Earnings call transcript: Brinker International Q4 2025 sees EPS beat and stock surge

Brinker International Inc (EAT) reported its fourth-quarter financial results for 2025, showcasing a notable performance with an adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.49, surpassing analyst expectations of $2.44. The company’s revenue matched forecasts at $1.44 billion. Following the earnings announcement, Brinker’s stock rose by 6.47% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor enthusiasm about its financial health and strategic initiatives.

Key Takeaways

• Brinker International’s Q4 EPS exceeded expectations, reaching $2.49.
• Revenue growth marked a significant milestone, surpassing $5 billion for the first time.
• Stock price increased by 6.47% in pre-market trading, indicating positive market sentiment.
• The company achieved a 21.9% increase in total revenue and a 21.3% rise in consolidated comparable sales.

Company Performance

Brinker International demonstrated strong company performance in the fourth quarter of 2025, with total revenue growing by 21.9% year-over-year. This growth was driven by a 23.7% increase in Chili’s same-store sales and an improvement in restaurant operating margins to 17.8%, up by 260 basis points from the previous year. The company has successfully reduced its debt by over $570 million in the past three years, achieving a lease-adjusted leverage ratio of 1.7x. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains a GREAT financial health score of 3.09, operating with a moderate level of debt and demonstrating strong revenue growth of 19.8% over the last twelve months.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $1.44 billion, aligned with forecasts and marking a 21.9% year-over-year increase.
• Earnings per share: $2.49, beating the forecast of $2.44 and up from $1.61 last year.
• Restaurant operating margin: 17.8%, a 260 basis point improvement year-over-year.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Brinker International reported an EPS of $2.49, exceeding the forecast of $2.44 by 2.05%. This marks a positive surprise compared to the company’s historical trends, suggesting effective strategic execution and operational improvements.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Brinker’s stock price increased by 6.47% in pre-market trading, reaching $164.9. This surge reflects investor confidence in the company’s performance and future prospects. The stock’s movement is notable given its 52-week range, with a high of $192.22 and a low of $58.85, indicating strong recovery and market optimism.

Outlook & Guidance

For fiscal 2026, Brinker International has provided revenue guidance of $5.6 billion to $5.7 billion and adjusted diluted EPS between $9.90 and $10.50. The company expects positive same-store sales in all quarters and plans to remodel 10% of its restaurant fleet annually, focusing on technology improvements and restaurant development.

Executive Commentary

CEO Kevin Hockman highlighted the company’s strategic focus on food, service, and atmosphere, stating, "We are at a much different Chili’s today than we were three years ago." He emphasized the importance of marketing and operations, noting, "Marketing brings them in, but operation keeps them coming back."

Risks and Challenges

• Potential supply chain disruptions could impact product availability and costs.
• Market saturation in the casual dining sector may limit growth opportunities.
• Economic downturns could affect consumer spending and dining frequency.
• Rising labor costs could pressure operating margins.
• Competitive pressures from other dining establishments may impact market share.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about new restaurant growth opportunities and the Maggiano’s turnaround strategy. The company also addressed pricing and mix expectations, along with technology and operational initiatives, providing insights into its strategic priorities and future plans.

Full transcript - Brinker International Inc (EAT) Q4 2025:

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Good day, and welcome to the Brinker International’s Q4 F ’twenty five Earnings Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode. The floor will be opened for questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ma’am, the floor is yours.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Thank you, Holly, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today’s call. Here with me today are Kevin Hockman, President and Chief Executive Officer and President of Chili’s and Michael Ware, Chief Financial Officer. Results for our fourth quarter were released earlier this morning and are available on our website at brinker.com. As usual, Kevin and Micah will first make prepared comments related to our strategic initiatives and operating performance. Then, we will open the call for your questions.

Before beginning our comments, I would like to remind everyone of our safe harbor regarding forward looking statements. During our call, management may discuss certain items, which are not based entirely on historical facts. Any such items should be considered forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include factors more completely described in this morning’s press release and the company’s filings with the SEC.

And, of course, on the call, we may refer to certain non GAAP financial measures that management uses in its review of the business and believes will provide insight into the company’s ongoing operations. And with that said, I will turn the call over to Kevin.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Thank you, Kim, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our financial and operating performance in the quarter as well as to share guidance for fiscal twenty twenty six. Q4 Chili’s same store sales were plus 24%, outperforming a stronger casual dining industry by eighteen ninety basis points. This result was lapping a plus 15% in Q4 last year for a two year comp of plus 39%. Q4 twenty twenty five marks the completion of a three years into our turnaround plan and the sustained results continue to be very encouraging.

Chili’s has now beat the industry the past seven quarters on traffic, as well as completed our seventeenth consecutive quarter of positive same store sales growth. Our three year fiscal twenty twenty five comp sales growth number is plus 40% and that growth has lifted AUVs to $4,500,000 Through simplification and growth, we’ve also been able to expand Chili’s restaurant operating margins significantly from 11.9% in fiscal twenty twenty two to 17.6% in fiscal twenty twenty five. With $4,500,000 AUVs, everything generally gets easier for the restaurants. Labor budgets, repairs and maintenance, staffing, cleaning and keeping food coming out hot and delicious. When you have these fundamentals in place and labor and facilities are properly funded, it’s a lot easier to continue improving the guest and team member experience over the next three years.

With a significantly streamlined menu, more labor deployed, a restaurant in the state in better condition with better equipment and a brand and culture that people are excited about, Chili’s is well positioned to continue growing market share in the industry for years to come. These strong quarterly results were achieved by our continued focus on the fundamentals of casual dining, food service and atmosphere. At the end of Q4, we relaunched our Ribs platform. Customers are raving about the look, the size and the taste of the ribs. It’s a very noticeable upgrade.

With a full rack of ribs that are so big and look so delicious, they are allowed when guests see them come to the table. After we get a quarter of execution reps for our restaurant teams on the new ribs, our plan is to turn on digital marketing in Q2. It’s clear we have a winning product with our new ribs and our intent now is to use them to drive traffic. We also rolled out our new Frozen Marg program, which features a new premium Patron frozen base with the new Taylor Marg machines. The new Taylor’s deliver a superior Frozen Marg texture, as well as have a larger production capacity, which is important because we are selling nearly twice the number of frozen marks even at the significantly higher $10 price point.

Customers love the new Patron Frozen, the Flamingo Freeze featuring Tito’s Vodka and the Arctic Drift featuring Malibu Coconut Rum and Blue Curacao. We believe we now have the best tasting frozen marks in the restaurant industry. The marketing team successfully launched a new frozen program at a press event in New York City featuring the world’s first ever frozen Chili’s restaurant and the reviews and sales of the new frozen program are significantly exceeding expectations. And lastly on food, I’d like to share the results of the BIG QP launch, which continues our Chili’s industry leading value story at $10.99 The marketing team came up with a brilliant launch event they called Fast Food Financing, where guests tired of paying high prices for fast food could apply for loans to pay for their next fast food purchase and try the new Big QP. This event not only created incredible buzz all throughout the country, it reinforced Chili’s as a restaurant value leader.

And through sharp menu merchandising, we’ve been able to keep three for me mix flat at under 18% and reduced ten ninety nine mix to 7.7% even with the BIG QP’s success. We also delivered more operational improvements in Q4. TurboChefs have now been successfully installed in all restaurants, resulting in the retirement of the CTX and Impinjer units. We continue to hear from the restaurant teams that TurboChefs put out way less heat in the kitchen, cook more evenly and quickly, are more reliable and easier to clean than the old equipment. They also enable the noticeable delicious bark on our new ribs and we believe the sales growth in ribs alone will deliver the return on investment we need for the new equipment.

Q4 also saw continued simplification of pantry ingredients and menu items. We eliminated a net of 10 pantry SKUs and eight food and drink menu items, which will allow our bartenders and cooks to focus on making fewer things better and help with less things to order and to inventory. We have now started the year four of our turnaround and there are some that have questioned the sustainability of our results, which is a fair question given the history of casual dining and of Chili’s. Our strategy that we shared two and a half years ago at our investment day was simple, address the key fundamentals to winning casual dining for the long term, food, service and atmosphere. And while there’s still lots of opportunity ahead of us, we are at much different Chili’s today than we were three years ago.

Here are some facts that provide some color on how much different Chili’s is today. Our average restaurant volume has grown from 3,100,000 at the end of fiscal twenty twenty two to 4,500,000 in fiscal twenty twenty five and Chili’s restaurant operating margin has improved from 11.9% in fiscal twenty twenty two to 17.6% today. We’ve eliminated over 25% of our menu and we do fewer things a whole lot better. We focus on improving our five to tribe core segments burgers, crispers, fajitas, margaritas and the triple dipper. As a result of the simplification of menu upgrades, food grade scores have never been higher.

On service, we now invest over $160,000,000 more in labor than we did in fiscal twenty twenty two and that going investment is built into the 17.6 restaurant operating margin. Guests with a problem or GWAP, our dining room key measure we track daily on a guest experience, is a mere 2.3% and has never been lower since we started tracking it. Less things to do with more people to do those things makes it a whole lot easier to deliver better food and service. On repairs and maintenance, we’ve invested over $100,000,000 incrementally in the past three years, allowing us to catch up on deferred maintenance accumulated during COVID, which had significantly impacted the guest and team member experience. Our estate has never been in better condition than it is today and we are now funded ongoing to keep it that way.

Our marketing budgets are also much bigger now, which allows us to drive traffic to our better operating restaurants. In fiscal twenty two, we invested $32,000,000 in marketing. In fiscal twenty five, we invested $137,000,000 We built a world class marketing team led by George Felix, Jesse Johnson, Steve Kelly, Mary Ellen Scott to invest those incremental dollars and that team is now wildly considered the best in restaurant marketing. They were awarded Ad Age’s 2025 brand of the year, which spans all industries and not just restaurants. Lastly, because of our much improved performance, we’ve been able to strengthen our balance sheet.

We paid down over $570,000,000 of our outstanding debt in the past three years and are now at a very strong 1.7 lease adjusted leverage ratio. This will give us increased flexibility in the future and the financial strength to weather any macro headwinds or bumps in the road that would be more difficult if we continue to have all that leverage. The reason why we are sharing this detail is to substantiate that Chili’s is a completely different concept today than it was three years ago. Those who believe our success was driven solely from a cheese pull on social media are just not close enough to our story. Yes, internet morality and TV advertising will bring new guests in, but that success is fleeting and short lived unless the experience they have in the restaurant matches what they saw in advertising.

The investments we have made in the food operations and facilities have allowed our guest experience to match the quality of our world class marketing. As we say at Chili’s, marketing brings them in, but operation keeps them coming back. This is why we continue to grow and sustain those gains. Now, I’d like to spend a few minutes on what’s coming in fiscal twenty twenty six. Our Chili’s fiscal twenty twenty six plans are strong and will allow us to continue the momentum and comp the comp, which includes rolling two big quarters of plus 30% same store sales growth in Q2 and Q3 of fiscal twenty twenty five and a whopping plus 43% same store sales growth in November.

Our 12 Vice Presidents of Operations once again selected an obsession metric to be laser focused on this fiscal. With their confidence in the plans and their confidence in the restaurant team’s ability to deliver them, I’m excited to share they have again chosen traffic as their obsession metric in fiscal twenty six. In the food pillar, we’ll have a full year of the ribs upgrade that started in July, Queso and Nacho upgrades at the beginning of Q2, which believe will position us to have the best tasting Queso in the industry served hot every order. And in the back half of the year, we have a major relaunch of our chicken sandwich platform. Chicken sandwiches are a very large and growing segment.

We have an exceptional product at an exceptional value, which positions us well to grow share in the chicken category. And from the beverage side, we’ll have a full year of our new frozen platform and a full lineup of exciting $6 margs of the month. We expect this plan will extend our number one position in margaritas, driven by our barbell pricing strategy and growth in the large frozen marg segment. We are also investing in base ingredients to continue elevating food grade scores. Throughout the fiscal, we will be making investments in more premium mayo, ranch, bacon bits, and 50% thicker bacon, which are key building blocks in the Chili’s menu and are featured in many of our recipes.

At a time when others may be pulling back on quality to offset inflationary headwinds, we view this as an opportunity to accelerate our food quality versus competition. From the operations front, we have several initiatives coming in fiscal twenty six. We will have four quarters of simplification rollouts, which will continue to make it easier for our teams to execute with excellence. Fiscal twenty six will see the start of our north of six initiatives, where we take the best in class processes from high $6,000,000 AUV restaurants and roll them into the balance of the system to increase throughput. And lastly, we will launch a new hospitality initiative that includes new labor scheduling process tools to help our general managers build stronger teams and an initiative to help build a culture of manager ownership and accountability.

In the atmosphere pillar, we are now finished with catching up on repairs and maintenance and with our improved cash position, we are now switching over to playing offense, which means remodeling and building new restaurants. We’re on track to do our first four remodels in the new Modern Greenville reimage package by the end of this calendar year, where we’ll learn what’s working, what’s not and land on the right package to roll to the system. The Modern Greenville project objective is to remodel 10% of the fleet annually, which means restaurants are refreshed every ten years and we maintain an atmosphere that guests are excited to dine in. We expect to ramp up reimage pace in calendar twenty twenty six and our plan is to get to a run rate of the 10% by the beginning of calendar twenty twenty seven. The work I’ve seen so far is exciting and when we showed the modern Greenville remodel renderings to the managers last week at our annual conference, there were a lot of ooze and ahhs with iPhones out snapping away.

Our world class marketing team set a vision for an exciting new design that is uniquely Chili’s and our construction team is doing a brilliant job of how to cost effectively bring this to life. To up our reimaging and our new restaurant development capability, we’ve invested in the new officer role to lead the group. I’m pleased to share Richard Ingram started a few months ago as our Vice President of Restaurant Development. His responsibilities across both Chili’s and Maggiano’s are to one, lead the reimage program to upgrade our state and two, restart a new restaurant opening program that will accelerate development. Richard spent over two decades working in development at a large convenience store chain that built a lot of new stores over a long period of time and we are confident Richard will be able to do the same at Brinker.

Lastly, I want to share several of the big technology initiatives we have planned for ’26 to improve both the guest and team member restaurant experience. The biggest one is a dramatic simplification of the handheld iPad application our servers use to take hundreds of millions of orders annually. It will feature a more intuitive design created by a third party UX expert, the removal of over 700 SKUs that are no longer sold but currently show up in the application, and faster paths to create orders. The results will be hundreds of millions of less taps for our servers, less scrolling, and more importantly, more accuracy and faster order taking. We also believe this initiative will help with server turnover as we’ve had some issues of new servers leaving after being frustrated by the current tablet system within thirty days of starting.

The new app will also continue to work even if the restaurant’s Internet connection goes down through a seamless offline mode and also feature easier split check capability, which can be a pain for our servers and slow down table turns in

: the current

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: system. Another major tech initiative is upgrading the Internet and WiFi throughout our estate. This was a project that began last year with our Comcast partners will be completed by calendar year end. It brings three important improvements to our connection. One, cellular backup if the network goes down to continue service.

Two, higher speed Internet for restaurants on older technology. And three, better WiFi coverage within the restaurants by installing over 5,000 new access points. Given how much of our operation now depends on the Internet connection and the speed of it, this is a very important foundational upgrade. CIO Chris Caldwell has done an exceptional job in his first year refocusing his organization on enterprise technology projects that will make a real difference removing friction and improving productivity every day for our restaurant teams. Now let’s do an update on Maggiano’s.

Today we announced the leadership change, Dominique Barloni has made a decision to step away from Maggiano’s and Brinker. Dom brought Brinker a new lens to hospitality and food that has inspired all of us to see what the Maggiano’s brand can be, especially with the recent reimaged Orlando Maggiano’s, our first reimaged restaurant in the Maggiano’s turnaround. I want to offer my sincere thanks to Dom for his friendship, leadership and service to Brinker over the past two years and wish him the very best in his next. While we are making progress on menu simplification and upgrading recipes, we do have an opportunity to apply more of the Chili’s turnaround to Maggiano’s. One of the keys at Chili’s was leaning into the things that made Chili’s great when it was at its best and making those things relevant again.

When Maggiano’s was at its best and growing the fastest, its core was a menu of delicious Italian American favorites served in abundant portions in an inviting atmosphere where you’d have a great time with friends and family. This was the recipe for great value. The core essence is why guests frequent Maggiano’s and is what we need to focus on to reignite and make Maggiano’s a growth concept. To accelerate a back to Maggiano’s turnaround, I will now be overseeing the Maggiano’s as the interim president. We also have promoted the Chili’s VP of Operations from the Florida region, Rich Kissel, to COO of Maggiano’s.

Florida has been a top three performing Chili’s region for years and Rich’s leadership has been the reason why. Rich is known for being a disciplined operator who builds great teams and is not afraid to challenge the status quo when change is needed. Rich and I together with the Maggiano’s leadership team are crafting a back to Maggiano’s plan, which will apply the key learnings from the Chile’s turnaround to address the biggest opportunities on the brand’s food service and atmosphere. We will also commit to spending more time listening to the restaurant team’s ideas like we’ve done on Chili’s to drive the ideation that will accelerate Maggiano’s turnaround. I’m looking forward to sharing plans in upcoming calls.

I continue to be encouraged by our business momentum and I’m just so proud of our team. Our Chili’s business has been rebuilt for the long term sustainable growth with a larger consumer base that now includes a new generation being introduced to the brand, a tighter menu, more labor, properly working equipment, upgraded technology, and restaurants in good condition. That stronger foundation plus an exceptionally strong fiscal twenty six plan gives me the confidence we’ll be able not just to sustain the growth from ’25, but add an additional four quarters of growth. It’s not just our executive team in Dallas that’s confident in the plans. We just completed our annual general manager conference in Las Vegas last week and they all couldn’t have been more excited about the progress we’ve made together and the fiscal twenty six plans.

With great plans, the right investments and field leadership who was fired up, I am very confident about our ability to deliver fiscal twenty six. Before I hand the call off to Micah, I do want to recognize three restaurant leaders from that conference for their amazing results this year. John Kalbaca is our fiscal twenty twenty five General Manager of the Year. He leads a great team at the Best Page in New York on Long Island. He was selected above 1,000 plus other General Managers.

Henri Altuve was our above restaurant leader of the year. He’s done an exceptional job leading to the South Florida market and was chosen out of over a 140 directors of operations. And vice president Dale Bellotta was our five star VP this year. Now Dale just beat only 11 other VPOs, but that’s still really good because our VPOs are the best in the business. A big congratulations to John, Henry and Dale, well done.

Now I’m going to hand the call over to Micah and she’s going to walk you through the fiscal twenty five fourth quarter numbers and our guidance for fiscal twenty twenty six. Go ahead Micah.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Today’s results marked the fifth quarter in a row of double digit same store sales growth for Chili’s. As Kevin mentioned, this comes on the heels of lapping the prior year fourth quarter same store sales growth of almost 15%, capping off a very successful fiscal twenty twenty five for Brinker. This was year three of our investor growth strategy, and we continue to deliver industry leading results by focusing on the fundamentals of food, service, and atmosphere. Our multilayered marketing strategy continues to drive trial, and our ongoing operational improvements are bringing guests back.

For the year, we reported total revenue growth of 21.9%, eclipsing over $5,000,000,000 in revenues for the first time in our history. We also reported restaurant operating margin improvement of four twenty basis points and adjusted EPS growth of 117.1%. In addition, we improved average annual volumes at Chili’s from $3,600,000 a year ago to over $4,500,000 Turning to the fourth quarter, we continue to see strong year over year top line growth, same store sales and traffic well above industry averages, and significant restaurant margin expansion at Chili’s. Brinker reported total revenues of 1,462,000,000 with consolidated comp sales of positive 21.3%. Our adjusted diluted EPS for the quarter was $2.49 up from $1.61 last year.

Chili’s reported top line sales growth with comps coming in at positive 23.7, driven by positive traffic of 16.3%, positive mix of 4.7%, and price of 2.7%. Our improved operations and effective marketing have brought more guests to Chili’s. By showcasing our strong everyday value, we’ve continued to build on the success we saw with the Big Smasher launch last year, carrying that momentum through this quarter and into July. July sales and traffic for Chili’s increased double digits again, and we continue to maintain our significant gap to the casual dining industry. Turning to Maggiano’s, the brand reported comp sales for the quarter of negative 0.4%.

As Kevin mentioned, Maggiano’s will continue to focus on the fundamentals of improving food, service and atmosphere, and we remain confident in our ability to grow the business for the long term. At the Brinker level, we saw continued strong flow through this quarter with restaurant operating margin coming in at 17.8%, a two sixty basis points improvement year over year, primarily driven by sales leverage, partially offset by unfavorable food and beverage costs and higher advertising costs. Food and beverage costs for the quarter were unfavorable 60 basis points year over year due to unfavorable menu mix with 1.7% of commodity inflation offset by price. We remain pleased with the mix and profitability of our $10.99 three for me value platform, which continues to perform as expected. It offers a compelling price point for guests seeking value while still allowing us to maintain margin profitability.

Labor for the quarter was favorable 60 basis points year over year. Top line sales growth offset additional investments in labor, increased manager bonus due to performance achievement, and wage rate inflation of approximately 3.8. Advertising expenses for the fourth quarter were 3% of sales and increased 20 basis points year over year to help support the rollout of the Big QP campaign. Our marketing team continues to do an excellent job with menu innovation, keeping Chili’s in the cultural conversation and making the brand relevant again, which is helping to drive traffic. G and A for the quarter came in at 4% of total revenues, with year over year sales leverage offset by increases in ERP and system support cost.

Depreciation and amortization for the quarter came in at 4% of total revenues and increased 30 basis points year over year due to accelerated depreciation associated with the retirement of kitchen equipment. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately $212,000,000 a 50% increase from prior year. The tax rate for the quarter increased to 19.5, driven by the increase in sales, which accelerates at a greater rate than the offset generated by the FICA tax tip credit and due to an increase in non deductible executive compensation related to an increase in the stock price. Capital expenditures for the quarter were approximately $80,000,000 driven by accelerated investments in kitchen equipment and capital maintenance. Due to our ability to generate significant free cash flow, in addition to investing back in our restaurants, we repaid the remaining amounts outstanding on our revolver of approximately $90,000,000 totaling over $350,000,000 in debt repaid year to date.

This further improved our balance sheet and reduced our lease adjusted leverage to 1.7 times. In addition, during the quarter, we extended and increased our $900,000,000 revolver that was set to expire in August 2026. Our new $1,000,000,000 revolver expires in May 2030 and locks in ample liquidity to continue to support our disciplined capital allocation strategy, which is to invest in the business, pay down debt, and return excess cash to shareholders. In support of our capital allocation strategy, our Brinker Board of Directors authorized an additional $400,000,000 under our current share repurchase program, bringing the total amount available to $5.00 $7,000,000 Turning to fiscal twenty twenty six, we will continue the path of making smart and opportunistic investments against the backdrop of our successful strategy to continue growing the business. In addition, we’ll continue with our barbell pricing strategy to protect our industry leading value for those that need it while providing more premium options for those who want a more elevated experience.

We’ll continue to focus on menu management with the expectation that mix will be relatively flat. And we’ll continue to focus on improving the guest experience with expectations of delivering traffic well above the industry. Regarding fiscal twenty six guidance, in this morning’s press release, we shared that we expect: Fiscal twenty twenty six annual revenues in the range of $5,600,000,000 to $5,700,000,000 adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $9.9 to $10.5 Weighted average shares in the range of 45,000,000 to $46,000,000 and capital expenditures in the range of $270,000,000 to $290,000,000 Assumptions underlying this guidance include planned commodity and wage inflation in the low single digits, a tax rate of approximately 19%, and one to four net company owned restaurant closures, which are not expected to impact overall profitability. In the upcoming year, we will turn our focus to ramping up our reimage programs for both Chili’s and Maggiano’s, while also working on our long term new unit growth strategy, with the goal of fully rolling out both programs during fiscal twenty twenty seven, helping us return to positive net unit growth. To provide some additional context on our guidance, we are confident our plans will enable us to lap fiscal twenty twenty five and continue to significantly outperform the industry on sales and traffic.

We anticipate the strongest same store sales growth at Chili’s in the first quarter of the year, with more moderate gains in subsequent quarters due to last year’s high comparison base. Positive sales and traffic are expected for Chili’s each quarter. As a reminder, we will continue to manage the business for the long term and make investments strategically, so timing of expenses may not be spread evenly across quarters. An unwavering commitment to investment in the fundamentals, continuing to improve our food service and atmosphere has put us at the top of the casual dining industry. Being a part of the turnaround for the Chili’s brand has been fun, and the exciting thing is that we are just getting started.

I’m so proud of what the team has accomplished over the past three years, and I remain confident that by sticking to our invest to grow strategy, we’ll continue to drive further growth and sustain momentum through the business for the long term. And with our comments now complete, I will turn the call back to Holly to moderate questions.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please Your first question for today is from David Palmer with Evercore ISI.

David Palmer, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Great. Thank you. I feel like I always say congratulations, but congratulations on fantastic year. A question really on the restaurant margins, and I wanted to maybe ask for a comment on Maggiano’s. But the midpoint of the guidance would seem to imply maybe 100 basis points of restaurant margin expansion next year and that’s better than what the Street was expecting.

Your comps guidance was more or less in line with the Street. So just wondering maybe could you give some detail about the line items you would expect to get leverage from or perhaps deleverage from? I would expect there’s going to be some comparison help from restaurant expenses given the repair and maintenance investments, but there’s concern about food inflation. So any color around that would be helpful. And then on Maggiano’s, just wondering conceptually at this point, Kevin, in what ways do you feel like the Maggiano’s turnaround is going to be different in ways that are more or perhaps even less challenging than what you saw with Chili’s?

See one brand is being a little bit more marketing led than the other one. So any color on that prospects and for the turnaround would be helpful. Thanks so much.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Well, thank you, David. Okay. Well, I’ll start. So, to clarify a little bit, our margin expansion next year, I think it’s going to be more like I have talked about in the past in that 30 to 40 basis points expansion. So, I’m not really promising 100 basis points at this time.

That’s more in line with the sales and the guidance that we gave on revenue. I will say that there is some inflation in the cost of sales line. We could invest a little bit there. We’ve actually planned about $12,000,000 of investments in the cost of sales line for Chili’s. We also have a couple of million planned in the food and beverage line for Maggiano’s.

For labor, we will continue to leverage that again as we move forward and also our fixed cost in the other exit line. So I’m thinking margins are still we’re planning on expanding, but I think it’s more in that 30 to 40 basis points range. Obviously, if sales higher than we planned, then that gives us more opportunity to continue to expand the margins like we did this year.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: And then on Maggiano’s, David. So I don’t think it’s really that much different than the Chili’s turnaround. I think that’s part of the challenges that we’ve had in the past year is that I think we kind of fell in love a little too much with this idea of elevating the experience when you actually talk to Maggiano’s core guests and why they frequent Maggiano’s, it’s pretty clear. They love the taste of the food. They love scratch made Italian favorites.

They they love the abundant portions, so this idea of this over the top value that they get from Maggiano’s, and they love the connections that they get from the teammates at Maggiano’s and the connections that they make. So they it almost feels like it’s not a chain restaurant to them, it’s like their local restaurant. And when we look at what we were doing in the last twelve months and compare that to what I just said, there were some things that were consistent and then there were some disconnects. So for example, we had certain ways of bussing tables that made less noise and it was a lot more detailed in the way you drop plates on napkins and take a lot longer to bus a table, when the reality is the Maggiano’s guest just wants to be seated when the reservation comes, right? Or if you’re a walk in, they don’t want to be told forty minutes, they want to be told ten minutes, right?

So, if we get true about the experience that the Maggiano’s guest wants, and then actually sit down with Maggiano’s leaders in the restaurant to understand how we can better serve them, I’m very confident we can get this thing back on track. So I don’t think it’s going to be that different than Maggiano’s and I couldn’t be more excited than of the COO that is coming over from Chili’s, who literally helped lead the three year turnaround at Chili’s and knows exactly what success looks like. So I’m very confident we’re going to get that thing back on track.

David Palmer, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Thank you.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question is from Chris O’Cull with Stifel.

Chris O’Cull, Analyst, Stifel: Thanks. Good morning and congrats on another great quarter. Kevin, I believe fiscal twenty six was the final year contemplated in the three year growth outlook the company had provided at the Investor Day. Just looking ahead, do you see a need to update those growth targets? Maybe if so, what particular metrics do you believe you should revisit?

And then I had a follow-up.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: I can start and then Micah, feel free to chime The biggest thing I think that we see in the next three years that we didn’t really contemplate at that Investor Day two and a half years ago was this ability to start building faster. It’s going to take a year to build out that organization and find enough sites to really ramp up growth. But like we’re in a way different place today than we were three years ago. Three years ago, whatever available capital we had needed to be deployed to the existing restaurants to get them in good working condition, get the equipment in the right places that they needed to be, so that we could start our turnaround on Chili’s, and not build new restaurants. And now, we’re in a completely different place on that, right?

The restaurants are in much better condition. We have the equipment that’s required to service the volumes that we’re at now. So I don’t see the need for deploying as much capital to the existing restaurants we can deploy to the new restaurants. The second thing that’s completely different about the business today is that the restaurants make 3x the restaurant contribution today than they did three years ago. So, when we build new restaurants, we get paybacks a whole lot faster, which makes it a whole lot more attractive to deploy capital to new restaurants.

So, that’s when you asked that question, that was the first thing I thought was that’s a very big difference than we were three years ago. And so there might be some needs to update that once we have a new build plan in place, which we’re not ready to share yet. But I don’t know, Michael, you wanted to add anything beyond that.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes, no, but just taking a step back, that 3% to 5% revenue growth is that’s a really nice range for us longer term. So we don’t feel any need to immediately change it, EBITDA growth in the 5% to 8% and double digit EPS growth. So right now, we feel really good about that. But like Kevin said, as we ramp up new unit growth, as we see you know, we’ve had some really great years of exceptional growth. As we see that start to normalize, then we’ll make sure that our long term algorithm reflects all of our expectations as we move forward.

But right now, it’s still a very relevant algorithm for us.

Dennis Geiger, Analyst, UBS: Okay. And then, Kevin, how are

Chris O’Cull, Analyst, Stifel: you thinking about opportunities to either increase marketing investment or improve the efficiency of the spin that you already are making? And then any comments maybe just on what could come next in terms of value? I mean, the big QP messaging has been very successful, but I’m just curious, what maybe the value innovation pipeline could look like.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah. So, what was the first question again, Chris? I’m sorry.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: He just said about investment. So we are investing. We’re we’re keeping our marketing accrual at about 3% of total revenues, but that does allow us to incrementally invest every year as it grows a little bit. So, I think we have about 19,000,020 million dollars more in the budget this year. We’ve made some huge step ups at this point, so it’ll be more about tweaking it and investing smaller pieces where we think it makes sense.

But you want to talk about just the overall TV strategy, Yes, social so

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: and

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: I had forgotten the first question. So there is more money in the budgets, like Micah said, for marketing. Every year, the team looks at what worked, what didn’t, and they make tweaks to the menu the marketing mix. There’ll probably be slightly more mix to social this year based on the work that we’ve been doing with influencers. But I don’t think there’s major mix changes that we would report on, other than some small tweaks.

Mean, obviously, things are working pretty well, so it’s kind of hard to rationalize making major changes to the mix, other than just putting more money into the business. And then as far as the value, we’re going to stay on value. So, got a bunch of new margaritas of the month at $6 coming. We’re going to continue to ride the BIG QP. We’ve got some new advertising ideas on value.

One is gonna be un price pointed, that’s gonna start fairly soon, something we haven’t advertised yet, which I think really exciting, will be really exciting for the guest. And it won’t scream value like a price point, but it’ll scream value in other ways. And then in the back half of the year, we plan to have an all new message for $10.99 value that we’re not ready to share yet. But, so we’re very much in touch with, we need to make sure we continue to bring news to value, keep it exciting for the guests. We have a lead right now versus some of our competitors.

We can’t let our foot off the gas.

Chris O’Cull, Analyst, Stifel: Great. Thanks, guys.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Thanks, Chris.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question is from Jeff Farmer with Gordon Haskett.

Jeff Farmer, Analyst, Gordon Haskett: Good morning and thanks. Could you guys just provide a little bit more color on the expectations for basically the same store sales components, traffic pricing mix, your assumptions for Chili’s in FY 2026 and then beyond that, how you’re thinking about casual dining segment traffic for 2026 as well?

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Okay. So I’ll start, Jeff. So I’ll start with price. So we have our 3% to 5% pricing strategy. We were taking price in previous years at a much higher rate.

This last fiscal twenty twenty five, we got it to the mid single digits. And I think this upcoming year, what’s embedded in our guidance is even a little bit lower, so a little bit closer to the 3% instead of the 5%. Some good news with that is we don’t have a lot of price increases planned for the back half of the year. So, have a lot of flexibility there. If we have any unexpected inflation, I think we have some flexibility to take price if need be.

But with that being said, we’re very aware of the consumer and we’re going to make sure that we protect our industry leading value and just lean into that barbell strategy. So we did take a little bit of price at the very end of Q4 in F25. So, that means that for F26, Chili’s price will be closer to that 4% range in Q1 and Q2, and then it’ll taper off to 3% and then maybe 2% as the year goes on. So those are some high level guidance. Again, we always reserve the right to take a little price or those could change, but that’s what we have embedded in the guidance right now.

As far as mix goes, I said in my script that we expect it to be flat. We’ve had some great mix run, especially with the triple dipper. As we start to lap that into F26, that could start to moderate. I will say we had some great numbers in Q4 with on top of the triple differ. We had some favorability.

We added the $12.99 layer in our three for me and had some nice upgrades there that helped drive mix. We’ve we’ve also had some positive mix in appetizers and a dessert. So with that being said, we’re gonna keep with our sharp menu management and any mix that continues to be positive really be upside to, you know, what what we’re planning. And then as far as traffic goes, again, like I said, we plan to continue to be positive in traffic. We know that those comparisons get a little tougher in the back half, but our plan is to continue to drive traffic as as the year progresses.

Jeff Farmer, Analyst, Gordon Haskett: Alright. Thank you very much.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question for today is from Dennis Geiger with UBS.

Dennis Geiger, Analyst, UBS: Great. Thanks, guys, and congrats. First, I wanted to ask just on sort of if any shifts in the contributors to your sales momentum. Kevin, know you ran and Mike, I know you ran through a bunch of the drivers. Any shift this quarter from prior?

You gave the free from eMix. I don’t know, on the triple or something on the marketing side, if you kind of noticed anything different there? And as it relates to 2026, you know, some of your bigger broader initiatives, do the contributors look different in ’26 than ’25 recognizing, of course, there are different initiatives specifically?

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Well, the same store sales being mid single digits, so that’s just a different guideline. But what it’s going to be is, like I said, price will still be a contributor. It’ll be not as high where it’s mid single digits, maybe closer to the 3% to 4% range. We have mix planned flattish. And so any continued mix progress will be upside there.

And then again, to have positive traffic to fill in the rest. So that’s kind of what we’re planning as we move forward.

Dennis Geiger, Analyst, UBS: Got it. And then I just want to touch on the new customer dynamic and sort of what you’re seeing there. I know you’ve given updates in the past as it relates to those new customers, the frequency after newer visits or kind of bringing customers back. Any kind of latest updates there on, on that that cohort behavior shift that you guys are seeing?

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yep. So we’re still growing all income levels. So that’s the good news. We saw growth in low, medium, and high, especially when we have traffic numbers like we’ve had. So every every income level is growing.

And as far as frequency goes, what I will tell you is we’ve had a huge influx, obviously, of new and lapsed users, and our frequency is actually staying flat. So that’s really good that we don’t dilute that number as we move forward. So we’re bringing new guests, and they’re falling. They’re having a great operational experience, and they’re coming back just as frequently as our other guests. So we feel really good about how that’s working out.

Brian Milan, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Thanks, Maika.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: You’re welcome.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question is from Christine Cho with Goldman Sachs. Yes. Thank you so much, and congratulations on successful three year milestone. I was hoping to get a little bit more detail on your STORE Reimage plans this year, particularly around that 200 priority assets that need updating. Any color on the timeline, scope, required investments and any early sense of kind of the sales lift or return profiles for these investments?

Thank you.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yeah. So Christine, we’re still really early in the process. So our plan is to get four restaurants reimaged here in Dallas. They’re gonna be at different levels and different scopes. We’ll evaluate the results there, and then the team is working on what’s really scalable for the back half of the year.

So still a lot of learnings to be had this fiscal year. I expect later in the fiscal year, we’ll have just more details to share on exact levels of investments, if we can expect any sales lift, and what that ramp up will be. Again, on the 200, that is where we said, hey, those are some that we may prioritize as we start ramping up. But again, we’re just looking to get to that that run rate that Kevin mentioned of that 10% per year just to get in a more just a better cadence of keeping all of our restaurants updated and relevant.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah. I mean, only thing I’d add is we’re not in a rush to reimage. We’re in a rush to get it right. And then once we get it right, we’ll move with speed. So right now, we’re just going get those four reimaged.

We’re going to learn from them. And then hopefully, we’re going to ramp up more in the back half of the year. But like I said on my prepared comments, we don’t expect to get to that 100 plus run rate until the start of calendar twenty seven.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you so much. Your next question for today is from Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays.

: Great. Thank you. My first question is just on the fiscal twenty twenty six comp. I think, Mike, you just confirmed kind of that mid single digit guidance, which is similar to the revenue growth, which I guess makes sense with really no material unit growth. But I think you also noted plans for positive comps each quarter of the year.

Just wondering how you think about that, whether that’s something that’s important to you. And obviously, the second and third quarter seems like it will be a lot tougher to achieve. I’m just wondering if you’re making strategic decisions with that goal in mind or how you should how we should kind of think about that sequencing through the year. I know you said you’re off to a good start, but just trying to understand the potential for those comps to go negative and still achieve that mid single digit for the full year. And then one follow-up.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes, right. So I’ll start and let Kevin kind of add some color on that. But no, we feel really good. I talked about that we have some great momentum into Q1, so we know that we feel really solid about that. And we have some great plans to comp the comp.

So we do expect to have positive same store sales at Chili’s all four quarters. Now be it maybe less positive as we lap the harder numbers, but we still expect it to be positive.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yes, we were very deliberate with the comments Jeff on that. And that we are very confident. Part of planning a year is math. Planning a year is making sure you have really strong plans so that you can deliver that math. And the reason why we shared comments that we did is we we believe we’re able to do this.

So, look at the plans, you look at the momentum, and you look at the run rate. Like, we believe we’re gonna grow sales every quarter, regardless of the how big the how big the rollover is. So, we thought that was very important to share with everybody.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: That’s our expectation.

: No. We we look forward to tracking that progress. And then the second question is just on the flow through. I’m just wondering how you balance maybe the desire to flow through the comp momentum into restaurant margin and ultimately earnings versus reinvesting in the business? Presumably, you’re still in the early days of this turnaround, and therefore, reinvestment would be prudent.

So I’m just wondering how you balance that and maybe what the top investment priorities are. It sounds like it’s, I guess, remodels in the short term, but how you balance the flow through to earnings versus reinvesting? Thank you.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes. So Jeff, that’s always something that’s on the top of our minds. If I take a step back and look at fiscal twenty twenty five, Kevin recapped a ton of investments that we made. We watched our revenues that allows accelerate investments when we do really well. So with all those investments we’ve made, we still managed to grow restaurant operating margins by 400 basis points.

I started talking about this a little bit, but we do have some nice investments still already factored in the guidance that I gave you. So I mentioned the food that we have about $12,000,000 at Chili’s built in for some investments in food. We have another $1,000,000 or 2,000,000 for Maggiano’s. We actually have 17,000,000 built in for some incremental labor for Chili’s, another $4,000,000 for Maggiano’s. So I feel really good about the investments that we have, a nice amount of investments already built into this guidance we gave.

So that’s good. And I think that our rate of investment, it is slowing a little bit, which is good. So we can flow through a little bit more, you know, but we’ll we’ll see what the sales do. So the sales allow us to accelerate some of those ideas and have more. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is we are gonna take some of the profits and flow through and reinvest it back into the guest and team member experience because we think that is the secret sauce to our success is to continue to invest, to improve that experience, gives us, you just better guest experience, more pricing power, all the things we need to stay relevant and, keep that top line growing.

: Thank you.

Brian Vaccaro, Analyst, Raymond James: Thank you.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question is from Brian Harbour with Morgan Stanley.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International0: Hey, guys. Good morning. Where do you see the chance to build more Chili’s as you sort of get to that unit growth plan? And I guess, there still other kind of real I think you’ve done successful relocations in the past too. Are there still opportunities to do that?

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes. So historically, we’ve been very successful in our three biggest states, which is Texas and Florida and California. With Richard and team, we think we have an opportunity to even put some more analytics on the front half of this process and to go into some markets where we historically haven’t gone. So just with the strength of the brand, with the sales, with the margins that allows us to move to different spots, it could be you know, we could build more where we have some very some of our most successful restaurants are in the Northeast. So, we could lean into that a little bit more.

The Pacific Northwest is the area we said we haven’t been in. And I do think there’s just many areas across the country that we could probably look a little bit harder and expand our growth. More to come on what we think that landscape looks like from a bigger picture, but we do think there’s plenty of opportunity to build outside of those three main states.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International0: Okay, thanks. Micah, isn’t cost inflation some or I guess also the investments, is that going to be somewhat similar by quarter? Is there any lumpiness to that? I don’t know where commodity contracting is, if you think it’s more inflationary in the first half or anything like that.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes. You know what, right now, I’d say it’s more evenly spread. So commodities might be a little heavier. The inflation might be a little heavier in Q1. So one might be a little Q1 and Q3 look like they have a little lumpiness to it.

But other than that, most of the other investments like labor and the other things I mentioned are more evenly spread.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International1: Thanks.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question for today is from Jon Tower with Citi.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International1: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. One for Micah and one for Kevin. Micah, with the accelerated depreciation for this quarter and last quarter, can you just kind of help us think about how that’s going to look in fiscal twenty twenty six? And then, Kevin, you had mentioned the north of six initiatives.

I was just wondering if you could kind of flesh out

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: what

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International1: those stores are doing differently than the rest of the system, how they look and what you’re going to integrate back into the remainder of the system versus what they have today to kind of push them towards that $6,000,000 AUV?

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: I’ll start with depreciation. So, John, if you back out that accelerated depreciation of about $3,000,000 I talked about, I think that’s probably dollar wise good starting place for next year what you can think the run rate of depreciation will be.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: And then on north of six, John, so there’s several pieces to it. There’s some short term pieces and there’s some longer term pieces. So the questions range from how do they better use the space in the heart of house or the kitchen to how do they staff differently, how do they schedule differently, even things like delivery. So many of those restaurants get three deliveries a week instead of two deliveries a week. And then how they also space out certain things come in a traditional delivery, some come with the fresh delivery, and there’s some things we can change on that, so that when they do get deliveries, it’s not so overwhelming because they can spread it across multiple different deliveries.

So, there’s a lot of different things coming for North Of 16, and it’s really exciting, because they’re operating with the same mousetrap as the others. Like, they’re not bigger restaurants, don’t have bigger kitchens, they’re not in dramatically different trade areas. It literally is the way they operate. So we’re just taking the best learnings from those restaurants. We’re applying them to the existing restaurants.

And then those restaurants are also coming up with new things that they don’t do that we can potentially deploy to the entire system to also improve throughput for everybody. So, it’s very, very encouraging and when we actually have things that roll out, I’ll make sure I share them in the operational updates in our earnings calls, but it’s, you know, our belief is there’s so much more capacity still left in our business, like if you look at our traffic over the last twenty years, like we’re nowhere near where our peak was. So everybody is like wondering like, know, how much more can they do? And the answer is a whole lot more. If you believe, you know, twenty years ago with probably a more complex menu, were able to do even more throughput.

So, when we have more details on what we roll out, we’ll make sure we share it. But like the first one we’ve done is the is moving a bunch of restaurants from two deliveries to three deliveries, which frees up a ton of time for those managers.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International1: Great. Thanks for taking the questions.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question for today is from Brian Milan with Piper Sandler.

Brian Milan, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Thank you. Kevin, you talked in the prepared remarks about how much the business has changed over the last few years. In that spirit, just want to ask about the evolution of the core four. I think it was something like 40% of sales when you started, I think. Maybe talk about how that’s grown and where that fits today.

Then just related to that, as you address improving the rest of the menu from here forward, do you think the core four to maintain the sales volumes at the same time you grow the rest of the menu? Any thoughts would be great.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah. Well, call it the five to try now because it includes triple. It continues to grow. So, you know, we continue to put heat on it, is exciting. The thing that’s really exciting, I think, in the next three years of the turnaround is our ability to then upgrade the balance of the menu.

So, you know, a lot of times people hear great things about Chili’s and they’re like, I’m gonna give it another try. And they come in and some we haven’t touched everything and the things that we haven’t touched, they have a lower probability of being as good as the things that we have touched. And maybe they don’t have as good experience as they would with the five that drive and our core items. And then they leave thinking, well, maybe all the hype’s wrong and this is the same old Chili’s, right? One of the ways that we can continue the comp growth over the next three years is to make sure everything is as great as the five to drive and is consistently made and has the right operational procedures.

So, that’s all upside. And we just saw that. RIBS was not part of the core four when we started. We spent almost two years fixing that product, fixing the process, getting to a much bigger rib spec, getting a better recipe, better smoking, a crust on the ribs, had to get new equipment to do that. And I promise you, you go in and get a full rack of ribs, you’re gonna be blown away.

I mean, it’s pretty awesome and I’m pretty excited about that product, and the thing I really challenge the team is like, why can’t all of our products be that wow, right? They should be, that’s why people go out to eat. So, I have a huge amount of confidence that we’re focused on the right things in the next three years, which is these other items that are not quite as big as the core four or the five to drive. And my hope would be in three years from now is that everything’s as great as Five to Drive, and I think we have plans to do that.

Brian Milan, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay. Thank you. And just a follow-up, same one question. The steak platform and the salad platform, can you get to that this year or is that maybe maybe beyond this year?

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: No. I I shared I shared all of our food innovation in the call, so our hope is to get that in the 27 steaks and salads. So the, you know, the main items that we’re working on, there’ll be a full year ribs, full year frozen. We’ve got the new queso, which will also show up. It shows up like five different ways in the menu, the nachos, the trash can style nachos, chicken bacon ranch nachos are gonna be a big I think a big hit in the restaurants.

And in the back half, we get this new chicken sandwich platform, and then all throughout the year, there’s four core ingredients that show up in a ton of our recipes that we’re upgrading, is bacon bits, we’re going to 50% more thick bacon strips, we’ve got upgraded mayo coming that will eventually upgrade the munch once mayo is upgraded. So, we’ve got some pretty big upgrades coming in the core products that I think are going help all of the dishes too.

Brian Milan, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Thank you.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Thanks, Brian. Your next question is from Alex Slagle with Jefferies.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International2: Thanks. Good morning and congrats. Question on the RIBS and what do you think opportunity is there in terms of sales mix, how you want to really entice people to come in and drive that frequency. And I’m kind of curious what the ribs mix was way back if you have any information on that kind of going years back.

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah, I don’t really have the specific numbers. I can tell you we don’t mix that much today, right? So before the rib upgrade, I think it was between 45% when you add the smokehouse combos. What I can tell you right now is per 100s are up over 20%, and that’s just from the menu merchandising and the quality of the ribs. And when you see guests, when they get the rib platter, they’re just kind of blown away.

That’s why we have so much confidence that it’s something that we could use to drive traffic. It’s not the biggest segment in the world, like bone in. Bone in products aren’t the biggest segment because young people tend to like things that are boneless, but we think we have such a good product, we think we’ll be able to use that to drive traffic over time. Maybe it won’t be the big tent pole that you see on TV with 10.99 burgers, but we do believe it’s such a good product, there should be ways to be able to get to use it to drive demand and drive traffic into our restaurants, because it is such a wow when you order it. So, so far, without any kind of advertising, just the menu merchandising and the quality of product, we’ve seen an increase of 20% on incidents.

So, there’s no reason why we don’t think that could be even more once we turn advertising on.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International2: Great. And that’s in 2Q?

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah. That plan is to turn advertising on in Q2. Yes, right.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International2: Got it. Thank you.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question is from Eric Gonzalez with KeyBanc.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International3: Hi, thanks and congrats on just a great year. I’m just curious if there’s any discernible difference between the performance at lunch versus dinner or perhaps you’re seeing strength during the week versus the weekend? Just anything you can read into regarding consumer behavior around the day parts and the days of the week.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: You know what Eric, the great news is that there’s not really a big difference. So we’re driving lunch, we’re driving dinner, we’re driving weekday, weekend. So we’re driving just all pieces of the business. The great news is that $10.99 dollars 3 for me, that does drive lunch, it drives dinner, it drives everything. So yeah, no, we’re seeing growth across all parts.

So very happy with that.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International3: Great. And then Kevin, just on the Mondial’s turnaround, obviously, it’s not a huge part of the business. But I’m just wondering how you’re going to manage your time and just make sure that it doesn’t become a distraction? Or do you feel like Chili’s is just such a well oiled machine that maybe you could delegate a little more responsibility and really focus on Maggiano’s or is this just how you’re thinking about that going forward?

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah, I mean, obviously, that’s a concern for everybody, right? Because we’ve had such great success on Chili’s. The first thing I’d tell you is, we have an exceptionally strong Brinker and Chili’s leadership team. Over the last three years, we’ve built I mean, pretty much every one of our leaders are best in class in the industry. And so, it makes it a little bit easier to take a little bit of time away from there to go spend more time in Maggiano’s restaurants.

The second thing I would tell you is, all of our executives are doing listening sessions now. Year So, one, it probably was just me and a little bit of our COO, Doug Cummings. Now, of our executives are doing listening sessions. So, we stay very much in touch with what’s happening in Chili’s. There’s nobody on our leadership team that doesn’t know what the hot topics are that we need to burn dogging and improve in the business to continue to drive the comp.

So, the number one I’d say is I think the team is a lot stronger today than it was three years ago. The second is that I’ve mapped out my time. I’ve done this before in a prior assignment where I’d run too broad. It’s very easy when you start making choices about what’s most important and what’s not, to figure out how to carve out time to do this. Don’t want say this forever, and two, I don’t think it’s going to be that much time.

If I thought it would be more time, I’d probably be having a different discussion with our Board about what we want to do. So, I’m not particularly worried about it. I’m actually energized by the opportunity because I think the more I’ve gotten into the business in the last couple of months, the more I see is very, very similar challenges to Chili’s and I think we’re treating it a little bit differently and I don’t think it needs to be treated that much differently. Obviously, I think in the next earnings call, we’ll be able to share the initial things that we’re going to do, because I think it is pretty clear what we need to do. And I think you’re going to see some progress.

I’m not to answer your question more directly, I’m not worried at all about the amount of time it’s going to take.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International3: That’s perfect, thank you so much.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Your next question is from Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James.

Brian Vaccaro, Analyst, Raymond James: Hi, thanks and good morning. Thanks for all the detail today. I had a question on the Triple Dipper and sorry if I missed it, but what was sales mix in the quarter? And are there any specific initiatives planned to continue to drive that platform?

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: So while they pull the mix, I’ll I’ll share the next initiative on triple. So so the social team is constantly mining for how our guests are using the triple zipper and seeing other ideas that we can use. And so there’s really there’s two things going on. One is there’s going be a social influencer push on a new way that the customer’s been using the Triple. So, they’ve been ordering mox planks and then putting them on the burger bites and then pulling the burger bite apart, so you can get like a cheese pull inside of a burger.

And that’s going to be happening soon. Think it’s in the next couple of weeks. I don’t have the exact date where that’s going to go live. So we hope that will create some excitement on Triple. And then the second is, we are going to be putting Triple on TV.

And it’s something that we just worked with in our General Manager Conference to make sure that they are aligned with what’s happening, but it’s a big deal because we do a ton of triples today and so we’re likely going to be doing more once it goes on TV and we need to make sure that operationally we’re ready and we’ve been spent the last two quarters making some things more operationally simple on the triple, so that we can handle more volume. And we’re also doing the TV at a time of year where the absolute volume seasonally are lower. So we’re going to get a pretty good read about understanding whether we can activate triple on TV, both in terms of driving demand with TV, similar to what we’ve done with social, as well as can we handle the volume operationally by doing it in a quarter where we just don’t absolute volumes aren’t as high. So, I’m very excited about the Triple plans and I think all the other improvements that we’re making on things like Bacon Bits and Ranch and Mayo, I think it’s going to also help the quality of the Triple Dipper too.

So I think we’re going have a great year on Triple Dipper.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes. And Brian, as I think we talked about last quarter percent of total sales, triple diverse still about 15% of our total sales, so still going strong.

Brian Vaccaro, Analyst, Raymond James: Okay. Great. That’s very helpful. And I guess you talked also about rolling upgraded server handhelds. When do you expect that to be rolled and kind of just any details on how that cost is going to be accounted for?

And do you expect that to impact average table station sizes or to yield any productivity gains?

Kevin Hockman, President and CEO, Brinker International: Yeah. So it’s not so there’s no it’s not a hardware upgrade. We actually last year, we actually upgraded all of our iPads to the latest version, and we got enough iPads because they’re because the restaurants are so busy, needed more iPads for all the servers. So that’s all that’s all been that’s already been deployed last fiscal. The upgrade that we’re talking about is a software upgrade, so it’s completely changing the user interface, it’s removing all the 700 PLU’s that kind of clutter the system, and then shortening the amount of time it takes to order something.

So, I think the team did a time study on it. It’s going to remove eight years of tapping for the servers when you add it all up annually. So, it’s a pretty big project. I believe it’s going to go live by Q3, but we can get an exact time of that. But I’m pretty sure at the end of the calendar year it’s going be ready to go, assuming the testing goes well.

Brian Vaccaro, Analyst, Raymond James: Great, thank you. And I guess just one more, Micah, on the fiscal twenty twenty six guidance, what does that embed for G and A? Thanks for all the help today.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Yes, so G and A is going to be about 4% of total revenues for the full year.

Brian Vaccaro, Analyst, Raymond James: All right. Thank you.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Thank you, Brian.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I will now turn the call back to Kim Sanders for closing remarks.

Kim Sanders, Vice President of Investor Relations, Brinker International: Thank you, Holly. That concludes our call for today. We appreciate everyone joining us and look forward to updating you on our first quarter fiscal twenty twenty six results in October. Have a wonderful day. Bye, everyone.

Thank you.

Holly, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.