Good afternoon, and welcome to Mister Car Wash's conference call to discuss financial results for the Q4 fiscal 2021. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. Please note that this call is being recorded, and a reproduction of this call, in whole or in part, is not permitted without written authorization from the company. I would now like to turn the call over to Megan Everett, Senior Director of Communications. Please go ahead, ma'am. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Mister Car Wash's Q4 fiscal year 2021 earnings call. Speaking today are Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, John Lai, and Chief Financial Officer, Jed Gold. After John and Jed have made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. Before we begin, I do need to remind everyone that comments made today may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. These statements speak as of today, and except as may be required by law, the company does not have any obligation to update or revise such statements if circumstances change. During the call today, management will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's earnings press release issued earlier today and posted to the investor relations section of Mister Car Wash's website at ir.mistercarwash.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to John. John? Thanks, Megan. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our Q4 and year-end earnings call. We had another great quarter and an extraordinary year that we're excited to share with you. Before I dive in, I'd like to zoom out and talk about the growing nature of our market, some of the trends we're seeing across the industry, and how we execute and deliver best-in-class unit level results. Big picture, the U.S. car park is huge and growing, with approximately 285 million vehicles on the road today. When we look at the size of the market, the pond is not only very large, but it's expanding as more consumers come into the category, driven by the ease, convenience, and tremendous value of the drive-through express car wash model. More importantly, we're seeing consumption rising as more people sign up to become members of our subscription-based Unlimited Wash Club program, which has made it easy and affordable to keep their car clean all the time while protecting their investment. Even in the face of inflation and rising gas prices, we believe that the joy customers receive from keeping their car clean, coupled with the relative affordability of our service, has created a strong tailwind for expansion. As the largest car wash operator in the United States with less than 5% market share, we believe we're in a great position to expand our footprint by increasing penetration in existing markets while continuing to look for new markets to move into. In short, when we look at the size of our industry, we see demand outpacing supply, which has created a huge growth opportunity for us The biggest differentiator is our people and the amazing team we've developed that delivers an elevated level of hospitality across the entire company. As service providers, we take great pride in our service delivery model, which has become arguably our biggest competitive advantage. We talk a lot about technology and systems and the procedures we use to consistently wash lots of cars, but it's our people-first culture that we've developed at scale that's the real key to our success. Watching our teams process 200 cars per hour in a smooth and seamless way is like watching a well-choreographed dance with everyone moving in synchronicity. The perpetual motion of our crews working in unison with a skip in their step and a shared purpose is what makes our company very special. This results in incredibly strong AUVs and customer satisfaction. During 2021, I'm delighted to share that our full year revenue increased 31.9% to over $750 million and EBITDA of over $254 million. From a unit level standpoint, we grew our footprint by 55 stores, acquiring 38 locations and opening up 17 greenfields. This set a record for the single biggest year in unit growth in the history of our company. On the M&A front, late in the Q4 of last year, we closed two strategic acquisitions, Clean Streak and Downtowner Car Wash, that significantly bolstered our position in Florida. We now have 65 locations in Florida and plan on opening at least 10 more before the end of the year. Greenfields are one of the most important pieces of our growth strategy, and we're thrilled with how well they're performing. We've leveraged all the knowledge we picked up over the years and have developed a car wash model that's all about throughput and volume. We're investing heavily in our new store development and construction teams and see significant opportunity to accelerate our greenfield openings in 2022 and beyond. For the full year, we washed over 75 million vehicles and ended the year with nearly 1.7 million Unlimited Wash Club members. We continue to see healthy membership growth as more and more customers see the value in keeping their car clean all the time, which has fundamentally changed the way people care for their vehicles. We achieve exceptional results by hiring great people, paying them well, and most importantly, treating them well. We invest heavily in training, and as a company on the rise, we're in constant leadership development mode as we build out a bench of future managers. In our last earnings call, we talked about our recent launch of our certified trainer program and our operations leadership program. To date, more than 200 team members have completed the training, and this is providing a clear stepping stone for those looking to take on more responsibility within our company. At a time when companies are struggling to staff their operations, we feel very fortunate that we've had no interruptions to our business, and our stores are continuing to become even more productive as we set volume records in almost every region. In the second half of last year, we moved to get out in front of the labor challenges that everyone's experiencing right now by increasing hourly wages to retain and attract talented team members. Our path of being a people-centric company began many years ago, and the ongoing investments we've made in wages, benefits, training, and career path progression has put us in a great position during this tough labor environment. On the executive leadership front, I'd like to recognize the retirement of Dave Hale, our VP of Development, who decided after 20 years with Mister and over 40 years in the industry, it was time to ride off into the sunset and spend some quality time with his family. From everyone at Mister Car Wash, we want to say thank you to Dave and wish him happiness. Over the last two years, Dave has been grooming his successor, Ryan Darby, to take over, and I'm happy to report that Ryan and his team are doing a phenomenal job building beautiful stores and increasing our capacity to open up even more. I'm also thrilled to announce the promotion of Mayra Chimienti as our new Chief Operating Officer. Mayra is a 14-year veteran of Mister Car Wash and has served as VP of operations services prior to being promoted to a new role. The fact that she's a female and a Latina in a predominantly male-dominated industry is also pretty cool. Before I turn it over to Jed, I'd like to thank our entire team who's done an amazing job scaling our company and elevating our culture, especially our field and HQ teams, who've been working so hard to deliver on our mission to deliver the best car wash experience. We couldn't do it without our people and are grateful to have the best team in the industry. I'd like to now turn it over to Jed to review our Q4 and 2021 financial results. Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. 2021 was a record year on many levels, and as John indicated, we're pleased so far with our strong start to 2022. Before going through our results in 2022 guidance, I wanna make three comments to help you better understand some of the broader trends in our business. First is around demand. Underlying demand was strong during the Q4. We did see some variability in the middle of the quarter related to weather, specifically impacting our retail sales, but that worked itself out in December and the trends have remained strong. The second is around input inflation and pricing. As we discussed on our last earnings call, we proactively adjusted hourly labor rates in August of 2021, and that resulted in some modest labor inflation in the Q4. To offset this, we took a modest price increase in our retail wash offerings across the majority of our locations in November. We are happy to report that since December, the increase in pricing has basically offset the increase in labor inflation. The Q4 did experience a little bit of margin compression based on the timing of these two events. More importantly, these investments have helped keep our employee turnover relatively flat since the middle of last year, and we're also seeing improvements in labor productivity measures such as cars washed per labor hour and store labor dollars per car washed that are allowing us to maintain very strong margins while continuing to invest in our people and future growth. The third is around acquisitions. We closed two acquisitions late in the Q4. These acquisitions have helped boost our market share and solidify our positioning in Florida, a state that is experiencing strong population growth and demographic trends. Upon the completion of the sale-leaseback process of the acquired locations, the acquisition multiple is expected to be in the low teens. As we have mentioned before, it can take us six months to a year to fully integrate acquired locations. During this time period, the acquired locations experience some margin compression as we apply our labor model and processes. Now let me review our Q4 results. My comments will include some of our adjusted non-GAAP results. Please refer to today's press release if you would like more details on our financial performance and our methodology in calculating non-GAAP financial metrics. In the Q4, revenue increased 18.2% to $191.5 million, driven by comparable store sales growth of 14.6% and unit growth of 15.8%. Please note that last year's Q4 included $4.9 million of revenue from the Quick Lube oil change business that was subsequently divested in December of last year. Excluding this from the comparison, revenue increased 21.8% in the quarter. Our subscription Unlimited Wash Club program remains a key driver of growth. UWC memberships increased 34% to 1.656 million, from 1.233 million as of December 31, 2020, and accounted for approximately 67% of total wash sales in the quarter. With respect to unit growth, we added 36 net new locations in the Q4, an increase in units of 15.8% year-over-year. Of the 36 new locations, 31 of these were acquired locations that were added in the quarter, and 6 of these were new greenfield build locations. We also closed one location in the quarter, giving us a total of 396 locations at year-end. Turning to the expense side of the P&L for the quarter. The cost of labor and chemicals increased from 19.2% in the Q4 of 2020 to $62.1 million, or 32.4% of revenue. The increase was primarily driven by the increased labor and benefits. Cost of labor included $2.3 million of expense related to stock-based compensation. Our chemical costs were well managed in the quarter and were down slightly on a per-car basis. Other store operating expenses were $71.2 million in this year's Q4 or 37.2% of revenue, compared with $60.1 million or 37.1% of revenue last year. The modest increase was primarily driven by the increase in wash locations and volume. General and administrative expenses in this year's Q4 were $28.8 million or 15% of revenue, compared with $14.3 million or 8.8% of revenue last year. Of the nearly $14.5 million increase, $4.4 million was from the debt issuance cost incurred in connection with our financing to acquire Clean Streak. $4 million was from stock comp expense. $2 million was from public company and professional fees, and $2.6 million was from an increased investment in G&A labor. As we have discussed on earlier calls, our development team is an area we continue to invest and build as we continue to scale our greenfield capabilities and bring more development projects in-house. Interest expense decreased to $6 million from $14.7 million last year due to the majority of the proceeds from the IPO to pay down debt. As a reminder, late in the quarter, we raised an additional $290 million in incremental first lien term loan to help fund our acquisition of Clean Streak. Our GAAP reported effective tax rate for the 2021 Q4 was 11.4%, compared with 26.6% for the Q4 of 2020. increase was primarily due to the exercise of employee stock options and the favorable tax treatment. Our GAAP tax rate, excluding the benefit of stock options exercises, was 26.3% in the Q4 of 2021. Adjusted net income, which adds back stock-based compensation and certain non-core operating expenses, increased 105% to $33.6 million in the Q4, and adjusted net income per diluted share was $0.10 versus $0.06 in the prior year period. The lower taxes that resulted from the exercise of stock options benefited adjusted net income per diluted share by $0.02 in the Q4. We realized the tax benefits from the exercise of stock options are difficult to predict and model. Starting in the Q1 of this year, we plan to begin excluding the tax benefits from the way we calculate adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share in our reported financial table. Lastly, adjusted EBITDA increased 15.9% to $57.3 million in the Q4 of 2021 versus $49.5 million in the Q4 of 2020. For the full year, we are very happy with what the team accomplished. On top of becoming a publicly traded company, the team delivered impressive results. We added 54 net stores, grew our store count by 16%, and ended the year with 396 car washes. Car wash revenue increased nearly 38% to $758.3 million. Comparable store sales increased nearly 32%. UWC memberships accounted for 64% of total wash sales in fiscal 2021, compared with 62% in fiscal 2020, and we ended the year with nearly 1.7 million members in the UWC program. Adjusted net income was $136.6 million or $0.44 per diluted share, and adjusted EBITDA increased to $254.3 million. Moving on to some balance sheet and cash flow highlights. At year-end, cash and cash equivalents was $20 million, and long-term debt was $896 million. Net cash provided by operating activities for the year was $173 million. Gross capital expenditures were $126 million, and we generated $96 million in proceeds from sale leasebacks. Lastly, let me make a few comments around our initial outlook for 2022, as well as some commentary on Q1 trends for the full year 2022. We expect revenue in the range of $875 million-$895 million, an increase of 15%-18%. This assumes the opening of approximately 30 greenfield locations, opened primarily in the second half of the year. Comparable store sales increase of between 5%-7%. On a GAAP basis, net income is expected to be in the range of $139 million-$149 million. Adjusting for stock-based compensation, acquisition expenses, non-cash rent and other non-recurring, non-operating or one-time expenses, adjusted net income is expected to be $144 million-$153 million or 44 cents-47 cents per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA is projected to be $284 million-$297 million. Gross capital expenditures are expected to be in the range of $285 million-$315 million. We are projecting gross proceeds from sale-leasebacks to be between $140 million and $150 million. While we do not anticipate providing quarterly commentary on a regular basis, we wanted to provide some color on trends in the Q1 and how we're thinking about the progression of the year. As indicated earlier, trends in the Q1 have been very strong, specifically January and February. We talked about how weather can have some impact on the business, particularly retail sales, and the weather in the Q1 has been favorable. As a result, we've seen a nice acceleration in the business over the past few months and anticipate Q1 comparable store sales growth to be in the area of 10%. As a reminder, this is on top of almost 19% comp growth that we reported in the Q1 last year. With this being the case, we see Q1 revenue being in the area of $215 million, and Q1 adjusted EBITDA being in the area of $73 million. As a reminder, the Q2 represents our toughest comparison for the year, driven by the strong prior year demand and our initial outlook for full year 2022 revenue currently assumes a mid- to high-single-digit comparable store sales increase in the first half of the year and a low- to mid-single-digit comparable store sales in the second half of the year. In closing, I would like to add my thanks and appreciation to all of our team members who work day in and day out to execute our business and serve our customers. Fiscal 2021 was a historic and record-breaking year for the company. We feel very good about our positioning and the fundamentals of the business going into 2022. We're as confident as ever in our ability to deliver against our long-term growth algorithm driven by our best in class operations and further new unit expansion. On behalf of the team, we look forward to our continued success and delivering consistent earnings growth for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to begin the Q&A session. Operator? We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Simeon Siegel with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Great. Thanks. Hey, everyone. Nice end of the year. Congrats. So, Jed, I think really great to hear about the positive quarter to date commentary. So this question might answer itself, but just curious how you're thinking about, and I guess maybe stress testing internally, any potential usage impacts, whether it's at retail or UWC with churn. Just anything from inflation go forward, general macro sentiment factors, just kind of thinking about how your customer might be impacted and how they react. Then I was hoping I think you said you raised the expected Greenfield estimate for the year. So I was hoping you would dig into that a little bit more. You've now handily beaten the M&A target. If you're raising Greenfields, like, it just seems like the heightened unit expansion is really in full gear. Maybe just kind of talk to that, talk to the acceleration. Thanks a lot, guys. Yeah. Hey, Simeon, this is John. Before I turn it over to Jed, I just wanna give some broad color on, you know, how we see the health of the business. I don't know if there's a technical definition for crushing it, but, you know, and trying to remain keeping both feet on the ground. You know, we live by the mantra of stay humble and stay hungry. You know, to have a Q4 where comps were +14.6%, you know, the numbers speak for themselves. As Jed alluded to Q1, how we feel pretty confident that we're gonna be able to, you know, grow comps +10% in this quarter. You know, our business is super healthy, right. I mentioned in my opening comments, the demand for our service has been amazing. We feel very fortunate to be in this category. With respect to concerns around inflation and what's gonna happen to consumer spending, we're not seeing it. With all the knock on wood, right? Because, you know, no one knows what the future holds. We're in a great spot right now, and we've got cars lined up to the street, and we're processing them as quickly as we can. I'll turn it over to Jed to give more precise answers. Yeah. Simeon, on the first part of the question and just some of the broader macro trends, right? As we were putting together the guidance. First of all, I think it's worth highlighting that the fundamentals and outlook for the business, as John said, have never been stronger. We're really encouraged with how the business is performing and the trends that we're seeing. It's in the backdrop of a lot of uncertainty with rising interest rates, gas prices. Gas prices are up nearly 30% on a national average year to date. We've got the backdrop of the geopolitical risk. Even though we operate 100% in the U.S., the indirect impact and potential trickle down that may come. As we pull together the guidance, we believe that what we've built adequately reflects the trends that we're seeing, but then also factors in the broader macro environment that we're operating in. Greenfield side of your question, so we're saying approximately 30 greenfields during the year. We've made some investments in that team, as you know. We're ramping up development. When we look at the white space and potential opportunity for future expansion, nothing has changed. There's a lot of white space and runway for growth. Excellent. Thanks a lot, guys. Best of luck for the year. John, keep up those technical terms. Thanks. The next question is from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi, this is Jackie Sussman on for Simeon. Congratulations on a good quarter. Kind of piggybacking off of what you were saying about the strong quarter-to-date trends. You know, the market is starting to think about a more traditional recession potentially occurring, and your business did have a bit of a decline in the last recession. As you mentioned, it's a different business now with a higher recurring revenue mix. I guess, you know, more specifically, how resilient is the subscription base during a recession? And, you know, you're expecting stronger comps going forward throughout the year. Yeah. Terrific question. You know, when we look at 2008, 2009 and the impact that we received, our portfolio was a lot different back then. We had a majority of our stores were full service interior clean locations. Today, that ratio has been flipped upside down, where the bulk of our portfolio is express exterior, which, you know, by virtue of that value proposition, has a very affordable price point of anywhere from $7-$9 to get in. So it's easily accessible for all motorists. That affordability we think is perfectly positioned and could be an even tighter environment going forward. Great. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up, if I can. You guys had a great year in 2021. You said you were going to reinvest back into the business. You know, is there any kind of volatility in your thinking given the inflation and kind of macro backdrop in terms of how you're choosing to invest? No. For us, it's full steam ahead. We are so emboldened with some of the success that we've been enjoying, particularly with our green fields that we're, as we mentioned in previous calls, not just doubling down, but tripling down on building out our capabilities there. Really the focus is on the human capital side, making sure that we've got, you know, the right team in place. We're growing like weeds right now and having a lot of fun doing what we're doing, but we don't anticipate pulling back on the throttle at all. Great. Thanks so much. The next question is from Michael Lasser with UBS. Please go ahead. Mr. Lasser, your line is open on our end. Perhaps you have your phone muted. Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. John, is there a national price per gallon of gas that if it got to that level, you think it would start to have an impact on the business? Would it be $5, closer to $6? What would that level be? Yeah. That's a tricky question to answer. I wish I had a really good crystal ball into future gas prices. I do know that from a you know an inflation-adjusted standpoint, we've had a couple other years in the history of our company. I'm gonna go back to 2012, where again on an inflation-adjusted basis, the price per gallon was a little north of $4. We didn't see any impact to our business then. We're quite frankly not seeing it now, but I wanna do all the knock on wood, because to your question, if it were to get to $5 or higher, I don't wanna come across within any hubristic way where we think that there's not gonna have any impact on consumer spend. I think if anything, it's gonna affect folks that are living paycheck to paycheck, and it disproportionately impacts their overall budget in a more meaningful way. For us, you know, we haven't seen any threat thus far. My follow-up question is two parts. One is how much is the price increase contributing to your same-store sales growth in 2022? As part of that, you did have a tough compare, like Jed, you pointed out in the Q2, particularly on the retail side of the business. To the extent that retail starts to soften in the Q2 is it gonna make it more difficult to recruit additional Wash Club members? Because that is a key source of new membership. Yeah. Michael, I'll take the first part of your question around the price and what we expect that. As we've said, we took a price increase of November of last year. As we look forward and the impact on 2022, we expect that to be just under a 2% benefit on the year coming from that pricing, which will largely offset the cost pressures that and the labor inflation and some of the investments that we've made, and we are making to support the future growth of the business. Yeah, Michael, I would add too that you know for us the lifeblood of our growing our member base is attracting more retail customers into our stores and then working towards educating them to make an informed decision and converting them into membership. So for us you know retail traffic is important. You know we've got this unique phenomenon where because we're doing so well and we're washing so many cars created member base. You know as we've shared previously we've done a lot to decompress our locations and speed things up and reduce bottlenecks to quite frankly you know cut down the lines and make sure that you can get in and out in five minutes. There are certain hours in certain stores where we're bumping up against maximum capacity which I guess is a good problem to have. It also then highlights the opportunity that we have to continue to grow our share, increase our penetration and add more stores where, when we have people lined up to the street, it's a beautiful thing. For us then we're saying, "Hey, there's more cars that we're quote-unquote, 'leaving on the street.' Let's add some locations around some of those high-performing stores to decompress them a bit, and overall lift our share in that market. Thank you very much, and good luck. The next question is from Chris O'Cull with Stifel. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. John, given you have made significant investments in the development team and you continue to make those investments, I was hoping you could describe what kind of capacity for greenfield development you're targeting longer term? Yeah. We continue to reset our set by watermark. If I just to, you know, put things in perspective, last year, we opened up 17 stores. This year, we expect to open up 30 stores. If we continue on that path, by the way, that's 100%, almost 100% improvement. You know, we wanna get to about a store a week, which we think is kind of a good sweet spot for us. One of the most important things I wanna highlight is opening the store is as much work as that is, the other piece of the equation, which is the most important piece, is we'd have to have the team in place to be able to operate them and deliver that exceptional customer experience, which speaks to our MIT investments, Management Training Program investments, and building out our bench. We've got this concurrent path of building out our capability of building new stores, coupled with increasing our leadership pipeline and making sure that we've got, you know, amazingly trained leaders that can go in and crush it. We're on that parallel path. As I mentioned to the previous question, we're not pulling back on the throttle. That's helpful. Your long-term algorithm calls, I think, for 50 washes to be acquired over five years. I mean, the Clean Streak acquisition, I think, was 23 units that were open, 10 under construction, then you had the other one, I think had five or so locations. Should we interpret that to mean that the 50 wash outlook would be conservative, or should we expect acquisitions to be very limited going forward? I think, you know, acquisitions by definition can be very lumpy and highly unpredictable. For us, you know, when we're looking at building out our market for the market we're in, you know, there's a number of bolt-on opportunities where we lean in to increase our market share in the regions that we're already in. Also lean in on some opportunities like the Clean Streak deal that you referenced that strategically bolster our position and in that particular case almost doubled our footprint in the Orlando and Tampa markets. As we look at this ever-changing landscape that is consolidating and is being rolled up, you know, we anticipate perhaps coming down the turnpike some larger scale combination opportunities, but those are very difficult to predict. Hey, Chris. Yeah, when we pulled that together, the long-term growth algorithm, right? The 50 over 5 years, what we didn't wanna do is put ourselves in a position where we were chasing a number just for the sake of chasing a number. There's a lot of capital coming into this space. Multiples are being driven up. Playing this to where we weren't forced to pay any egregious multiples to try and hit a number that we would put out there just didn't make sense for us. Right, M&A is a key driver, but we also are building out, as you highlighted in your earlier question, the investments we're making in greenfield, which brings an element of predictability and even just that much more consistency to our unit expansion. Yeah, that's very helpful. I may have missed this. I apologize if I did, but did you say how much the Clean Streak acquisition is embedded in your guidance? How much you're anticipating maybe it contributes to EBITDA or revenue? As we look at Q4 2021, the acquisition was late in Q1, so very little impact on 2021 results. We aren't disclosing the exact expectation around Clean Streak. Keep in mind, Chris, as we make these acquisitions, oftentimes it will take half a step back and then we'll get two steps ahead. We've done over 100 acquisitions. We have a strong track record of this and really looking at these investments over a three-year investment horizon. That's fair. Thank you. The next question is from Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Hey, good afternoon. Congrats on a great year. I wanted to piggyback off of Clean Streak. You guys have now owned it for a couple of months. It's a fairly sizable acquisition compared to what you guys have done in the past. How would you frame it up versus your normal acquisition accretion benefit? You historically raised EBITDA by about 65% in three years. Do you see a similar opportunity here, or Maybe a little bit more, a little bit less. Yeah, we definitely see a ton of growth potential inside the business, and we're very optimistic about, as Jed referenced, you know, where we're gonna be in year three. Just to underscore what Jed mentioned, you know, it takes us at least six months to get all the pieces in place and oftentimes a year to get the team, you know, trained up and operating in the Mr. way. For us, we do take a somewhat conservative outlook in year one 'cause it's not about year one EBITDA growth in our opinion, it's about what we get in year three. Making those necessary investments, making the necessary changes, and it's one of the things that we do really well. We're integrating and standardizing and assimilating, but creating this consistent experience across all of our stores. If you're going into any store, any of the 75 in Florida, you'd receive the same Mister Car Wash experience. We're not there yet. We have probably another 90 days to 180 days before we get there, but that's the heavy lifting for us, and we will get there. When we do, again, we think all boats rise with the tide because we're connecting everything from a standard point of sale system to singular procedures and getting the culture right, again, is probably the most important and the most difficult, but it's something that we really stick to it and get to ultimately, because for the team members that we adopt into our family, in almost every single case, it's a lifting experience for them personally and professionally. Peter, just a little bit more color on that. Right as we look at our vision of building a national brand, right? This takes us a big step in that direction, particularly in bolstering our position there in Florida. The one thing we'll share is that the EBITDA on a per unit basis for this particular acquisition is higher than what we've seen in previous acquisitions. Having said that, we still see, as John had highlighted, a lot of upside, particularly in memberships. When you look at the UWC, the subscription members per location, it's materially lower than the 4,300 that we had per store. Also, there's opportunities for throughput and then also some potential cost synergies as well, which as you guys know, we don't build those into the model, but as we convert them over to our chemical programs and some of our processes. All this, it's gonna take time. Integration does not happen overnight. The one other point I think worth mentioning is that 100% of the real estate was owned on Clean Streak, and we're in the process of looking at sell lease back opportunities on the portfolio. Yeah, Jed, I would just add too that it's not uncommon for us to acquire businesses that are running leaner labor staffing models than we are, and we're happy to again increase that staffing approach because we're able to generate more cars through the turnstile, and we're already starting to see that. To your comment on increasing throughput and growing the top line, for us, having more people on the clock, as counterintuitive as that may sound, because it's like, well, aren't you increasing labor? Yes, we're increasing labor, but we're washing more cars. Overall we're gonna generate more revenue, which will ultimately trickle to the bottom line. That's a front-end load investment, which we're happy to make. Okay, great. That sounds exciting. Maybe just one last clarification question on Clean Streak. I think you had... What was it? I think there was additional 10 stores that weren't opened yet, that are in process of opening. When you're guiding for 30 unit openings in 2022, are those your own greenfield or do you have the 10 Clean Streaks in there as well? The Clean Streak are factored into that approximately 30. Yeah. You've got basically 20 of your own greenfield plus 10 of these planned Clean Streak acquisitions. Yeah, roughly. That, that's how it'll work. Yep. Okay. Sounds good, guys. Thanks so much and good luck. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question is from Ryan Sundby with William Blair. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi guys. Good evening. Thanks for the question here. You ended the year with 1.0 or nearly 1.7 million UWC members. Just from a housekeeping standpoint, does that include members that were active at the acquired locations? If it does, how quickly should we think about driving penetration higher at this location? 'Cause it sounds like it was lower than the corporate average. Yeah. The nearly 1.7 million members, it includes all of the members, including the members that we acquired through the acquisitions. Yeah, when you look at the membership on a per unit basis for those acquired stores, materially lower than the member per location in our core base business, providing thus some opportunity for future UWC membership growth. Once again, that's gonna take time. We've got to put in place our processes, our team, our training, our development, that it's not gonna happen overnight. Yeah. I would expect, Jed, that probably the second half of this year we'll start seeing an uptick in member growth. There might be some modest growth right now, but there's other things that we're prioritizing before we start to turn customers on to the value of the membership. You know, we wanna make sure the quality is there, speed's there, customer service is where it needs to be. Those are our fundamental building blocks before we turn them on to the Unlimited Wash Club program. There's a little bit of a chicken and egg, but the second half, I think we're very optimistic about the growth potential. Got it. Makes a lot of sense. Then historically, I think you've talked about roughly 75% of the UWC sign-ups occurred during the first half of the year. You know, 2021 looks a little bit different with bigger gains in Q2 and Q4. Can you help us think about how we should think about the sequencing of number of adds next year. I guess there's a different setup here in 2021. Does that impact anything like retention rates or frequency compared to years past? Seasonality, it's a little bit tricky. In this business, it's a little bit tricky, particularly as we make these acquisitions, because seasonality shifts just a little bit based on where, for example, we now have a larger presence in Florida, which will have a little bit more seasonality, that the seasonality patterns are different there versus a Michigan or Iowa market. Seasonality shifts just a little bit. Historically, we have seen that 75% in the first half of the year, but it's a difficult thing to predict. It really is a difficult thing to predict. When you look at any given year, there's some years where it's relatively flat, and then a year like last year, where I believe it was about 90% within the first half of the year. Jed, I would add the beauty of our geographic footprint and how diverse our portfolio is when right now we're coming into pollen season, which is like gold when it hits the vehicles because everyone, and particularly in the southern climates, they wanna get that pollen off their vehicle. In the summertime in California, during the harvest seasons of almonds, we absolutely crush it. In the winter in Minnesota, we're rocking and rolling. There's these different demand curves based on each of the regions. Florida has the love bugs, right? I mean, I can go down to each specific market, demand comes at different. That's beautiful because what that has done is smoothed out our growth curve. I think some of the percentages as we try to triangulate around where do we see the bulk of our growth, I see it smoothing, not, you know, clumpy in any one quarter, because back in the day, historically, it was Q1 and then moving into Q2. Now it's more persistent year-round. Got it. That's a tough one. If I could just squeeze one more. I think at least one of the Clean Streak locations had oil change. Is that something you'd continue to do, or is that a business or a site that you would give one exit? Yeah, no, we subscribe to the theory of doing fewer things well, and we're very focused and committed to washing cars and delivering a great experience. We, as we divested our lube business last year, if we're acquiring a business that has a lube shop, we'll either look to partner with another, you know, major oil change provider and divest that piece of the business, or we will repurpose that area to be able to either get more free vacs in or get more stacking lanes in to wash more cars. Short answer to your question is no, we don't anticipate any of these ancillary profit centers. We have our hands full with just washing cars. For the life of me, because back in the day, we had a whole bunch of profit centers, and it's hard to be good at all of those things. Okay, makes sense. Thank you. The next question is from Greg Badishkanian with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Mr. Badishkanian, perhaps your line is muted. Yep. Hey, guys, this is Jake Moser on for Greg. Yeah, so I was just wondering, it looks like your guidance embeds a little bit of margin compression. So I was wondering how much of that is driven by the recently acquired Florida stores. Then, secondly, it sounds like pricing is pretty much offsetting labor and chemicals, so sort of aside from the acquisition impact, what else? You know, is it mostly just the investments in building out the development team, or what else might be contributing to the margin compression? Yeah. A couple of things on the margin. Like we've been saying, the fundamentals and outlook for the business on our margin hasn't changed. Our targeted adjusted EBITDA margin for the business is in the low- to mid-30% range, like we've been saying. Last year, we experienced incredible margin rates, particularly in the first half of the year. They were exceptionally high and at or above our target range. For the most part, we're offsetting the labor inflation or just inflation in general with the modest price increase we took in November and through various productivity improvements. When you look at Clean Streak in particular, it's actually margin neutral to the balance of the business. What you're seeing on the overall margin compression side, the investment that we're making in the MIT and Operations Leadership program as we make investments in our team members to help support the future new unit expansion. Then also last year, we only had about half a year of public company costs, which we expect to be about $10 million for the year. This year, we'll have a full year of those costs. Yeah. Jed, I would add, too, that as a high-growth company, we have not prioritized margin expansion. Our margins, we think are really healthy and strong, and they've grown year over year. To your comment, you know, we are in investment mode, and we are in build mode. We could easily, if we ever chose to, dial back on certain investments and increase margins very, very quickly or take pricing if we wanted to get, you know, a margin profile even higher. If we're in growth mode, why would we wanna do that prematurely? As a result, we're remaining very conservative. Again, the goal here is to build a national car wash brand, and we're on that path. That makes sense. I appreciate the color there. It sounded like you were seeing some encouraging trends in terms of improving employee turnover. Were those improvements across both manager-level positions and sort of rank-and-file employees? Did Omicron have any impact on that sort of at the start of 2022? Yeah, for sure. I think January from an Omicron standpoint, we were put to the test with a bunch of call-outs and a bunch of people that had gotten sick. We were able to work through that, and again, without any interruptions. In this current environment, you know, flat turnover we would consider a win. Again, over the last three years, we've reduced our turnover considerably, given the things that I mentioned in my opening comments, to make this an amazing place to work. Going forward, you know, we're really focusing on now this employee value proposition and how we can make this an even more attractive career opportunity. You know, one of the things that's been probably the most rewarding part of this entire journey is that, you know, we've been lifting lives and improving, fundamentally improving people's lives, thousands of people's lives, as a result. Because we're sharing, we're a company that believes in kind of an egalitarian mindset. But the fact that every one of our site managers is an owner in the company because we have provided and we're providing them with an equity position, that is really powerful. It puts us in a great spot vis-à-vis our competition, who has chosen not to share in the profits with their team leaders. Gotcha. Thanks for taking the questions. Appreciate it. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Lai for any closing remarks. Well, thank you, operator. Listen, on behalf of the entire team here at Mister Car Wash, we appreciate your interest in our journey. We think we're in the early stages of our life cycle, quite frankly. Even though we've been at this for over 25 years, it feels like the second or third inning and our opportunity to scale this company to 1,000 stores and even higher. Jed, who came from Yum! Brands, pats me on the head sometimes in a very condescending way and says, "John, 1,000 stores? That's cute. Let's get to 15,000." Which might be a little bit big, but, you know, 1,000 is in our sight line, and we're thrilled to be on this path. Thank you everyone for your support and interest. We're gonna get back to washing cars. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.