Be here today. Well, we'll throw it right over to you, Manny, and go through the presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon, good morning, depending where you are today. Just really quick, our forward-looking statements. Today we'll be talking about some things that are forward-looking and just wanted to point you out to the slide there that has the limitations of forward-looking statements. I just want to make sure everybody got to see that. The ONE Group. What makes us different is our leadership in vibe dining. The way that we operate our restaurants is different from everyone else in the industry or most of the other players in the industry. Most other restaurant companies focus on food as a key component and the service as a key component. At The ONE Group, we do experiential dining, which is what you would get somewhere else in a restaurant, food service, beverage, facilities, ambiance. We actually go one step above, which is entertainment, doing something that no one else. For the Benihana brand, obviously we have our chefs who work the tables and have very cool tricks and who entertain people with their skills at the table. At STK, we have some really compelling environments with very high quality music programs delivered by our DJs. At our Grills we have a 3:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M. and a 9:00 P.M. to close happy hour programs that are highly differentiated, providing incredible food and some really good beverages at some very low price points. All of our brands are differentiated and really different in terms of how we operate. As I mentioned earlier, the core of our business is the guest and the guest experience. As you can see from our mission here, our number one priority is to make sure that every guest that comes to our restaurants gets an unforgettable experience and creates unforgettable memories. Our restaurant managers and our teammates all over the world are highly focused on ensuring that we live this mission every single day that we come to the restaurants. As you can see in the pillars, our key areas that we believe we're very good at and our key competencies are in operations. If you look at our level of execution and how we operate our restaurants, we believe that's one of the big key difference from everyone else in the space. Also marketing. We have highly differentiated marketing, much advanced strategies with digital, that's one of our key competencies. Last but not least, working on craveable both food and beverage, we put a lot of work behind making sure that all our programs deliver an excellent food quality and, more importantly in today's environment, Instagrammable, making sure that everything that we do lives in social and all the digital platforms. Our brands, as I mentioned earlier, we operate what we believe are iconic brands. Brands that are timeless, brands that are different from much everyone else in the industry, and brands that have stood the test of time. For instance, Benihana has been around for over 60 years. We believe that the timeless of these brands and the fact that they've been around for a long time is something that is super critical for the success of The ONE Group. A little bit about our footprint. I'll turn it over to Nicole. Sure. Thanks, Manny. We are an international organization. We have 158 venues across, this isn't updated, I'm so sorry, 31 states and 11 countries, comprised of 32 STKs, 20 Kona Grills, a handful of F&Bs, and 85 Benihanas, 10 RA Sushis. You can see our reach is really a global enterprise. Our current headlines, as you've been following our story, is that our performance has been very good for the first quarter and as well as our progress towards the second quarter. If you look at the first quarter of 2026, we had improved sequential same-store sales at all our brands. We have positive same-store sales at STK. We were +1.4% for the quarter on same-store sales. We were flat sales at Benihana. I would say that overall, we achieved a good performance on the first quarter sales. As we also reported in our call through the first five weeks of Q2, the company was positive on same-store sales, and both STK and Benihana brands were positive on a quarter-to-date basis. Again, the momentum and the success on sales continued in the early parts of the second quarter. From our guidance, we're guiding for the whole year of 1% to +1% to a +3% same-store sales. We think that overall sales will continue to be a positive performance for us. Just looking at our P&L in the first quarter, we're particularly excited about the fact that our cost of goods was 19.4%, which was an improvement from the prior year. We see that as an important milestone as the commodity environment has been challenged, but I think the fact that we locked in our beef through September of this year, and that we have some initiatives in place that helps us manage it, we've done very well on the cost lines. Operating income increased 30% in the quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was up 12%. Other headlines, our capital expenditures have improved year-over-year. We also talked about the conversion of the RA in Scottsdale, Arizona into an STK, where we talked about how encouraging the results have been, particularly the fact that sales went from about $3 million to about a $7 million run rate. A $4 million improvement in converting that property from a RA Sushi to an STK. Just in general, we've made progress with our grill portfolio and improving operations by frankly eliminating some units that were distracting to our operators and also focusing on converting some of the other locations into the other brands. We have currently five restaurants that are temporarily closed that we're going to reopen as either Benihana or STK, so we're in the process of converting those. As we've been talking about throughout 2025 and the beginning of this year, we're really reiterating our focus on asset light and working on franchise opportunities, as well as working on license deals for STK. Franchising obviously is for the Benihana brand and our Benihana Express brands, which we currently operate. We're really optimistic and look forward to continue growing those brands with asset light opportunities. Great. Then to put some financial numbers behind everything that Manny just outlined. We're looking at our total revenues of $814.2 million last year. Currently, we expanded that a little bit to $816 million on a TTM basis, with a guidance of $847.5 million at the midpoint. That 847.5 indicates a 1%-3% guidance on our same-store sales. An adjusted EBITDA result of that of $105 million at the midpoint. Then just looking at our trends on some additional highlights, things we want to call out. Manny spoke about our margin improvement. Looking at our cost of sales, we've improved quite significantly and are showing really outstanding cost of sales margins at this point. TTM of 2026 is 20.3%. Our Q1 was 19.4%, so we're seeing a lot of great momentum there. Our adjusted EBITDA you'll see is also improving year-over-year with our full guidance, going from 10.9% in 2025 up to 12.4% expected in 2026. Again, focusing on the asset light and the capital efficient growth model. You see we're bringing down our CapEx expectations from $51.3 million in 2025 to an expectation of $40 million this year. That's really just honing in on the conversion strategy, the asset light with the franchise development, and really just strategizing on our new unit development. A quick graphic on our same-store sales. Like Manny said, a lot of positive momentum. Each year and each quarter have been sequentially improving from the previous, across all brands. Just to remind you, our fiscal 2026 guide is 1%-3%, and we're well on our way to achieving that. I want to point you down on the grill, Kona Grill and the RA Sushi on the bottom right. We're seeing a market improvement on that, and I think a lot of that is a result of the conversion strategy. We're going to continue to see development in that regard. Coming back to priorities and what we're working on. As we've spoken about this matter a lot. Same-store sales this year is really critical that we focus on value. You'll see that a lot of our marketing and a lot of our promotion this year has really been focused on enhancing our 3-6-9 Happy Hour program. We launched a $15.95 lunch initiative at Benihana, we've been putting added emphasis on that. Obviously the Grills were also lots of emphasis on the 3-6-9 Happy Hour programs. STK, we also changed our Steak Night America price from $69 to $49. Providing even more compelling price points to drive incremental business through some compelling entry price points in steaks and the whole steakhouse side. In general, operations is critical. In addition to the value, as I've mentioned earlier, that's one of the cornerstones of our business model. Innovation is also super critical. Adding new menus to or adding new items to our seasonal menus has been super critical in terms of driving the same-store sales. Just in general, marketing, targeting value messaging. Also leveraging the loyalty program that we launched last year, Friends with Benefits, has become super important in driving our same-store sales. Barbell. Don't underestimate the power of barbell. Particularly our STK brand. For instance, we featured $129 big size lobsters in our menu, and as a matter of fact, during the fourth quarter, we ran out of them. The consumer that has money is still willing to pursue a little bit of the premium experiences. We are always very thoughtful that we are always adding some premium promotion in addition to our focus on value. As I mentioned earlier, capital asset and driving new licensing and franchising deals into the system has been very important strategy for us. As a matter of fact, in the fourth quarter and first quarter of this year, we souped up our support teams and our sales team for franchising. We should start seeing some additional progress going forward on that area. As we previously announced, we entered into a new deal in California. We also entered into a new deal in Florida, so we're starting to see some of the payback of our investments in the infrastructure on the franchising and licensing side. Obviously, continue to optimizing our portfolio. It will continue to be part of our long-term strategy. We have five temporarily closed Grills that we plan to reopen in 2026 as one of our other brands, so stay tuned. Two of those are already under construction. Three of the other ones are awaiting final permits to get going. The construction cycles on those conversions tend to be relatively mild, about eight weeks to do the whole conversion cycle. Obviously, the big guarding element on these conversions is the licensing and permitting time, because you do have to still get the permits and get the local authorities to approve it. Sometimes that could take up to 180 days to get those, so that's the guarding element there. Ultimately, managing our balance sheet and maintaining financial flexibility. If you look at our guidance for 2026, we're able to service our debt and continue our growth and still generate a significant amount of free cash flow after we do that. We're very encouraged by the flexibility that we have when we're able to generate those levels of free cash flow. Nicole? Great. Just some highlights on our 2026 development. We talk about the conversion starting at the left, converting five Grills into five Benihanas with a Kona [Bistro]. The 6-10 new openings, those are all going to come across all brands, but primarily focused on Benihana and STK, and really mostly focused in markets that we already operate in in order to round those out and gain those efficiencies. The Phoenix, Arizona restaurant has been recently opened. We're excited about that one. On the more asset light side over on the right, we have three Benihana franchise license agreements that we expect to open within this current year. Like I said, focusing on the asset light, we're really looking at driving the cost of our build-outs down. The conversions are relatively inexpensive, about $1 million or so to open. Honing in on the new restaurants to make sure those are as efficient as possible. Our long-term potential for the organization, there's a lot of white space out there, a lot of untouched land for us. We're looking at the opportunity for Benihana sitting around 400 restaurants, and 200 for STK, a lot of runway to go for us for our long-term. In terms of the new unit economics, like I said, we are working on really streamlining these costs. On average, we're looking at, for an STK, a $3.8 million investment and a Benihana at a $3.5 million investment, with each of those expected to return at 50% and 40%, respectively. That situation is really when we're looking at a brand-new space. We're looking as well at second-generation space, a space that was previously a restaurant operations. That gives us a lot more flexibility to utilize the infrastructure that's already there. With that tactic, we're literally looking at investments of $2 million or less. Great. The one thing I would say about our conversion strategy when Nicole was going through it is that we do have one restaurant, our Kona Grill in Baltimore, that actually the conversion will yield two different restaurants. Will yield a small Kona Grill Bistro. The Kona Grill will stay in Baltimore, but with a much smaller footprint. Right next to it, there will be a full-size STK right by the convention center. We'll get two out of one current site with the conversion of the Baltimore site. The next slide speaks a bit about what we're doing with the Benihana brand. Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, it's a 60-year brand, and one of the areas that we've been working on is refreshing the look and feel of the brand. If you look at our latest opening, which was San Mateo, California, we have already integrated a lot of these design elements into the new location. We're creating a footprint for Benihana that's a little bit more modern and a little bit more open in the way that it looks. It presents itself to the guests. We're kind of, if you will, creating a more welcoming environment into the Benihana of what we call next generation look and feel. We're also making the bars a lot more relevant into the brand, because we think that bar sales historically have been in the 10%-12% range for the brand. We think that creating bar programs and creating happy hour programs and just having a little bit more compelling bar layouts and look and feel in the bars will help us create additional business on wine and liquor. We're really excited about the potential of this prototype. Not to mention that the way that we're designing and working on the prototype, it's also allowed us to take cost out of the build-out cycle. It presents a lot of advantages for us in the long term to have a much fresher, a much cleaner looking restaurant with a lot of potential to drive incremental sales with the bar. Nicole? Yep, looking forward to, again, more asset light development opportunities. There's a lot of opportunity with the manage and license business on the STK side, both primarily with an international focus on that. We have a lot of opportunity. We do really well in Italy and U.K. currently, might see some opportunity there for us. On the Benihana side, also franchise and license opportunities within the U.S., the Caribbean and South America. On all brands, we really have or getting a good foothold in our nontraditional elements as well. That includes things like Benihana and STK concessions in a number of sports arenas across the country, as well as some licensed Benihana products, whether it's frozen food, and some other shelf stable and looking into sauces in the future as well. Stay tuned to your local grocer for some future products. Great. I think as we talked about earlier, value is a key component of all our brands. As you can see here, we're pretty much adding some layer either at lunch, happy hour, dinner, or on takeout. It's a consistency of having those layers all demonstrate value at all the brands. Just in general, as I mentioned earlier, seasonal menus are really important to all our brands. That's what we bring in some ideas in terms of new products, where there's some innovation. Also, it creates us an opportunity to add some excitement with some Instagrammable opportunities. Friends with Benefits, our loyalty program, has been growing, and it's critical long term for the success of growing frequency and transactions. We changed all our websites, so I'm sure you probably have had an opportunity to look at it, but that was part of our new strategy this year to have our sites be more easily to navigate and easier to get access to. Obviously, we're also integrating them all into The ONE Group templates and so that they consistently work the same with the guests all the time. Just to start our closeout, a path to $5 billion is in our sights and we have a plan to get there, focusing on kind of a repeat of what our target is this year. Looking at about 7- 13 openings going forward after this current year, in terms of long term growth. Seven to 13 annual, same-store sales of 3%-5%, and we'll get there just by continuing to focus on asset light development, really tightly managing G&A and making sure we're continuing to maintain and grow efficiencies at the restaurant level. Great. That's our story. Strong economics driving flexibility for us. I'd like to turn the meeting back to Joe for any questions that you may have. Thanks. Great presentation. Let's start. The key one here, I think question on top of mind for a lot of people here is you gave us the first five weeks of the second quarter, you got the positive same-store sales. I think the question that people are having given the ongoing increases in gas prices, there's been a lot of press on this. Historically, how sensitive has your clientele been to these types of things where we're concerned about maybe traffic is starting to drop off because of people looking at paying more for gas and other items? A great question. I think that obviously that's the macro situation is real. You got the confidence, you got all the matters that you mentioned there. I think from a ONE Group perspective, our internal focus is that our research still shows that consumers will still want differentiated experiences because they still are celebrating birthdays, they're still celebrating their anniversaries, there's still milestones that they want to go out to. I think by having highly differentiated and entertaining venues makes a big difference, at least from our perspective. I think the performance was good coming out of first quarter, strong going into the second quarter. I think by reiterating the 1%-3% for the year, positive 1%-3%, we truly believe on the strength of our initiatives. Outside of the context of what is a pretty challenging overall environment still. We do think that our differentiated product really helps us in this environment. Okay. Then there's some questions on changing consumer taste patterns, however you want to call it. I'll lump these together. The proliferation and use of GLP-1s, how has that impacted your guys in terms of potential menu changes, portion sizes? Then liquor sales are down industry-wide, seemingly due to shifts in consumer taste. Has this impacted the company? Have you made any changes there, like introducing more mocktails or other specialty non-alcoholic drinks? Two big impacts to us from that is the non-alcoholic zero-proof program. We're putting a lot more emphasis on our seasonal menus to feature those items. The second thing that impacts our business is if you look at our more recent menu rollouts, we feature small plates or smaller portion presentations of our full menu items. We're putting a lot of added focus on being sensitive that those tastes are changing right now. We definitely are aware of it, and we certainly are making adjustments to deal with it. On the owned restaurant cost of sales, you guys have done a great job of bringing that down from almost 24% in 2023 to 19.5%, let's call it, in the first quarter. How low do you think you can go there? What kind of is the goal that you have internally is to get that to? I think our internal objective is to be in that 20- 19 range. I think we're right in the middle of that range. Obviously, you also have to be careful that you don't get too good at that number because it means you're not providing enough value to the consumer. There's always kind of a fine line between being really good at managing it and also being sensitive that you have to provide value to the guest. That's kind of our internal target on it. Let's finish out here, Manny, with the conversions. You talked a little bit about it. Maybe a little bit more color as to why you're doing these. What are your expectations for the new restaurants that are going in? I think the goal was to get to five up by year-end. Is that still in the cards? Maybe just a little bit more detail there. Yeah. The goal of this conversion is take a look at, we have great real estate, so that's number one. The majority of our restaurants are in high profile, high quality real estate. Sometimes the brand just doesn't fit the real estate, or for one reason or the other, it's different in that real estate. For example, a lot of the Kona Grill and RA were built around movie theaters, which is actually starting to get a little better with that business, but since COVID, has not exactly been an ideal traffic generator for restaurants. What we're doing with the conversion strategy is to put in a different brand in that great real estate that we think it's less reliant on foot traffic from movie theaters, and there you go. You have a great real estate, a restaurant that might have required reinvestment or remodel anyhow, and just the brand didn't make sense anymore. Those three things really made it compelling to do it. On top of that, in all the ones that we've done, we're moving from either break even or slightly negative cash flow to opportunities to make a lot of cash profit in those properties. Great. Well, Manny and Nicole, we covered a lot of ground today and got significant insight into what The ONE Group does, its markets and opportunities. We appreciate you taking the time to do this, and we wish you and the company the best in the future. Thanks again. Thanks, Joe. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care.
Loading workspace