Participants

Carl Bachmann; Chief Executive Officer; BurgerFi International Inc

Christopher Jones; Chief Financial Officer; BurgerFi International Inc

Ben Parente; Analyst; BTIG

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss BurgerFi International's financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended January 1, 2024. Joining us today are Carl Bachmann, CEO; and Chris Jones, CFO. Following their remarks, we'll open the lines for questions.
Before we begin, I want to remind everyone this conference call may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may be related to bird revised estimates of its future business outlook, liquidity store opening plans, same-store sales and restaurant operating margin growth plans, prospects or financial results, including projected sales, restaurant EBITDA.
Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by words such as anticipates, believes estimates, expects, intends, plans, predicts, projects, projects will be, will continue, will likely result and similar expressions.
These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements.
Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, as discussed in the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended January 1, 2024, which will be filed this afternoon and those disclosed in other documents that the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to BurgerFi or persons acting on burner files behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements included in this conference call.
The company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements except as required by law. Given these statements and uncertainties, listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.
Also, the following discussion will contain non-GAAP financial measures for discussion and reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures see the earnings release for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023. I'd like to also remind everyone that this call will be available via telephone replay for two weeks starting today. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release as well as the company's website at www.burgerfi.com.
Please note, today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to BurgerFi CEO, Carl Bachmann. Carl go ahead.

Carl Bachmann

Thank you. Thank you for joining us today, and we appreciate your interest in BurgerFi. Let me begin by thanking our entire team, franchisees and employees for their dedication and hard work. 2023 was a challenging year, both Anthony's and burger five, but also no way indicative of the work this new management team is doing or where we intend to take the business over time.
Both Chris and I began our leadership in July 2023, and since then have been working diligently to fix the foundations of both brands to ensure the next best turnaround story in the restaurant space is an indisputable success.
In fact, I'm more convinced than ever that Anthony's and burger fire, high-quality brands with great opportunities ahead and strong growth potential.
Leveraging my prior experience in turnaround situations at Burger and pizza concepts, I implemented five key strategic priorities when I began eight months ago that I will discuss momentarily and which should ultimately drive long-term profitable growth.
Notably, we have already begun to see early leading indicators that our efforts are taking hold. While Anthony's had a 3% decrease in same-store sales growth during the fourth quarter. It did experience a sequential improvement in same-store sales and traffic compared to the third quarter, an encouraging performance during the holidays.
And while like most of our peers, January was a challenging month, trends have improved sequentially with March flat to slightly positive adjusting for the Easter shift. Performance remained volatile at Burger five during the fourth quarter, system-wide same-store sales decreased 10%. However, we did see sequential improvement from the third quarter in same-store sales and traffic at both Company and franchise locations.
This volatility, however, continued into the new year where results have been more challenging. We believe that a combination of normalized trends versus COVID and overall softer demand in the Florida market is part of our challenge as stores in the Northeast and elsewhere have fared better.
Looking forward with the combination of new unit growth and improving same-store sales trends, driven by our expanded offerings and more effective marketing messages, we anticipate burger PHI returning to positive same-store sales and positive EBITDA by the second half of 2024.
Additionally, we are equally confident in Anthony's return to positive same-store and positive EBITDA growth, driven by similar initiatives, including menu modification and aggressive focus on food costs and the benefits from an updated POS platform.
To give you a sense of why we are confident that we can reach these goals in 2024, I will provide a detailed update on our five strategic priorities. Number one, infrastructure which is really about the people. We needed to build the team and create camaraderie around the two brands at the restaurant level and in our corporate office.
So our first step was picking the team element, and we've been very successful at that. Our restaurants are now about 95% staffed with significantly reduced turnover. Notably turnover at Anthony's is better than industry standards and Burger is now in line with the industry. This has significantly reduced training labor needed at the restaurant level.
As a result, we expect to see improvement in our labor line throughout 2024. These efforts have also resulted in higher consumer satisfaction scores as well as faster throughput and ticket times. While these encouraging metrics are not yet reflected in our financial performance, they are leading indicators that we are on the right path towards higher sales and margins.
We have also started to leverage technology at both brands. In Q1 we began using an operations management platform at Burger five and started rolling it out to Anthony's, which enables us to manage all inventory and labor across our company-owned locations. This system will help us drive efficiency and operational excellence across our portfolio.
In April, we'll be rolling out the toast POS and management system across our Anthony's locations. We believe this system will improve operations, increased sales and create a better guest experience. Part of this rollout will include handheld tablets for our servers that will allow them to be motors directly to the kitchen which will increase accuracy and speed of table turns.
Up until now, it was using paper tickets and did not have KDS, which has been a commonly used back-of-the-house tool across the industry for years. As a result, we had no analytics and speed of service to drive efficiency in the kitchen or dining rooms. By end of Q2, we expect the new toast POS system to be in both in most, if not all 59 Company-owned Anthony.
Next is taste and quality. We're continually focused on improving the taste and quality of our products at both brands. Across both brands, we rightsized the menu while also adding new items with broad appeal. At Burger five, we launched new chicken wings and for different types of Burger five balls. We also introduced a grilled and crispy chicken sandwich option in 31 company-owned stores as we did not previously have any grilled chicken options at Burger five.
We wanted to be part of chicken wars and have already seen a 4% to 5% lift in overall mix. We continue to innovate with our burgers as well. In Q1, we launched two new burger LTOs. In January, we launched the Shack burger and in February we debuted a prime rib burger at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. These two burgers are already accounting for more than 4% of our overall mix.
At Anthony's, we launched new classic Italian items, including spinach in order choke, dip spaghetti and meatballs Credit Union, Alfredo and a great midstream Bali. We also brought back our original Aruba Verrata salad. We are now testing new shrimp, pastas and pizzas in preparation for our first ever attained from festival in April.
Finally, we're having fun with the new happy hour called the meatball Martini night. All new menu items across both brands are well exceeding our expectations.
Our next initiative is developing gold standards between my prior leadership experiences and feedback from employees and guests at both brands, I have determined what our gold standards are and have begun holding ourselves accountable to them so that we can drive long-term sales growth.
We've standardized our catering program and are in the process of rolling out system wide is already contributing significant additional revenue. In addition to establish industry-leading gold standards, we have improved the quality of our bonds are all natural Angus beef, our French fry process and our exclusive plant-based veggie burger. As a result of the work we're doing around gold standards, our third party audit scores are already strengthening.
Priority four is telling the world about our brands through an enhanced marketing strategy that is already resonating with customers. Our social media engagement rate continues to improve with 60% net positive sentiment at BFI at 56% and Anthony's up 4% since August of 2023.
Additionally, our online reviews continue to improve. Our five star online reviews have increased from 4.2 to 4.4 since July 2023, when Chris and I began our leadership roles, the highest in the Company's history. These early indicators are signs that the marketing strategy is working.
Finally, I'll end with step five defining the portfolio, which is about both store development and optimization. We conducted a strategic assessment of our burger five portfolio to identify locations with the greatest opportunities for improvement.
We segmented each restaurant location into four performance buckets based on the correlation between online ratings and comp sales growth. Our assessment validated the high correlation between guest ratings and financial performance. We intend to improve the overall portfolio quality by prioritizing the highest impact locations.
As of January 1, our portfolio consisted of 108 BurgerFi restaurants, 28 corporate owned and 80 franchised and 60 Anthony's, 59 corporate owned, and one franchised. As we continue to rightsize our portfolio, we closed five underperforming franchise burger by restaurants during the fourth quarter. We also acquired two franchise burger fries in South Florida in a strategic move to solidify our presence in our core markets.
We believe these restaurants could be high volume and margin accretive as we fortress South Florida. We expanded our footprint using a nontraditional space by opening a franchise burger by within samples within Apple cinemas in the pit for Plaza, Apple's cinemas in Rochester, New York.
This location provides in-theater service were guest scan QR codes during their movies to have food delivered directly to their seats. It also provides third-party delivery service capabilities for not theater customers.
We believe nontraditional spaces will become a larger part of our development story as they represent a great opportunity to grow the brand and get people excited about burger by again within a smaller footprint and lower start-up costs.
Franchisees were able to build a 500 square foot kiosk to drive revenue without the same level of capital expenditure as a 2,500 square foot store. Apple cinemas is already working on a second burger five movie theater location in Warwick, Rhode Island that we expect to open this year and see an opportunity to expand to most of their locations east of the Rockies.
We continue to grow our presence in airports across the country with the second certified location in the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport slated to open this year. In December, we opened our first ever co-branded burger financing location with our franchisee MGM hospitality services in Kissimmee, Florida, this locations off to a very strong start and exceeding expectations.
Later this year, MDM will open a second co-branded location in Miami World Center development near the Miami bright line station and a third location is slated for 2025. Just last week, certify reopened our flagship company, Alberta five restaurants and first-ever better burger lab on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
This location offers and exclusive lineup of limited edition offerings not available at our other locations and a late night menu with a variety of beer and wine. It will also serve as a venue for special events we are so excited to be back in New York City, the food capital the world, and look forward to welcoming many of you on this call to this restaurant.
Looking ahead, we are targeting other metropolitan cities in the I-95 corridor to grow the burger by brand as these are the DMAs or bird weights do extremely well. We're excited to share this week, we signed another franchise agreement for three Anthony's in the Jacksonville, Florida area. We expect these restaurants to open in 2025.
One of my main priorities has been finding well-capitalized franchisees with restaurant, retail and hospitality experience to bring more disciplined and profitable growth to our system.
To conclude, I am more confident than ever that I made the right decision to join the company. Sales and margin improvement will not happen overnight, but we are laying the foundation to grow upon. We're making very educated smart decisions using a very simple formula. We must win for our guests. We must win for the team members, and we must win for the shareholders and franchisees.
With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Chris Jones, who will provide commentary on our fourth quarter 2023 performance and discuss our guidance. Go ahead, Chris.

Christopher Jones

Thank you, Carl, and good afternoon everyone. As Carl stressed or not evident yet in our financials, please note that this new management team is working hard every day, executing a sound strategy that will increase sales and improve margins over time.
During the fourth quarter, topline softness pressured margins, but that didn't stop us from continuing to drive labor and cost efficiencies as evidenced by the continued decline in payroll and corporate expense dollars. Bottom line is that the more work we do driving efficiencies today, the greater margin expansion opportunity we have as we emerge from the recovery.
With Anthony's moving into positive comps here in March and then in a month, roughly flat adjusting for Easter, we are cautiously optimistic that we will start to see some of this positive leverage for our largest brand in 2024.
Now briefly, looking at the fourth quarter. Total revenues were $41.5 million, decreasing 8.3% from $45.2 million for the same quarter last year. And these corporate-owned restaurants contributed $31.1 million to total revenues in the quarter. The decrease in revenue primarily attributable to the decrease in same-store sales at both brands, partially offset by the additional revenue from two acquired burger five restaurants from franchisees during the fourth quarter.
Restaurant level profit margin was 12.5% for the fourth quarter 2023 compared to 13.9% in the fourth quarter of 2022. The decrease was primarily related to lost sales leverage. However, we continue to see an improvement in food, beverage and paper coffee costs, a trend that should continue through 2024.
We are also beginning to see an improvement in other operating expenses due to better expense management. We expect to see an improvement in restaurant-level profit margins throughout 2024 as we accelerate the rollout of the inventory control system to entities.
Shifting to our individual brand results, the Burger five corporate-owned restaurant sales decreased 4% to $8.3 million, reflecting a 14% decrease in corporate-owned same-store sales. System wide sales for Burger five in the fourth quarter decreased 9% to $33.9 million compared to $38.7 million in the year ago quarter, primarily due to the closure of underperforming Company stores, coupled with declines in same-store sales.
BurgerFi system-wide same-store sales decreased 10% for the fourth quarter compared to the same period in '22 for corporate Alberta five same store sales decreased 14% and franchise restaurants same-store sales decreased 8%.
Burger fire restaurant-level operating margins was 2.8% for the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to 9.4% in the fourth quarter of '22. This was largely the result of lost leverage on fixed costs due to same-store sales decline along with higher gains from franchise fees, termination fees, gift card breakage income from BDSI's sales benefited the prior year quarter.
As mentioned earlier, food and paper margins continue to be a positive story, a trend we expect to continue despite the continued pressure on beef prices. While we're not immune to these price increases, we don't expect to see the same level of increases that others have seen.
This is because as discussed last quarter, we have secured a secondary supplier that should allow us to insulate ourselves from any volatility in beef prices for 2024 and beyond, well, giving us an edge on pricing.
We are confident that we will continue to see improvements in food and paper margins due to these benefits and the positive impact from inventory management and procurement systems that continue to yield improvement.
Looking into 2024, we believe the combination of menu enhancements, improved marketing and the contribution of new stores return us to positive total growth of BurgerFi. At that point, operating leverage of the burger five business will start to emerge in a compelling way.
Turning to Anthony's corporate-owned restaurant sales were down $31.1 million in the fourth quarter compared to $33 million in the prior year fourth quarter. The decrease was driven by a 2% decrease in same-store sales when compared to the fourth quarter of 2022.
Staying with Anthony's on restaurants profitability, restaurant-level operating margin was 15% for the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to 15.2% in the fourth quarter of '22. This was due to lost leverage on fixed cost because of the same-store sales decline.
Food and paper margins improved modestly in the quarter despite continued higher coal prices and higher wing prices. Importantly, we expect to see greater improvements in Anthony's in 2024 is the inventory management and procurement systems currently positively impacting burger fight today start to take hold and entities.
Additionally, we expect to start rolling out a new POS system in Anthony's and expect most, if not all 59 stores to be converted by the end of second quarter 2024. This system is a significant upgrade to the 20-year-plus old platform in stores today, employing handheld devices and advanced KDS technology to drive greater efficiency and customer engagement in the stores.
So in Anthony's you will also see in a second franchise location or Blake later this year with an expectation for more in 2024 and beyond.
Back to consolidated results, we reported a net loss of $10.7 million in the fourth quarter compared to a net loss of $26.2 million in the year ago quarter. This quarter reduction in net loss is primarily due to lower goodwill on fixed asset impairments, lower depreciation and amortization expenses, lower general and administration expenses, primarily due to lower litigation expenses, partially offset by lower leverage on sales.
Adjusted EBITDA was $671,000 in the fourth quarter compared to $2.6 million in the prior year fourth quarter. The decline in EBITDA was especially evident at Burger five business as we saw layers, which we saw lower royalty income in the quarter due to lower franchise sales volume and didn't benefit from a higher franchise termination fees or breakage we did in the fourth quarter prior year.
Further, keep in mind that some of the royalty declines were self-inflicted as the company made the right decision to both underperforming stores in the quarter with some of these declines, partially offset by lower food costs and other operating expenses.
Moving on to the balance sheet. Our cash balance at January 1, 2024, was $7.6 million compared to $11.9 million at January 2, 2023. The decrease in cash of $4.3 million was primarily due to decreased cash from operating activities of $5.4 million and investing in investing activities of $1.6 million, partially offset by cash provided by financing of $2.6 million.
Cash used in operating activities include severance payments due to restructuring, store closing expenses, legal settlements, integration costs, and a decline in EBITDA, partially offset by receipts of employee retention credits. Cash outflows for investing activities were $1.6 million due to capital expenditures, offset by proceeds by proceeds from the sale of assets. Cash provided by financing activities of $2.6 million was due to proceeds from issuance of common stock and proceeds from related party notes payable, partially offset by term loans line of credit repayments.
Looking forward, as we stabilize top line volumes, volumes and roll resolve non-preferred recurring cash events, we continue to refocus on use of cash for EBITDA growth.
Now before I move to guidance and update on covenant compliance, anyone who is familiar with our credit, you will know that we have a $12.5 million cash reserve requirement, which includes a $4 million swing line. As noted earlier, we are below this level and no longer compliant with our senior lender agreements.
We are in active conversations with our lenders, but cannot provide any more update at this time. Additionally later today or tomorrow morning, investors will receive[12 B25] provided notice to beef. Burger five will delay the filing of its Form 10-K. We are shooting to have the 10-K out by the end of this week, and there will be more details in that filing.
Now turning to our fiscal 2024 outlook, we expect total revenues of $170 million to $180 million, which assumes it assumes a low-single digit increase in same-store sales for corporate-owned locations. The addition of 10 to 15 new franchise restaurants as well as including one Anthony's, a new burger bar and our new York City burger five flagship location, continued improvement in our cost of goods, driven by increased adoption, inventory management of both brands. Adjusted EBITDA of between $7 million to $9 million and CapEx expenditure between $2 million to $3 million.
With that, we'll open up the call for questions. Thank you.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Peter Saleh, BTIG.

Ben Parente

Thank you, gentlemen, and good afternoon. It's actually Ben Parente on for Peter this evening. So a couple of questions on our end. The first is if you could just maybe dig into the sales trends in the fourth quarter as well as anything year to date, you're willing to share for both brands in particular, maybe the monthly cadence during the fourth quarter as well as any geographic differences you saw between the Northeast and the Florida market would be would be helpful.

Carl Bachmann

Yes, I can start addressing that and Chris can feel free to jump in, but definitely weaker performance in Florida as we saw kind of that seasonality trend come back to normal post COVID trend. But the for early fourth quarter was it was slow. And then we saw a good a good rebound in December as we go into the holidays.
And you started to see kind of influx in Florida as far as both brands outside of Florida, a stronger fourth quarter results, especially in the Northeast on Anthony's side. And then as you got into the first quarter, I think weather hit a lot in the East Coast, both north and south.
So January was a little disappointing for us, but we saw improvement a slight improvement in February and a marked improvement in both brands in March.
And like we talked about them Anthony's, when you take into consider Easter flip was actually positive same-store sales. So we are we are right in line with what I believe is our guidance for the year and moving that direction. So hopefully that answered your question.

Ben Parente

It does. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Secondly, maybe for you, Carl, following the strategic review of Burger five that you did, could you maybe comment on the health of the franchise system as you see it today?
Are there any changes or improvements you think need to be made among the franchise system? Maybe you can touch on expected closure, a relocation and door of repurchase activity that you're anticipating for this coming year?

Carl Bachmann

Yeah. So in the fourth quarter that we took -- in the third quarter, we took a really good look at our franchise system from two perspectives. Do we have the right franchisees and are we giving them the right level of support. So we've really worked hard to improve our support our communication on that side of it, and we got to that. Got to work on that early.
And I think the end result is you're seeing a much better level of communication support between franchisor and franchisee as we have elevated the support and communication. We also determined that there were certain franchisees in the system that was not a good fit for us.
And that's why we've made those closures. I believe we noted in the in the call we closed five, I believe, franchise burger fires that were underperforming. So we still think there may be a couple out there, but we think we've seen the herd, so to speak and really gotten that behind us.
And we have some very good, strong franchisees that have reengaged and are growing. So we're very excited about that so I think we're in a good place there. We have a lot of interest in our nontraditional growth aside of Burger five from a franchisee perspective.
I truly believe that the strategy today is bringing burger five to where people are at in life as opposed to just putting a brick and mortar store up and hoping that the marketing gets them in the door. So we see the opportunity in airports, amusement parks, casinos, hotels of the movie theaters, and we have a lot of interest from those groups.
And Appleton was one great example of the kind of nontraditional franchise growth. We're negotiating working with them on opening quite a few stores, and we're opening our second store here's shortly in Warwick, Rhode Island.
So a lot of good franchise growth coming on, and we're seeing a much better interest from existing franchisees that are really looking for their second or third concept as of franchisees that have operational structure, financial structure and their own infrastructure that they can support. That's the kind of partners that we're looking for. And we're engaging and we're starting to see quite a bit of quite a bit of new interest as a result of that. I think that I think that answered it for you

Christopher Jones

(multiple speakers) I'd add to that, you asked the question about the refranchising of the repurchase of existing franchise operations. And I think it's clearly we should be clear that that's not something that we do a lot of obviously, we did a we did buy two though those operations down in Miami.
If they're in strategic locations, I think you should look at locations like that as being places where we might consider that. But as a general rule, it's certainly not something that we would do. But here again, in strategic locations where we think it's a good opportunity for us and we can grow how it will be. And that's something that we would consider, certainly if it's if the deal is good.

Ben Parente

Understood. Maybe my last question then is for you Chris, and then I'll pass on the queue. Could you just comment on is there a restaurant level margin target or guidance contained within the adjusted EBITDA outlook for this year?
And I understand if you're not willing to give an explicit RLM. target for the year, if you maybe just speak to the puts and takes on some of the line items aside from the cost of goods improvement that you're expecting for the year?

Christopher Jones

Absolutely. So I think you are probably was shy away from giving a specific margin rate or that kind of level of detailed guidance. But to your point, certainly cost of goods will continue to food and beverage will certainly be a large part of it. But we also do believe that other operating expenses, we will we will be able to get our hands around as well as labor costs.
One of the things that this organization has struggled substantially with labor. You don't necessarily see manifested in the numbers today, but I think what we are seeing is a substantial reduction in turnover. And so is that a big reduction in training hours and social as well.
So that would be an area where I think we could see substantial improvement and particularly in the event that we start to get some positive top line, I would say that was where you see the most dramatic improvement in terms of overall leverage.
Secondly, I think corporate G&A will continue to be an important area for us. We are holding the line on corporate expenses here. And I think that's really a trend that we're going to be able to continue as well.

Ben Parente

Great. But I hope it does that does it for us this evening. So thank you both again, and I'll pass it on with that.

Christopher Jones

Thank you.

Carl Bachmann

Thank you.

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll be concluding today's question-and-answer session as well as today's presentation. We thank everyone for joining, and you may now disconnect your lines.