Earnings call transcript: FAT Brands faces revenue decline in Q4 2024

FAT Brands Inc. reported a decline in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024, with total revenue decreasing by 8.4% to $145.3 million. The company recorded a net loss of $67.4 million or $4.06 per diluted share. Despite these challenges, FAT Brands plans to open over 100 new locations in 2025, signaling optimism for future growth. The company’s stock showed a modest increase in aftermarket trading, rising by 0.29% to $3.44. InvestingPro analysis reveals the company operates with a significant debt burden, with a total debt of $1.54 billion as of Q3 2024, though current analysis suggests the stock may be undervalued.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue decreased by 8.4% in Q4 2024.
• The company plans to open over 100 new locations in 2025.
• Net loss of $67.4 million was reported for the quarter.
• Aftermarket stock price increased slightly by 0.29%.
• Focus on international expansion and co-branding strategies.

Company Performance

FAT Brands experienced a challenging fourth quarter, with a notable decline in revenue compared to the same period last year. The decrease was attributed to factors such as store closures and reduced operating weeks. However, the company’s full-year revenue showed a 23.4% increase, highlighting overall growth in 2024. The company remains committed to expanding its footprint with plans to open more locations and enhance its co-branding strategy.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $145.3 million, down 8.4% YoY
• Net loss: $67.4 million or $4.06 per diluted share
• Adjusted EBITDA: $14.4 million, down from $27 million YoY

Outlook & Guidance

FAT Brands is optimistic about 2025, with plans to open over 100 new locations and continue its international expansion efforts. The company is focusing on reducing debt and exploring potential liquidity events for its manufacturing facility. The development pipeline includes approximately 1,000 additional locations, which are expected to generate significant incremental adjusted EBITDA. However, InvestingPro data shows the company is quickly burning through cash, with a negative free cash flow yield of -144% and a concerning current ratio of 0.3, highlighting the importance of successful execution on these growth initiatives.

Executive Commentary

Chairman Andy Wederhorn expressed optimism about the company’s growth prospects, stating, "2025 is off to an exciting start with the successful launch of Twin Hospitality Group as a standalone public company." He also emphasized the company’s focus on organic growth and deleveraging, noting, "We’ve got this huge pipeline of organic growth, which is free."

Risks and Challenges

• Continued revenue decline due to store closures and reduced operating weeks.
• Potential impact of consumer spending trends on certain brands.
• Challenges in reducing debt and achieving financial targets.
• Risks associated with international expansion and co-branding strategies.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the conversion of Smokey Bones locations, with the company planning to convert approximately 30 locations within 24 months. Questions also focused on the impact of consumer spending on brands like Fazoli’s and the positive performance of segments such as Roundtable Pizza and ice cream.

Full transcript - FAT Brands Inc (FAT) Q4 2024:

Conference Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the FAT Brands Inc. Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen only mode.

Please note that this conference is being recorded today, 02/27/2025. On the call from FATBANDS are Chairman of the Board, Andy Wederhorn and Co Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Ken Quick. This afternoon, the company made its third quarter twenty twenty four financial results publicly available. Please refer to the earnings release and earnings supplement, both of which are available in the Investors section of the company’s website at www.fatplans.com. Each contains additional details about the third quarter.

But before we begin, I must remind everyone that part of the discussion today will include forward looking statements. These forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The company does not undertake to update these forward looking statements at a later date. For a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact future operating results and financial conditions, please see today’s earnings release and recent SEC filing.

During today’s call, the company will also discuss non GAAP financial measures, which it believes can be useful in evaluating its performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in today’s earnings release. I would now like to turn the call over to Andy Wiederhorn, Chairman of the Board. Please go ahead.

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. As a Los Angeles based company, our thoughts are first and foremost with those affected by the devastating fires. Before I begin today, I want to thank our team members, franchisees and employees. Their dedication to our business, to each other and to our communities during this time exemplifies the true spirit of Fat Brands. We kicked off 2025 with a major milestone, the spin out of Twin Hospitality Group Inc, which operates our Twin Peaks and Smokey Bones restaurants.

In January, we distributed 5% of Twin Hospitality’s Class A common stock to shareholders while retaining the remaining shares. This amounts to approximately a $50,000,000 dividend paid to our Fat Brands shareholders of Twin Hospitality shares. Twin Hospitality now trades separately on the NASDAQ under the ticker TWNP. The public listing of Twin Hospitality creates an opportunity for shareholders to directly participate in the growth and success of the Twin Peaks brand. This strategic move enhances transparency and enables the market to better appreciate the distinct value of Twin Peaks.

Furthermore, it provides Twin Peaks additional currency to sustain and accelerate its robust growth. If you reference the original $12 per share IPO price of FAT Brands in 2017 and adjust the price for all the ordinary and special dividends paid to FAT Brands shareholders, the current basis in FAT Brands stock is $2.74 In other words, FAT has paid more than $9 in cumulative dividends. The current trading price of FAT reflects an approximately $2.5 per share adjustment for the dividend of the TWNP shares to establish the listing of Twin Hospitality Group. Following this call, we invite you to listen to the Twin Hospitality inaugural call at 05:15 Eastern Time led by CEO, Joe Hummel and CFO, Ken Kuik. The details are contained within their earnings release also issued this afternoon.

As noted in our public filings for Twin Hospitality Group regarding our bond refinancing that took place in Q4 of last year, we are committed to raising equity at Twin Hospitality and reducing debt in 2025 by $75,000,000 or more, including a minimum of $25,000,000 by late April. We believe we are on track to fulfill that commitment. As part of that same debt reduction obligation, we agreed not to pay a fat common dividend until that $25,000,000 dollars is paid. So we expect to complete that over the next sixty days and declare and pay the Q1 dividend as usual at that time. A key driver for fat brands in 2025 is unlocking the tremendous amount of value created at Twin Hospitality.

With TWNP operating as a separate independent public company and while market prices may fluctuate at the time of the spin off listing, FAT’s shares in TWNP were valued at more than $900,000,000 This is in addition to shedding over $400,000,000 of Twin Hospitality’s debt to the spin off entity from FAT. FAT will continue to consolidate the Twin Hospitality financials for the foreseeable future because of our ownership and control percentages. Nonetheless, we will break out this information so that you can see the clear unlocking of value at FAT. So another way to summarize the balance sheet post spin off is that FAT now owns the remaining 16 brands and their cash flow plus all of its fully diluted 85% of the TWNP stock and has net debt of approximately $850,000,000 plus approximately $150,000,000 in preferred stock. On another note, we are also looking to refinance our remaining three securitization silos as the market permits, perhaps most or all of those in the second half of twenty twenty five.

Now turning to our fourth quarter results, which Ken will dive into in more detail. There were thirteen weeks in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four and fourteen weeks in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Total (EPA:TTEF) revenue decreased 8.4% to $145,300,000 compared to $158,600,000 in the prior year quarter as a result of the incremental operating week in the prior year quarter. Our system wide sales were $580,200,000 for the quarter, representing a 7.4% decrease from the last year’s quarter, again due to the incremental operating week last year. To put this in perspective that one less week equals about $45,000,000 to $50,000,000 of sales and $2,500,000 to 3,000,000 of royalties and another $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 of adjusted store level EBITDA.

So there’s quite a lot of noise in our numbers because of that one week by one week adjustment. And also as we convert the Smokey Bone stores and or close a few of the underperforming units that won’t make the conversion list. We hope that this noise can be eliminated in 2025. So it will be a very clear line of sight for both TWNP and FAT going forward in 2026. We ended 2024 with total revenue increasing 23.4% to $592,700,000 and system wide sales increasing 3.1% to $2,400,000,000 As a reminder, we are focused on three core strategic initiatives to drive our success.

First, generating organic growth across our existing brand portfolios 1,000 plus new unit pipeline. Second, evaluating strategic acquisitions that could complement and strengthen our portfolio. And third, expanding manufacturing capabilities at our Georgia facility, particularly in cookie dough and dry mix production. Turning first to our organic growth initiatives. Throughout 2024, we opened 92 new restaurants.

This year, we plan to open over 100 new locations having already opened 17 units year to date. We anticipate strong organic growth across our portfolio in 2025, in particular with Great American Cookies and Marble Sub Creamery, Fatburger and Buffalo’s Express, Roundtable Pizza and Fizzoli’s. This growth trajectory is further supported by our robust Twin Peaks new store development pipeline. Our current development pipeline consists of signed agreements for approximately 1,000 additional locations, which includes over two fifty units that were signed in 2024. Once these units are open, we expect them to generate approximately $50,000,000 in incremental annual adjusted EBITDA, which will naturally strengthen our balance sheet and reduce our leverage.

This robust development pipeline demonstrates both strong consumer demand for our brands and the significant growth opportunities provided to our franchisee base. Co branding also continues to be a key driver of our growth strategy as seen by the success of multiple brand pairings across our portfolio. Great American Cookies and Marble Slab Creamery has been a standout example, growing to over 160 co branded locations since 2014, including 15 locations opening in 2024 and approximately 15 projected for this year. Co branded locations typically generate 10% to 20% higher incremental sales compared to single brand units. These compelling unit economics continue to attract franchisees and drive expansion.

Building on our co branding success, we’re looking to further lean into this strategy in 2025. To kick off the year, we opened a tri branded model of Great American Cookies, Marble Slab Creamery and Pretzel Maker in the Dallas area. Similarly, we are set to open several more Fatburger, Buffalo’s Express and Hotdog on the Thick locations in addition to Fatburger and Roundtable pizzas this year. The international appeal of our brands is especially evident with Johnny Rockets where international locations now represent over 55% of the brand’s global footprint. In 2024 alone, we opened 11 new international locations across multiple markets, two in Chile, Two in Bali, Indonesia, 4 in Mexico, Two in Brazil and a ghost kitchen in The United Arab Emirates.

Our presence continues to grow in key international markets with over 40 locations now operating in Brazil and nearly 25 in Mexico, demonstrating the strength of our international expansion strategy. Additionally, we continue to see significant opportunities in non traditional venues. A prime example is a recent opening of Hurricane Grill and Wings at the Six Flags (NYSE:SIX) Great Escape Lodge in Lake George, New York, our first theme park location for the brand. Johnny Rockets also continued to grow across non traditional venues opening at the Soaring Eagle Casino (EPA:CASP) and Resort in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. We believe these non traditional venues significant growth avenue allowing us to reach new customers while leveraging existing infrastructure and foot traffic.

I’d like to also address our renewed focus on synergies and cost reductions. We are continuing to reduce costs as we separate out Twin Hospitality Group from the rest of the brands at that. Taking essentially half of our 200 corporate stores and spinning them off with Twin Hospitality, meaning the corporate stores at Twin Peaks and the Smoky Bones locations. We plan to refranchise additionally our 57 company owned Fazoli’s locations, leaving us with approximately 33 Hot Dog and a Stick locations out of our 2,300 total locations or 2,125 if you exclude Twin Peaks and Smoky Bones. This will bring us back to being almost 100% franchise.

If you look at our supplement filed on January 13, you will and it’s in our Investors section on our website, you will see on pages eleven and twelve, third party valuation of all of our brands less our debt and given various assumptions and this supplement gives a good roadmap to value creation and our strategy to unlock the same, which is clearly our focus today. Now turning to our growth by acquisitions strategy. Our recent transactions have been highly strategic creating multiple avenues for value creation. A prime example is our acquisition of Nestle (NSE:NEST) Toll House Cafe by Chip about three years ago. This transaction was particularly compelling as it allowed us to convert these units to Great America Cookies locations, effectively growing our cookie footprint, while simultaneously increasing production volume in our manufacturing facility.

Similarly, we bought Smokey Bones in late twenty twenty three to help fuel Twin Peaks growth, which will allow us to convert about 30 of the Smokey Bones locations into Twin Peaks. This dual benefit illustrates our approach to acquisitions. We look for opportunities that not only expand our restaurant portfolio, but also drive incremental value through our manufacturing capabilities, essentially getting two bites at the apple. Looking ahead, our acquisition strategy remains focused on opportunities that are synergistic with our existing portfolio. We’re especially interested in concepts that could leverage our manufacturing capabilities, such as additional cookie concepts that would utilize our cookie dough or pretzel mix operation.

However, we maintain strict discipline in our approach and we’re not interested in turnaround situations of which we have seen many lately. Turning to our manufacturing operations, we currently generate approximately $38,000,000 in annual sales from our franchisees through our Georgia facility with a profit of about $15,000,000 representing a 40% margin. This is a win win situation as our franchisees buy cookie dough and pretzel mix at a below market price from us and we benefit from this high margin revenue stream. Our manufacturing facility presents significant growth potential currently operating at only 40% capacity. We have substantial room for expansion.

The facility spans four acres and we are only utilizing about half an acre. We can also increase production capacity through modest equipment upgrades within the existing facility when needed. Our near term goal is to increase utilization to 60% to 70%, which would significantly enhance the facility’s value. Ultimately, this asset could provide an opportunity to reduce our leverage through a potential sale. But for now, we’re focused on optimizing its operations and capturing the available growth opportunity.

Before concluding, I’d like to share an update on the Fat Brands Foundation. Since the FAT Brands Foundation commenced its giving in 2023, the organization continues to further cement itself as an emerging nonprofit leader. In one year, the foundation increased its giving by 36 providing approximately $325,000 in grants. The foundation also provided 27 more grants to deserving nonprofits across The U. S.

An increase of 59% from 2023 for a total of 70 grants in 2024 across 17 states plus Washington DC. Our commitment to community support also extends to crisis response as demonstrated during the recent LA wildfires. Through Fatburger’s food truck, the Fat Mobile, we provided 10,000 meals to first responders sites and shelters, while Roundtable Pizza offered free personal cheese pizzas to first responders at over 50 Los Angeles area locations and Hotdog on a Stick handed out free lemonade at a fundraising event at the Santa Monica Pier. These initiatives particularly resonated in Los Angeles where many of our brands have their roots. The combination of immediate crisis response capabilities and long term community development through our foundation’s work demonstrates our ongoing commitment to making meaningful contributions to the communities we serve.

The strong support from both FAT Brands corporate and our franchisees shows how deeply embedded community engagement is in our company culture. In conclusion, 2025 is off to an exciting start with the successful launch of Twin Hospitality Group as a standalone public company. As we look ahead, our primary focus for 2025 is deleveraging our balance sheet while continuing to execute on our robust pipeline of organic growth opportunities. The energy momentum I see across our organization makes me incredibly optimistic about Fat Brands future and I look forward to updating you on our progress in the coming quarters. And with that, I’d like to hand the call over to Ken Kuik to discuss our financial highlights from the fourth quarter.

Ken?

Ken Quick, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, FAT Brands Inc.: Thanks, Andy. Before I discuss our quarterly results, I’d like to briefly recap and Andy covered it a bit, our recent spin off of Twin Hospitality. On January 30, we distributed 5% of our ownership in Twin Hospitality Group Inc. Class A common stock to our shareholders, while the remaining shares continue to be held by FAT Brands. When Hospitality Group began trading on the NASDAQ at the time of the spin off and we’re excited as we begin this next chapter.

Separately, during the fourth quarter, we refinanced our Twin Peaks debt to a new series of thirty year fixed rate notes. This refinancing strengthens our financial structure and enabled us to complete the public listing of Twin Hospitality. As Sandy mentioned, we are committed to raising equity at Twin Hospitality and reducing debt by $75,000,000 in 2025 and believe we are on track to fulfill that commitment. Moving on to our fourth quarter results, I’ll start by noting that 2024 was a fifty two week fiscal year and 2023 was a fifty three week fiscal year. The fourth quarter of twenty twenty four was a thirteen week quarter and the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three was a fourteen week quarter.

So there’s one more week of operations in the last in last year’s results and the extra week falls in the fourth quarter. Moving on to our quarterly results, total revenues were $145,300,000 in the quarter, an 8.4% decrease from $158,600,000 in last year’s quarter. This was driven by the incremental operating week in the prior year quarter, which contributed $11,300,000 in revenue, lower same store sales and the closure of Smokey Bones locations for conversion into Twin Peaks Lodges, particularly partially offset by revenue generated by our new Twin Peaks Lodges. Turning to costs and expenses, general and administrative expense increased to $34,500,000 in the quarter from $30,300,000 in the year ago quarter, primarily due to $5,000,000 in Smokey Bone’s store closure costs, partially offset by the incremental operating week in the prior year quarter. Cost of restaurant and factory revenues decreased to $97,200,000 compared to $105,100,000 primarily due to lower company owned restaurant sales.

During the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we recognized $30,600,000 of non cash goodwill and other intangible asset impairment, primarily resulting from the decline in restaurant performance during 2024. Advertising expense varies in relation to advertising revenues and decreased to $11,800,000 from $13,800,000 in the year ago period. Additionally, we slowed down advertising at Smokey Bones as we continue our strategy of converting locations into Twin Peaks Lodges. Total other expense net, which consisted primarily of interest expense, was $36,400,000 in the quarter compared to $31,900,000 in last year’s quarter. Additionally, in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we recognized a $2,200,000 non cash loss on extinguishment of debt related to the refinancing of our Twin Peaks securitized debt.

Net loss was $67,400,000 or $4.06 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $26,200,000 or $1.68 per share in the prior year quarter. And on an as adjusted basis, our net loss was $29,900,000 or $1.87 per diluted share compared to $17,300,000 or $1.15 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. And lastly, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $14,400,000 compared to $27,000,000 in the year ago quarter with the extra operating week in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three contributing $1,900,000 to adjusted EBITDA. And with that operator, please open the line for questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: You.

Conference Operator: The first question comes from the line of Roger Lipton with Lipton Financial Services. Please go ahead.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Yes. Hi, Andy. Hi, Ken. Several questions. The Smokey Bones impairment loss from stores closed, you mentioned, presumably there was an operating or an EBITDA loss in the quarter also that affected the results.

Is that a fair assumption?

Ken Quick, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, FAT Brands Inc.: It is Roger, it’s a fair assumption. The operating loss from those restaurants really was felt throughout the year.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Right. Can you quantify that at all?

Ken Quick, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, FAT Brands Inc.: It was about $2,600,000 for the year, full year.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Okay. And I noted that the litigation costs dropped quite sharply in half actually year to year. Granted that it’s hard to talk about the expectations of litigation, but Andy, can you venture any thought at all in terms of how that’s going or might go or how the cash costs out of pocket will take place here going forward?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Well, as you know, no company really wants to talk about continuing litigation with having any clear line of sight, but we’re hopeful that the bulk of this litigation gets resolved during this year and we eliminate further legal expense. We also are hopeful that we’ll reach a settlement with some of our insurance carriers that will enable us to recover some of those legal fees that we’ve spent this year. And I think we’re very optimistic about that coming to play in probably Q2. So look forward to reporting on that as soon as we as soon as we have news to break.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Okay. And I think everybody has to be concerned you guys most of all about liquidity and maintaining strong liquidity. So So can you bring us up to date on how that stands in terms of cash on hand and available cash to deal with the month to month operational needs?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Sure. All of our numbers are reported publicly, so you can look at our financial statements for cash on hand. But with respect to liquidity, we maintain an available for sale portfolio of bonds. We have approximately $150,000,000 available for sale securities that sit on our balance sheet that from time to time as we need liquidity, we sell them into the market to generate cash. We also have an ATM on file that allows us to issue preferred stock, common stock, whatever we need to for liquidity purposes.

And as noted already on this call, we anticipate raising equity at the Twin Peaks level in the coming weeks in an effort to reduce some of our Twin Peaks corporate debt and that will also generate liquidity for Twin Peaks and some repayment of intercompany obligations between Twin Peaks and Fats. So all those things are happening. The markets seem to be open and moving again, which is great. And we don’t really see any foreseeable issues.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: All right. That’s helpful. And in terms of the potential within the portfolio aside from the potential of Twin Peaks, which is obviously on everybody’s mind and has taken place and will progress forward. But what portion of your remaining 16 brands could be used the same way? I mean, what are you thinking about in terms of you mentioned Johnny Rockets with international growth.

I don’t know whether that’s in any sort of a state that could be used in a similar fashion.

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: You should not think about I would not think about SAP Brands as an activity in splitting up the company brand by brand. That’s not a goal that we’ve stated. We felt that the Twin Peaks business is very different than many of the other franchise concepts that we operate and that alcohol percentages etcetera. So we’ve spun it off now. And of course, we’re sitting on some 50,000,000 shares of Twin Peaks stock.

So we look forward to realizing value from that brand, which in and of itself would go a long way to either reducing or eliminating all of our debt. We’ve talked before about our manufacturing operation and I just talked about it on this call as an opportunity to essentially take a non core asset and once we’ve used up more capacity or utilization of the factory, then we might look for a liquidity event. Now that could be an outright sale, it could be a spin off again, one of those things. I don’t see us spinning off additional restaurant brands today, never say never, but I don’t really think that’s likely. In fact, I think we’ll probably acquire more brands.

But I think the next couple of things to look at are our investment in Twin Peaks and our manufacturing business as logical next steps.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Okay. Well, thanks very much. I’ll get back in queue. My pleasure.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Next (LON:NXT) question comes from the line of Joe Gomes with Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Josh Delanberg, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Hey, good afternoon everybody. It’s Josh Delanberg, Joe. So I just wanted to kind of start off with, I just kind of looked at the earnings and you guys had kind of 92 openings for the year, which is great, but you guys kind of expected a little bit of 100 plus plus Can you add any color as to maybe why would this kind of just push to the right from the franchisees themselves into 25?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Yes, there’s definitely a little slippage into 25 from 24, maybe 20% of the stores. Some of that has to do with franchisee financing, a little bit of construction delays, but mostly just franchisees dragging their feet a little bit or claiming that lenders from a construction financing standpoint are just a little bit slower to react, a little choosier. So it’s a slight delay, but the pipeline is very solid. We have one way to measure the health of the franchise system is when your franchisees are continuing to come back and buy the rights to build more stores. And like I mentioned, we sold like two fifty incremental stores last year, keeping that pipeline full and keeping our development schedule full.

So we’re optimistic that we’ll get more than 100 open this year. We’ll know better as we get into the coming couple of quarters exactly what number that’s going to be.

Josh Delanberg, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Okay. That’s helpful. And obviously we got we kind of covered a report that kind of consumer confidence is down. Is any really of the brands been hit harder than others with respect to like consumer spending? And really on that flip side, which concepts have you guys seen that really have been like outperformers?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Yes. I mean, we definitely saw the QSR sector get hit on at the Fizzoli’s level where it’s very price sensitive brand and you had frequency during 2024 trade down as customers were trading down from their spending patterns from fast casual to QSR and so on. And so we probably saw high single digit same sort of declines in that category, but things have also started to turn around. We’re pretty optimistic about 2025 sales and we’ve seen some categories definitely be in the black. We’ve seen, for example, roundtable pizza with positive same store sales and we’ve seen cookies and ice cream come back handsomely.

So I think it’s a little bit of a mixed bag, but also there’s been crazy weather in the first six weeks of the year that really has affected everyone. So I think generally we’re optimistic. We may not be forecasting huge positive same store sales increases across all brands, but there’s definitely segments where we’re seeing positive pushes.

Josh Delanberg, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Okay, that’s great. And the last one for me is, obviously, you touched on this in your guys’ remarks, but kind of the with the election really behind us now, can you kind of expand more really in the M and A pipeline, have new opportunities come to you that really just haven’t prior to the election?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Well, we have I don’t think it’s so much about the election. We have we see a lot of stuff, right. We see deals every single week. There’s just a lot of turnarounds and they just haven’t been strategic for us where we’re getting checking two or three boxes at the same time. Cost of capital is still high relative to 2021.

And we’d rather refinance, delever, things like that right now rather than add to our leverage. So we committed to unlocking value and reducing leverage. We’re focused on that. There are definitely some targets that make strategic sense for us to acquire that would complement the existing portfolio. We are pursuing those timing is everything.

So we’ll just have to see how that comes together and how the markets react. And I think we’d all like to see lower interest rates and a looser financing market. But until such time, we’re going to focus on de levering. We’ve got this huge pipeline of organic growth, which is free. So to get that $50,000,000 of incremental EBITDA by just opening those 1,000 stores, that doesn’t cost us anything.

We don’t have to borrow anything. And so that’s a big focus for us is get those stores open. If we wanted to buy $50,000,000 of EBITDA, then we’re going to have to go write a big check and that’s going to have to come from somewhere. So that doesn’t really help our delevering strategy. Now that may all change as Twin Peaks grows, as we get diluted in our ownership and create some liquidity there and pay down some debt that could all change.

But I don’t think that that’s a big 2025 initiative other than maybe one or two targets that are very interesting strategically for us and we are continuing to focus on them.

Josh Delanberg, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks for taking my questions.

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Roger Lipton, Lipton Financial Services. Please go ahead.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Yes. Hi, again. Relative to putting to work or disposing of the Smokey Bones locations, what kind of timetable do you think is realistic?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Smokey Bones will majority of them will get through in 2026, ’20 ’20 ’5, ’20 ’20 ’6. We should be fairly far along. There may be some stragglers, but the majority of it over the next twenty four months we will have made a decision on and move forward. The numbers have been very encouraging. There are some complicated leases where there are multiple properties under master leases.

And so we’re trying to negotiate all of the leases at once because that’s what the landlord wants maybe more so than what we want. And so it’s taking a little longer on some of those more complicated master leases. But otherwise, we have a solid line of sight and we have franchisees who are stepping up to convert locations in their markets and we’re converting the corporate ones as well.

Roger Lipton, Analyst, Lipton Financial Services: Right. And you’re still thinking that something like 30 of the 58 locations will be suitable for conversions?

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Yes. 30 is a good number. There were 61 when we started, we’ve converted a couple, we’ve closed one. So 30 is a safe number, give or take that we get done. There’s always a chance it’s more usually if we haven’t converted a location and we don’t plan to it’s because there’s already a Twin Peaks nearby, so they’re too close to each other or there’s some landlord restriction that may have to do with the sale of alcohol or things like that, that some landlords where there might be a smokey bones have some master lease with a target as an example where they may have a 25% alcohol restriction and we know that Twin Peaks is in the high 40s percentage of alcohol, so it doesn’t qualify.

Those are the kind of reasons as to why. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Roger.

Conference Operator: Thank you. As there are no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of question and answer session. I would now like to turn the floor over to Andy Wiederhorn for closing comments.

Andy Wederhorn, Chairman of the Board, FAT Brands Inc.: Thank you, operator. I would like to thank all of you for participating in our earnings call today and happy to take any follow-up on a one off basis. Thank you again.

Conference Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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