Earnings Labs

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. (BJRI)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 19, 2016

$37.45

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the BJ's Restaurants, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Release and Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Greg Trojan, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to BJ's Restaurants' fiscal 2015 fourth quarter investor conference call and webcast. I'm Greg Trojan, BJ's Chief Executive Officer, and joining me on the call today is Greg Levin, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have Greg Lynds, our Chief Development Officer; and Kevin Mayer, our Chief Marketing Officer on hand for Q&A. After the market close today, we released our financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Tuesday, December 29, 2015. You can view the full text of our earnings release on our website at www.bjsrestaurants.com. Our agenda today will start with Rana Schirmer, our Director of SEC Reporting, providing our standard cautionary disclosure with respect to forward-looking statements. I will then provide an update on our business and current initiatives. And then Greg Levin, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide a recap of the quarter and some commentary regarding trends to-date this year and our thoughts regarding fiscal 2016. After that, we'll open it up to questions. So, Rana, go ahead.

Rana Schirmer - Director, External Reporting

Management

Thanks, Greg. Our comments on the conference call today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, February 18, 2016. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required to do so by the securities laws. Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Rana. Q4 was another successful quarter for our company and capped a tremendous record saving year for BJ's. With 9% top line growth, we increased net income in Q4 a robust 32%, and EPS by 39%, lapping one of our most successful quarters in 2014, when we grew net income almost 17 fold. Comparable restaurant sales in the quarter came in at 0.7%. And given the headwinds from the Halloween and Christmas calendar shift, we were pleased to slightly exceed our initial internal sales projections, while extending our string of six successive quarters of positive comp sales growth. For the full fiscal year 2015, we grew sales by 8.8% to $920 million, fueled by restaurant operating weak growth of 9% and a comparable…

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

All right. Thanks, Greg. As Greg Trojan noted, our record fourth quarter and full-year operating results were driven by positive comparable restaurant sales and the benefits of our return-focused restaurant development strategy coupled with our continuing success with our productivity and efficiency initiatives. Revenues for the 2015 fourth quarter increased approximately 9% year-over-year to $233.1 million, while net income and diluted net income per share increased 32.2% and 38.7% respectively to $10.9 million and $0.43. Our fourth quarter 19.9% restaurant level cash flow margin marks a 150-basis-point increase over last year's fourth quarter, and I'll remind you that included in our restaurant level cash flow is approximately 2.3% of marketing spend, which many peer companies include in their G&A. Therefore, excluding marketing spend, our four-wall restaurant level margins for Q3 were 22.2%, which we believe are among the highest in casual dining. Our comparable restaurant sales rose 0.7% during the quarter despite the negative impact from the calendar shift around Halloween and Christmas. We estimate that the holiday calendar shift negatively impacted comp sales by approximately 0.3%. So on a stable calendar basis, we estimate Q4 comp sales would have been positive 1%. Our weekly sales average for Q4 was a little over $105,000 per week, which was down about 0.7% from last year's fourth quarter. Quarterly revenue benefited from menu pricing in the upper-2% range, offset by a traffic dip of about 2.5%. Q4 cost of sales at 24.7% was in line with our expectation and 90 basis points lower than last year's fourth quarter due to lower commodity costs, primarily in cheese, dairy and seafood, and the benefits we continue to derive from our initiatives around menu mix and menu pricing. Labor was 34.2% for the fourth quarter and that represented a 50-basis-point reduction from the year-ago period…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our first question from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer & Company. Brian J. Bittner - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks. Just have a couple of questions. First question is on the unit growth. Can you just remind us the analysis that you guys have done to arrive at the 425 that's your target? And as we look over 2017 and 2018, where are the new openings coming? Are they still a lot coming in California? Or are you starting venture more and more out to the East Coast and the Midwest?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yeah, Brian, on the 425 units, we did an analysis, I want to say now it's probably five years to seven years old, where we use one of those national real estate site selection firms to go out and target where we could put BJ's based on historical factors. We also actually had our real estate group go out as well and go through the U.S. based on their experience and see where they could put BJ's Restaurants as well and we looked at both of those reports, which basically came together eerily similar, meaning, they both came up at around 425 units. We haven't updated that. I will tell you when I first got to BJ's and we did our first analysis, same type of analysis back in, I want to say, 2006 or 2007 that showed at that time 200 restaurants, we did it a few years later and it came up to the 400 range. And it's something that we have internally talked about doing an update probably this year and maybe next year. We haven't increased the number out there, because, at the end of the day, we don't have a concrete analysis, saying, what it is and instead of just throwing out a number. We always feel it's very important to have some type of quantitative analysis behind it. So that's where the 425 comes from. It was – research done by us about five years ago. In regards to our new restaurant, we did open one just recently in California, the first one in a few years, but most of our openings is going to continue to be in Ohio Valley and on the East Coast in the Virginia, Mid-Atlantic area. So as I look through our openings this year, we've got, I want to say, maybe three or four in the Virginia, Maryland area. We've got a few in the Ohio. In fact, we just opened our first one in Fairfield Commons up in Beavercreek, Ohio. We're going to open another one in Cleveland later this. We've got two more coming into the Pennsylvania market in the Pittsburgh area, that's has been really strong for us. I'm looking for our first New Jersey restaurant. So primarily outside of California and also outside of Texas, two of our, obviously, larger markets. Brian J. Bittner - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. And then, the second question is about comps. When you're thinking about the comps throughout 2016, is using a two-year trend a good way to think about it? Because you did take the big mix hit in 2014. So, I guess, you could say, you started maybe a new sales cycle starting in 2015. And if this is the case, and you're comping a 1% now with easier comparisons on the horizon internally, would you think about full-year 2016 comps as being a bit better than 1%?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Hey, Brian, that's a good question. And I don't know if I have an answer for you on that. One of the things that we have seen and I talked about the fact that we're going over our tougher comparisons. What I continue to see in casual dining, and that is when there is a reason to go out, meaning, it's a Valentine's Day, let's call it, something from a social standpoint, especially, in casual dining, we see some pretty big sales. But when I look at where we're trending this first quarter here, we went over some of our toughest comparisons, and we did that in early January. And frankly, that's when we had some of our best comps to start off the year. And I think the reason for that is, you're still on a celebratory mode from year-end, whether you've got gift cards, you haven't gone back to work, et cetera. And then you start to come back into your normal patterns. And even though our normal patterns seem to be a little bit easier, let's call it, year-over-year, we see that same type of slowdown. When I look at something like was just happened Valentine's Day weekend, we do big numbers on that. And again, I think casual dining has become a place of gathering, a place for people want to experience things together, and BJ's is great for that. So I'm not sure I can conclude that sometimes easier comparisons means that comps will be easier from that standpoint. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Brian, the only thing I'd add to that is, we're not looking at a repeat of 2014. Clearly, it was easier to drive comp sales where we have some check growth on our side in this…

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Will Slabaugh with Stephens, Inc.

Billy Sherrill - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Hey, thanks guys. This is actually Billy on for Will right now. Wanted to ask a little bit on the value – something that you guys spoke to earlier, and as we talked about, you had more of a focus on 2014. But looking forward to this year and given that we've seen a lot of value promoting across the industry, I was just wondering how you're thinking about what the next leg of your value message should be? And maybe along with that, what do you think is the biggest component that you're going to need to communicate to the guests in order to drive more sustainably positive traffic? Is it that value messaging? Is it the quality of offerings? Is it diversity? Or something else? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So look, from a value perspective, we're focused early on in the year anyway really on the lunch opportunity. I think clearly that's where the fast casual over the last few years has become more competitive to us. And just, in general, people tend to be more value-focused at that daypart as well. And as I think – as we've done some menu engineering and things that we've introduced at launch, we haven't focused on the value side as much. So the answer to that question from a value perspective is that we will still – I agree with your comment around the promotional and competitive activity is not getting any easier out there given the environment. We think we're getting better and better at that from a targeted perspective and utilizing loyalty. But we see that continuing. So I agree with you on that front. But in terms of the overall brand messaging, I think the important part of the BJ's story that I look forward to telling and I know Kevin is focused on is this notion around our quality. And looking at – making sure we communicate through what we call these touch points, I was trying to communicate that. I think if you took a poll, which we haven't officially done, and asked people how many people really realize that we brew our own really fantastically award-winning beer at BJ's, we would be disappointed in that answer. So how do we tell the story of not just around our beer, but our food quality in a way that – people tend to see our menu and our category and unfortunately not really appreciate oftentimes the level of differentiation we have on that quality front. So that quality value quotient is what we're trying to get people to understand, particularly in our newer markets. So that's what really – when we refer to Craft Matters, it's by association and telling the story around different components of who we are and for people to really understand the quality of the experience.

Billy Sherrill - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. That's helpful. And just one more if I could. Could you speak a little bit to me (43:09) geographical trends? I mean, we've heard a few of your peers, I guess, point to continued strength in California, where you guys obviously have a presence. But are there any other notable trends to speak of maybe in Texas or on the East Coast, where we saw some winter weather? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I'll take a first stab at it, and Greg, you can fill in. It's continued to be what we've noted in the last few quarters, where it's – we're experiencing the same thing, where California continues to be one of our stronger markets. Texas has been more challenging compared to our other markets. And our perspective – my perspective continues to be it's less about what's happened in the world of energy and more around the growth, and just the level of development in seats added in the Texas markets specifically. There's a fair amount of relocation happening given that growth, particularly, in the DFW area. So I think that's something that all the casual dining concepts are going to be battling for a while to swallow the level of development as that hopefully settles down a little bit. And I think some of the dislocation, that's a combination of new development, and frankly, just infrastructure development and highway development in these Texas markets. I think that's going to be a challenge that's going to be here for a little bit.

Billy Sherrill - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Great. That's helpful. Thanks, guys. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Matthew DiFrisco with Guggenheim Securities.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. I just have a couple of questions here. With respect to price, I was curious, when did you say you're going to roll that out or take the incremental price? I assume you're going to stay at the high end of 2%, but then you expect to take some with that new menu. What is the timing on that?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

That timing is actually next week, Matt. But we'll lap about 1%, and 1% will get added. I think it's – actually, I think it's a little less than 1%, but it's more or less neutral. That's why our overall menu pricing will be very consistent in Q1 with Q4.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

A new menu rolls out next week with some of the lunch offerings that Greg Trojan mentioned.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Excellent. Okay. And then, just looking at the comp, a year ago, you gave us a number of – sort of a range of mid-single-digit through the first seven weeks. And obviously, on this call, you've been specific to say the first half of 1Q was more challenging than the way it ended. I was curious, though, also within that 1%, are you getting stronger as far as the comp progressing throughout the quarter? Because I observed obviously you didn't have a West Coast team in the NCAA finals. Did you get any lift from that from last year, where maybe there were some sports viewing that you didn't have this year around the New Year's Eve holiday that were the first couple of days of the quarter?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

No – I'm going to try and answer your question. I'm not sure I understood all the parts of your question there, Matt. Last year, when we talked about this quarter, if you remember, we talked about, I think, at this time sales were probably higher in the first seven weeks of last year. And some of that was going against the weather and so on. And then, we finished the quarter at 3.2%, but at that time, we were a little bit higher. So everybody can interpret – or interpolate that sales get a little bit softer from that standpoint from this quarter. That being said, on my earlier comments, we tend to see our highest sales when there is a reason to get together and gather. So our sales started out of the gate pretty well this year even though we were going over higher sales versus last year.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Yeah. I was just talking more so about the football and the college football game falling on – it wasn't a well-televised game as far as ratings wise. I wonder if that affected you on a year-over-year basis as well, as far as the semi-final games playing on New Year's Eve versus New Year's Day the prior year, if that affected your volumes...

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yes, it probably didn't help but...

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

On those days. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's not large enough of an impact, Matt, to make a difference on the quarter.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Excellent. Okay. And then, just lastly, on the COGS line, I might have missed it, but did you give a inflation or a deflationary basket-type number? Because with 2.5% price, I guess, I was looking for maybe even a little bit more leverage on the COGS line or is there potential for that if – I would assume you're seeing lower year-over-year dairy costs you've locked in.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

A couple of things in that regard. So we saw last year a little bit more of deflation. And we're expecting it to be a little bit more inflationary this year, up about 1%. As we start off this year, we're expecting our COGS in the first quarter to be flat, maybe up a tad. And then, it slowly goes up throughout the year. Right now, because we're just not expecting to get the same type of benefit we got last year on things like cheese, cheese last year in the first quarter looking in January was in the $1.40, $1.50 range. And that's kind of where it is right now. So we're not looking to get as much. And then, your point about getting additional leverage, I think there might be some of that later in the year. Don't forget, when we talk about 2.5% of pricing, it's not like we put it all on on January 1. We're rolling 1% on, and then, we're rolling on another 1% later and so on. So depending on when our contracts expire, we might end up being – the full-year being only up 1%, but we could be a little over 1%, let's call it, in Q3 or Q4, but less the early part of it. So while I do expect some leverage in COGS year-over-year, maybe probably not as much as maybe you would think when you start to say 2.5% of pricing, and only thinking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 1% commodity basket.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Excellent. That's very helpful. Last question, bookkeeping-wise, I think you had a planned closure, if I'm correct in Century City in late January. Was that executed in – or have you relocated that store?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

It was executed – if you want to use the term – it was closed unfortunately. As we said, that was a good restaurant. We were sorry to have to close it, in the Century City Mall, but where they wanted to relocate us was not a spot that we thought we could do the sales volumes that we had in the past. So it is closed. So when you start to look at the weeks, that's why that's out of there. It was open for about, I want to say, three weeks in January, and then closed from there on.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Excellent. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And, Matt, we're looking at options in that trade area. And we're actively looking. And so we don't have a commitment on a replacement at this point. That restaurant was still comping positively almost to its last day, it was -

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

It was. Composite the last day... (50:10) Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It was amazing. It did not die down.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yeah, despite the renovation going on at the mall.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Can I just – since you started talking about comps, I just had one last question. I know this is the third last question I had. I apologize to everybody else, but the new stores, the 7,500 square foot, 7,400 square foot store, how is that – have you got enough evidence to sort of talk about how maybe that is comping, given it's a smaller store? Are you running into – is this going to be rolling in as less of sort of the sophomore year growth phase or are they new markets and you're seeing somewhat of a – people getting to know how to use a BJ's a little bit better and gaining momentum in that second year like you have historically with the bigger boxes?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

We don't – you know what? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We don't have enough data points yet.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yeah. The first one that opened was Oviedo, which is that north suburb of Orlando and it opened – I want to say early September or middle August of 2014 and thinking about being a 18-month comp, I think it might have now just dropped in, but it hadn't dropped in, in the fourth quarter. And that will be the only restaurant that's even coming close to a comp sales perspective, so we just don't have the answer. I would tend to tell you though, looking at our numbers, everything seems very similar to historical comps, meaning they open with a honeymoon, they drop down and I'd think that they would kind of comp in the – into the base negative just because that's what we've done historically over the last couple of years.

Matthew DiFrisco - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to David Tarantino with Robert W. Baird. David E. Tarantino - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hi. Good afternoon. My question is on the traffic trends you're seeing. And I think the last couple of quarters; the traffic has been a little bit lighter than the KNAPP-TRACK benchmark, that's the relevant comparison. So I just want to get a gauge for how you're thinking about that trend, and why you think BJ's is not outperforming given the vibrancy, the concept and all the things you're doing? And then, I have a follow-up.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Hey, David, I'll take the first part. And we might have talked about this ourselves – you and I before. But our real struggle is – frankly is Texas. Texas is – we've got 32 restaurants I believe in the state of Texas. I would – I think all of them are comp or just about all of them, which means 20% of our comp is in that state. And unfortunately, as Greg Trojan said, that's just been a softer state for us. When we look at our numbers and look at our traffic trends, kind of pulling out Texas and other things, we are outperforming here in California at least on a year-to-date basis, looking at traffic versus KNAPP-TRACK and versus Black Box, so we feel pretty good from that perspective. Same thing in some of these other markets, but really it's kind of unfortunately – I've got to look at our business and report on our business in totality. But Texas is the real area that I think has held us back from driving comp sales significantly better than what we've expected. And at the same time, I think it's one of the reasons we're seeing a little bit more softness, let's call it, in our traffic and what we like. But if I had to pull them out and look at some of our other markets, I feel pretty comfortable in regards to what we're doing there to move the business. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: There's an interesting disparity between the numbers we have for the quarter where we actually – there is a bit of a disparity between KNAPP-TRACK and Black Box. And so there is not a big gap there, by the way, of where we are versus the…

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

I think you got it. It obviously is going to depend on a big part in regards to the comp sales numbers, but we finished fiscal, what, 2015 with labor around 34.5% or so. And I do think overall when we add up labor this year because of the pressures and minimum wage and so on, I think you'll see labor up a little bit from the 34.5%. I do think, though, we can offset some of that with lower cost of sales and continue to manage the operating/occupancy to get some margin enhancement in the business overall. So if you took it at that, then it's probably going to be mid-34%s overall for the full year, maybe mid-to-upper 34%s, we're getting some offset in some of the other areas to continue to drive overall restaurant level cash flow margins. And then, our goal is again to leverage G&A. And we said this – David, it just kind of remind me of one premise that I always like to kind of reiterate to everyone and that is what, ultimately our goal is we want to get 10%-plus increase in operating weeks. We want to see comp sales be higher than where they are right now, but we would like to see comp sales somewhere around our menu pricing and hold on to our guest traffic. And then ultimately, we like to drive earnings above that in the kind of mid-teens revenue number, because we're getting that leverage in our business model and I think we showed that last year, and I think we can be on pace to do that again this year to put earnings into that kind of mid-plus-teen range on a go-forward basis. That's kind of our long-term operating model. David E. Tarantino - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Great. That's really helpful. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We will go next to Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays.

Jeffrey A. Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much. You mentioned digital a couple of times, I'm just wondering – I know you guys were kind of at the forefront internally developing your platform a few years ago, now we see a lot of new external opportunities out there. I'm wondering how you contemplate your internal versus potential external and maybe you can give us an update on the initiatives you've got going now in terms of maybe what percentage of your tables are call-ahead or what percent pay on their devices or speed of service opportunity, any kind of metrics around the technology thus far?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

So, Jeff, couple of things, internal versus external, kind of your first question there. We look at both of them. I will tell you I think we can be faster, believe it or not, and better on certain things that are maybe in front of the guest to be internal, because that's – we want to have our branding around that. And as you know, as you'd mentioned, we're one of the first out there with kind of a mobile app in casual dining. In fact, we even beat some of the bigger players in QSR and the coffee worlds and so on in regards to mobile application, and really hats off to our IT department, they've done a great job on that aspect of our business. That where we struggle – and I think you're hearing that from some of the other people in casual dining – is just getting people to change their habit to use the app as frequently as we would expect. For those that have used it, like myself, or Greg Trojan, who will comment here shortly, it's one of the greatest inventions ever. I mean, I love being able to go in and see my check right when I order and pay before I'm done. I love to be able to put my name on our wait list before I ever leave my house. It's really changed the way I dine in our restaurants, it's great from that perspective. But like anything, if you – if you're a free – a user of BJ's maybe once a month, let's call that's kind of an average guest, that means you're looking at that app once a month. And sometimes you forget about it in that timeframe versus maybe some of the other concepts out there…

Jeffrey A. Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. And then just one clarification, just to kind of repackage what you said in response to the prior question around kind of 2016's earnings outlook. I think where you learned some new information that maybe you don't often provide, but if I look at 2015, for example, I think with a sub-2% comp, obviously you saw huge margin expansion and 60 percentage points earnings growth. As we now kind of look at 2016 and presumably some of the margin opportunity isn't there that was there the past couple of years, did you say that it's reasonable to assume – and I don't know if you said earnings or EPS growth mid-teens-plus range for 2016? Is that kind of a reasonable ballpark for guidance for 2016? And again, just to clarify, I don't know if you're talking about earnings dollars or earnings per share after share repurchase.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Well, I don't know if I got quite that specific, Jeff, more about the fact that when I think about the long-term business model for BJ's. The long-term business model for BJ's is we're going to expand restaurant weeks somewhere is in that kind of low-teen range. And this year it will be a little less than that because unfortunately our Century City restaurant closed, but we're adding 18 restaurants to 19 restaurants on the base of 170, so you're at 11% unit growth from that standpoint. We want to get norm – we want to get comp sales somewhere is around our menu pricing. Now – right now, we're a little bit below that, so you take that into consideration when you build out your margins from the business. But generally speaking, we think we have the ability to get our menu pricing and hold on to our guest traffic. That's shooting par for this course and that's what we want to do. When we can put those two things in place, we still have the ability to expand our margins both at the restaurant level, which finished at 99% and we still think there's some leverage at SG&A and over time continue to get leverage on depreciation and amortization, especially as more of the proto 7,400 come on board that keeps our depreciation and amortization line. So ultimately that means that our earnings growth should be above our revenue growth in that regard, and that's kind of what our long-term target is. Now, there will be years like this last year, 2015, where I guess, what, we exceeded that because some of our other margin initiatives from that standpoint. There might be years when it's a little bit less from that standpoint. But ultimately with 172 restaurants and the ability to get to 400-plus, and looking at an average unit volume right now of $105,000, so you've got restaurants doing $5 million, we think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity for this business from a long-term perspective. And yes, there's going to be ups and downs in that as much as we'd all love to be able to grow at a 45-degree angle and grow revenues and earnings perfectly from that standpoint. There's just going to be wobbles from that standpoint, but we think the overall curve is going in the right direction for our business. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And, Jeff, the other thing I would add to that is, is from a – on an EPS basis, we still – we have crossed this line of where our cash flow generation is greater than our requirements from a growth perspective, right? And so it gives us the flexibility from a share repurchase perspective to increase those numbers from an EPS perspective, at least it has in the last year-and-a-half or so. And we can – we think that it's going to be another lever for us going forward.

Jeffrey A. Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Chris O'Cull with KeyBanc.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Greg, I know the company had been focused on driving traffic through reducing wait times or speed of service I guess as well. Is that still the case and can you give us an update on maybe the progress you've been making and maybe what initiatives you think could have an impact in 2016? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. We're still pushing hard on that, Chris. I would say, we haven't cracked the code. I think we've been making sort of – I'll describe it more as steady incremental improvement, not breakthrough on that – on that front. And it is a good issue to raise, because I do think it's – it represents a lot of upside given how busy our restaurants are, right? And so, we are – we are both testing and have some things in sort of, call it, R&D lab category that are both front-of-house and back-of-house, I'm not going to talk about too specifically, but that is still a real opportunity for us. So, like I said, given all the things that we've been working on, our teams have done a good job of getting a bit better there. But we still have room – we have more room to go there. And I think it's a combination of, like I said, some kitchen speed and that's probably more technology-driven than sort of people-driven, if you will. And I think the front-of-house opportunity is probably a combination of both, of thinking through our human steps of service, if you will, and configuration of job categories, if you will, but also some technology.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Just to follow up on... Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And I'm sorry. And the last thing is, if we can break through and convince some more people the value of the app, that is a real speed – that's an immediate speed benefit as well. And that's why we continue to work on that.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. That's helpful. And then, just a follow up on a comment you made earlier about a lot of the traffic issue being related to stores located in Texas, what are you doing differently in that market to try to correct the traffic issue or try to improve traffic in that market? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: First of all, we're making sure we're running great restaurants and I wish – and a part of me wishes I could sit here and tell you, look, we have more of an operating issue relative to other markets, and that's just not the case. Our – every operating metric we look at, those restaurants are running quite well. And I think, Greg and I between us have seen – the three Gregs in this room have seen almost every Texas restaurant in this calendar year. And I can tell you, I think we're running good restaurants in Texas. And look, this isn't a forest fire, like this isn't – like Texas is more challenging, but we're still doing great volumes in these markets. And competitively, I'll tell you, I walk across the streets from most of our restaurants and look at what the competition is doing, I'm glad we're BJ's, let's put it that way. So, it's all relative, and look, we want to see more traffic and more growth there. But, I think, the opportunity is how we get more aggressive around sort of menu and we're going to get – and we have been more aggressive on giving people more of a reason promotionally to be in our restaurants there, within reason in a more targeted way. But, I think, those are how we get even better there on speed and turnover. We're still running very speedy restaurants or busy restaurants there, and the formula isn't that different than the opportunities we have elsewhere.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And then, just lastly, does your assumption – Greg Levin, does your assumption for labor coming down later in the year assume menu pricing remains in that mid-2.5% range in the back half of the year?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

It does, but again, so when you think about the 2.5%, there was going to be – 1% gets added in February. We do kind of a summer menu or something like that, that's kind of May, June, so get an additional 1% at that time, and then we'll do our fall menu. So we kind of have three menu rollouts where we take a little bit of pricing, as we did this last year, so each time you get a little bit of that additional menu pricing, that helps to leverage obviously labor and cost of sales later in the year.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks, very helpful.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Jeff Farmer with Wells Fargo.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Just actually a follow-up, real quick on that one. So when you say labor down, does that mean – towards the back half of the year, does that mean sequentially versus the typically higher labor cost first quarter or year-over-year, you mean that you'll see some labor benefit year-over-year in the fourth quarter, or the back half?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Great question, Jeff. That means sequentially.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

So as I mentioned, first quarter, it's in that middle 35%, whatever, I think last – we ran 35.4% a year ago, and then it started coming down into the 34% range or so. And so, sequentially it's going to come down from the first quarter, but I would still expect quarter-over-quarter – year-to-year, I guess, or quarter-over-quarter compared to prior-year, and it's going to be up a little bit, because of that California minimum wage.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

And I think we get some of the offset in the other areas.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

That's helpful. And a couple of other just quick modeling questions. Greg, did you offer any interest expense guidance for 2016?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

I didn't – I would tell you, I think did before. It's probably going to be somewhere around $2 million.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Thinking about the $100 million of debt right now, yeah.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

And then you alluded to it, but just as it relates to Q1, and media, more specifically the TV media, anything you can share in terms of maybe TV weeks in Q1 of this year and markets versus Q1 of last year? Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. This is Kevin. Really, in regards to TV weeks, we're going to be running similar point levels across similar weeks as we did in Q1 last year. We are looking at some market expansion opportunities, but still trying to kind of work through what those levels will be and what the median (75:05) placement would be, but overall, I think it's really comparable, Q1 and Q1.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then final question, Greg. I can't remember if you've talked about this, so you guys blew throw your longer-term restaurant level margin and operating income margin targets pretty quickly. I think it was 19% and 16% or 6% respectively. Is there a plan, do you guys plan to provide new target margin levels at any point?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yeah, I tried to push that off for an extra year, but nobody would let me to do that around here.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Look, we've said this before, and I think Greg Trojan even made the comment that, the ability to get the type of leverage we got this last year, just on the pure fact of law of diminishing returns, it's not as great from that standpoint. However, I think as we continue to work through our business and drive a reasonable comp that our restaurant level margins can get above the 20% range on an annual basis. We came awfully close to it in the prior year. This year you get a little bit of challenge with the California minimum wage, but I think we've got some other initiatives in there that I think can help offset some of those things. We haven't gone and reestablished new targets to go after that we've publically addressed, but I will tell you, ultimately, we can get ourselves into the 20% plus range there. And as I mentioned earlier, I think the ability to continue to leverage G&A, and depreciation and amortization in the future should allow us to get above – to continue to grow the income from operations above 6%, significantly above 6%.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay, thanks. That works. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Sharon M. Zackfia - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hi. Good afternoon. Most of my questions were answered, but I was intrigued by what you talked about on the commentary, about going after lunch traffic. Can you remind us kind of where lunch is right now as a percent of your mix, and whether you've seen success driving that daypart kind of more quickly than the dinner daypart, recently? And I guess, if lunch grows more quickly going forward, is there any margin implication there, we've seen other companies go after lunch and sometimes it's at a negative margin potential for the company? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We haven't seen lunch behave all that differently, Sharon, than dinner. We've been, I'd say, a little more challenged on traffic, but because a lot of our – a slightly more disproportionate part of our guest check growth has been during lunch, and I think burgers have a lot to do with that, our success on the burger lineup. And then some of the menu engineering that we've done over the year-and-a-half or so. We used to profile our lunch specials and our lunch combos, literally, we would turn the menu to that page when people came into our restaurants, and I used to use the analogy or I sometimes do use the analogy: it was like walking into a car showroom and trying to sell the Yugo, when you have catalogs to sell them, right. So not that – I think out – it's probably not the best comparison. Our combos are great, but – so all of that resulted in some good guest check growth, but we don't want to do that at the expense of…

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

So Sharon, in about a week-and-half, our new menu rolls out. And as Greg was kind of alluding to, we have a couple of lunch type items that are going on there. Last – and we will have a national FSI drop in kind of the end of February, and by the way that FSI is the same as it was last year, we ran at the same time. But last year, we at that time were promoting our new Tavern-Cut Pizzas, and we rolled out, and did really well for us, has been very success for us. This year as that FSI comes out, it will be talking about the new menu that just came out. And those new menu items are more a lunch-centric type menu items on there. So, that's kind of the way we'll go after as well from a digital standpoint, where last year our digital focused on our Tavern-Cut, this year, our digital will focus on some of our new lunch items in the sandwich, and salad category that rolls out later. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And in tests we didn't see any noticeable dinner cannibalization given how we were sort of positioning the products. So we don't expect to see anything significant on that front. Sharon M. Zackfia - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay, great. Thank you. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That is all the time we have questions for. And that concludes today's call. We thank you for your participation.