'm trying to take a longer-term view. I'm trying not to just manage for the quarters. I'm trying to do the fundamental things that build a more consistent and durable BJ's. And I think that delivering that consistency is what earns you the trust and earns value. And then I think you do that and you can start to layer on the new unit growth again. Those things come together. I think create a compelling story for our business. Well, that's a great way to close out, Lyle and Todd. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.