Good afternoon, and welcome to Mister Car Wash's Conference Call to Discuss Financial Results for the Third Quarter Ending September 30, 2023. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. Please note, this call is being recorded, and the reproduction of this call in whole or in part is not permitted without written authorization from the company. Speaking from management on today's call are John Lai, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer; and Jed Gold, Chief Financial Officer. After John and Jed have made their formal remarks, we will open the call to questions. During this conference call references to non-GAAP financial measures will be made. A complete reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures have been included in the company's earnings Press Release issued earlier today and posted to the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.mistercarwash.com. As a reminder, comments made on today's call may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from the company's current expectations. Please be advised that the statements made today are currently as of this call and based on the company's present understanding of the market and industry conditions. While the company may choose to update these statements in the future, they are under no obligation to do so unless required by applicable law or regulations. Please review the forward-looking statements disclaimer contained in the company's latest annual 10-K and 10-Q reports as such factors may be updated from time to time and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I will now turn the call over to Mr. John Lai. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining our Q3 earnings call. We had a solid third quarter and feel good about the upward momentum in our business. Comp store sales were positive and continue to grow quarter-over-quarter. New build openings are on schedule and performing nicely. Our Titanium launch is moving full steam ahead, and we're encouraged by the early results. Our Unlimited Wash Club members, who represent over 70% of our revenues, continue to remain our most loyal and steadfast customers, and we continue to manage our expenses while simultaneously investing for the future. For the quarter, sales grew 8% to $234 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased 8% to $72 million. Comp store sales increased 1.7%. We opened eight new Greenfield stores and are on track to hit our full year target of approximately 35, and we ended the quarter with 462 locations. As we continue to build the company that has enduring value, at the end of the day it's all about the people that you surround yourself with. From our field operations to our Tucson headquarter staff, it truly takes an army and the strength of Mister Car Wash is due to the strength of our team. Our Titanium launch is a perfect example of how awesome our teams are. I want to recognize two groups in particular, our Facility Maintenance group and our Tucson Distribution Center, who worked around the clock, building, reconfiguring and installing our new Rinse Improvement, Lower Reconfiguration and Titanium Solution. When it comes to differentiation, Titanium is just the latest in a long list of proprietary innovations that we have developed in-house. Over the last several decades, our research and development teams, staffed with very talented engineers and chemists, have developed truly unique products like HotShine, Wheel Polish, Repel Shield and now…

Thank you, John. And good afternoon, everyone. Overall, we had a solid third quarter. We continued to manage our expenses, execute against our strategic priorities and move the business forward. Before I review the financial details of our third quarter results, let me give you a brief update on our new Titanium offering. We remain optimistic about Titanium and the positive impact it is going to have on the business and results. The early Titanium results are encouraging and running in line with our expectations. As of today, we have implemented our new Titanium offering, Rinse Improvement Technology and Reconfigured Blowers in 317 stores. We continue to pick up momentum and installations are slightly ahead of our implementation plan. We now expect all stores to be reconfigured by mid Q1 next year. We continue to refine and test various promotional offers to help drive Titanium trial and adoption. As we have said previously, this is likely to result in slightly higher churn rates during the implementation period. We expect this to be more than offset by higher early membership levels. We believe Titanium could represent a meaningful portion of our UWC and retail business over time and remain very comfortable with the initial target of at least 10% of UWC subscription mix within a year of implementation. As previously mentioned, the revenue and EBITDA impact will likely be minimal this year due to the timing of the rollouts and the promotional offerings and strategy, but we believe it will be meaningfully accretive to next year and should have a multiyear impact. Now turning to the third quarter results. During the quarter, total net revenue increased 7.6% and comparable store sales increased 1.7% compared to last year. UWC sales represented nearly 72% of total wash sales and we added 6,000 net…

Yes, thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley.

Hey guys. This is actually Michael Kessler on for Simeon. Thanks for taking our question. First guys, I wanted to ask about how retail customers behaved through Q3? If you noticed anything relative to Q2 earlier in the year as far as some of the weakness that we've seen last year or so, and then any differences in how that customer behaves versus how your core UWC member behaved?

Yes, I'll kick it off. So retail volume and revenues are moderating quarter-over-quarter. We're seeing improvements and a nice healthy growth in our ticket averages as well without having to resort to price increases. And so we've been very careful as an organization not to be overly promotional, specifically from a discount standpoint. And so we believe that the trends that we're currently seeing are healthy, and with all the knock-on-wood, sustainable, but we're also staying on soft ground.

Yes. And Michael, just to put a little bit finer point on that. So going back, last call we talked about retail being down double digits in Q1, moderating to a high single-digit negative in Q2. It further moderated during Q3. Still kind of that high mid-single digit, but it was Q3, it was an improvement on a year-over-year basis compared to Q3. So encouraged by the trends that we're seeing here on the retail side.

And Jed, your famous line is ‘up is good,’ right?

We'll take it.

Maybe one follow-up Jed on CapEx guidance, which is coming up a bit, I think, about $50 million, $55 million or 20%. So it's a pretty -- it's a notable step up given that, I guess unit growth is still on track for how you've previously been thinking about it. So just any color on what's changing there and where you're maybe seeing some inflation in the CapEx line?

Yes. There's really three factors there Michael. So the first, as we shared in the prepared remarks, we've been accelerating the rollout of Titanium. What was a full rollout as of the end of Q1, we're now targeting to have it all done by the middle of Q1. So getting more of these stores equipped with Titanium at a faster rate than what we had originally projected. Also, a little bit of a timing with just the spend against our 2024, 2025 pipeline. As we've talked about, it's an 18 to 20 month build out for one of these car washes and when the spend starts, while most of that spend is in the last 8 months of the construction cycle, there's a little bit of a timing piece there. And then we are seeing some construction inflationary pressure, construction costs are up just a little bit. But also our ability to get more in proceeds on a sale leaseback is also up. So the net investment on that construction and development is still approximately $2 million, keeping our cash-on-cash – year two cash-on-cash returns at about 50% and under a three year payback.

All right, thanks guys.

Thank you. The next question comes from Justin Kleber with Baird.

Yeah, good afternoon everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Just want to start on the guidance, Jed. Obviously, holding the full year – the full year implies a pretty wide range for 4Q. Just any color on maybe how the business is tracking here quarter-to-date and whether you would anticipate some acceleration, as I believe the comparisons ease quite notably in November and December versus October?

Yes. As we've talked about earlier in the year, we expect the lap just to get a little bit easier in Q4. Also, as the greenfields that we opened in 2022 come online, that will provide a little bit of a tailwind as they move into the sophomore year. And then also with Titanium picking up a little bit faster, that will be a nice tailwind. So in order to hit the full year, the high end of the range, the plus one, it will require a little bit of an acceleration compared to Q3, when we look at October. September and October last year were some of our strongest months. October, we're lapping a plus 9.3. And so really looking at the two year stack, and we saw a slight improvement in October on a two year stack compared to Q3 on a two year stack.

That's very helpful color. And then just on the – much of the costs with Titanium flowing through CapEx. I'm just wondering if there's been some, I guess, excess operating expense that the business is absorbing this year that obviously won't repeat next year as you finish the rollout early in 1Q?

Yes. Certainly, I think – in particularly the first half of the year, a lot of pressure on the labor front. When you look at less, for the quarter labor rates were up just over 3% compared to, I believe it was, last quarter we were about 5% labor rates up. So we're starting to see just a little bit of relief on that side. Utilities, we're also seeing some favorability during Q3 and expect that to continue into Q4, whereas there was a lot of pressure on utilities, particularly in the first half of the year. And then also, finally – and we called this out in the prepared remarks, corporate insurance. We're seeing some favorability on our insurance in the second half compared to where we were in the first half.

Yes Jed, I would just add, when we take on a project of this magnitude, and it really is what I'd describe as a fundamental transformation of our tunnel, and the tunnel experience and we added as we've noted before, this blower reconfiguration and rinse improvement. And this is not scope creep, but there's other things that come with these projects. And so when I look at our repairs and maintenance line and the things that we have to expense upfront, that's also I think come at a certain cost, but we're happy to make those investments, because again, we're setting up our stores for the long haul.

Right. Thank you both. Best of luck!

Thank you. And the next question comes from John Heinbockel with Guggenheim.

Yeah, let me start, John. It’s sort of two parts. You’re thought on pricing of membership architecture, right. So I think in some markets there might be a $7 gap between premium and Titanium and others maybe $10. And then how that impacts membership qualities? So is there a thought that maybe you want more of a $7 gap and encourage people to move towards Titanium. So a little less membership, but a little higher price, a little higher quality. How do you think about that?

Yes. I think you're spot on, John. And so directionally, as we look to kind of compress that delta between our Platinum and our Titanium, to make it more within reach and easier for folks to upgrade, that's going to be part of our overall design. Again, we want to be very clear in how we transition existing members into a new price point. And there are certain rules and things that we need to do from a communication standpoint, so that they are given ample notice. So we're working through the mechanics of that as we speak, but you nailed it. At the end of the day, as we're settling in on what we believe the Titanium price to be, anything we can do to make that more attractive and more within reach, that would help us achieve our goals. But we are balancing to your comment, this mutual objectives behind increasing the number of members in each of our premium packages, while maximizing profitability.

All right. And then I guess a second topic, right, the idea of buy versus build, right, and how close the cost of buy has to be to build, to make that more attractive to you. Are we – it seems like we're getting closer. You’re thought on that, and are we within reach where the economics are more compelling or competitive on the buy side?

Yes, it's – we're getting there. So prices on M&A are definitely coming down. The cost of build is going up, and so there will be a point where both become equally attractive. I think it's important to note that as a company we're agnostic, at the end of the day between greenfield and acquisitions, and we will deploy capital where we can generate the highest return. There's pros and cons to both sides of that equation. The greenfields, we can – I'm not going to say, control our own destiny, but really set up the stores to our specifications and design in the way we want. But M&A is also an attractive path for us, particularly as we look to move into new markets and accelerate that path into a new market. So that, coupled with bolt-ons, which will always be part of the equation. So we're not quite there yet in terms of that equilibrium point, but it's moving in that direction.

Okay, thank you.

Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my question. John, at the outset of your remarks, you mentioned an increasingly competitive environment, while Mister Car Wash has operated in a competitive environment for a long time. Are the dynamics changing where it's just more difficult to attract new members to your club, given that the 6,000 net additions is one of the smallest increases that you've reported since you've been a publicly traded company?

Well, there’s kind of three questions inside that question, Michael, which you're famous for. So to answer the middle part of your question, we haven't seen a slowdown in member growth through our greenfield locations. Q3 though, was relatively flat from a UWC net member growth standpoint and that was somewhat intentional. We prioritized converting existing members into our Titanium program in Q3 as we're launching and rolling this out, and it's really hard when you get down to the store level to have multiple objectives happening simultaneously. So we err on the side of, let's take existing members and introduce them to Titanium, rather than focusing what had been our primary focus, which is on converting retail customers into membership. And so that will be – we're in execution mode on Titanium right now, and that's going to be our primary focus over the next several quarters. But equally, both sides of that are equally important to us over time. And so with respect to your question about competition, we have not felt any meaningful impact to our growth trajectory due to the current competitive environment.

Hey Michael, one other point I think is worth highlighting. When you look at the seasonality of UWC growth, its 65% to 70% of our UWC sign-ups have typically been in the first half of the year. And when you look at the more recent years, that's been even more pronounced, but that's – to John's point, that's where we're really optimistic and excited about Titanium, is because we now have these 2.1 million existing UWC members that are at bets [ph] and driving the top line through trading them into Titanium.

And Jed, in your comments you had noted that core churn is stable. Does that mean you're – I think you alluded to experiencing some higher churn, which would be consistent with John's comments around focusing on the conversions rather than the new customers. Can you explain and frame how we should think about churn into 2024? And then how does that impact overall membership growth in the next year, especially on the heels of the retail business being softer for the last several quarters, and that being a source of new member growth?

Yes. So when we talk about core churn, previous calls we've shared that we've been testing various marketing initiatives, promotions. And what we have found that really works is introductory and trial price offers, where we're trying to get new customers to try Titanium and really accelerate that trial and drive mix to those more premium packages. What happens is, it comes at the price of slightly higher churn, and we talked about it in the prepared remarks in Q2, also talked about in Q3, where when we roll to the regular pricing, we see a slight uptick in churn. For Q3, it was about two-tenths of an uptick in our churn, with promotional UWC members rolling back to regular. So it's not outsized or anything to be overly concerned about at this point, but something that we're keeping a close eye on and making sure that the end objective though is to drive that mix and get as many members in our premium package as we can.

Jed, if I could just add too. I think we've been very responsible and smart, quite frankly, and not getting too aggressive in some of those introductory trial offers. We've seen some silly stuff out there where folks are, I call it giving away the farm with $0.99 offers, $0.001 offers for the first month. And that could be a slippery slope, and there's an old adage, the way in which you acquire a member is the way in which you need to keep a member. But if you're leaning really heavily in on the price side of the equation, which we haven't, that is going to have – it's going to come at a cost, and that cost is a higher churn.

One other point, Michael, I think is really important for folks to hear and kind of the proverbial yellow canary is UWC usage. Obviously, a customer is more inclined to cancel out of a subscription that they are not using. When we look at usage of UWC during the quarter, we did not see any downtick there. Customers – our UWC customers are washing as much as they have in past quarters.

Got you. Thank you so much. Good luck!

Thank you. And the next question comes from Randy Konik with Jefferies.

Yes. Good afternoon. Thanks a lot. I guess a question for you, Jed. You talked about the, back to the retail side of the business. I think you said double-digit negative comps in the first quarter, down high single in the second quarter and the third quarter was a little bit better. Based on what you're seeing across the different regions, do you think that based on the business and as it stands today in retail, as we kind of get towards the first quarter and go up against that negative double-digit type of compare, is that – can we kind of think through that the retail side of the ledger should start to kind of get towards flattish or slightly positive as we go up against that comparison based on what you are seeing right now? I just wanted to just get a feel for that trend line.

Yes Randy, when we look at the last – when you go back and you look at this over the last five, even 10 years, our goal is to trade our retail customers into the Unlimited Wash Club program. And so historically, that has run negative mid-single digits. Retail has run negative mid-single digits, and perhaps we really haven't been framing this like we should, but essentially its mix shift, trading that retail customer into the higher-priced predictive reoccurring UWC offering. But the price of that, and we're willingly accepting it, is you lose a retail customer. So it's been – historically it's been down about mid-single digits, and I think that's a fair assumption as we think about on a baseline for go forward.

Understood. And then just how should we be thinking about over the next couple of years, when you're thinking about Titanium mixing in and just how you're thinking about core pricing? I'm just trying to get a sense of how we should be thinking about over a multiyear period of how pricing should shift. What should it actually grow at on a multiyear basis for the next few years? Like should we be thinking low single-digit price growth, because of mix plus some taking of the core up? Just give us a little sense of how we should be thinking about that for framing it up. Thanks.

Yes Randy, that's a trickier one. It's still what I would consider relatively early days as we look at Titanium and how it's testing. We are very encouraged and optimistic in being able to put emphasis on that at least 10% mix. And so by the end of year one – but it's really hard to say how that plays out in 2024 and then into 2025 as well. But we believe internally that it's going to continue to provide a natural tailwind, because just the consumer – educating the consumer on the benefits of Titanium, it's not just going to happen on the first visit. This is going to continue to happen over time. I do think, and it's worth pointing out is, you've got the UWC side of it that we talk about and the at least 10%, but also the Titanium retail side as well, which we're seeing encouraging results. We're not doing any discounting or promotions there, just natural customers wanting to try on a retail basis and seeing the retail ticket mix in the mid-teens from a mix perspective.

Yes Randy, I'd just add, what gives us great confidence and why we're so excited about Titanium is that when we look at pre-Titanium, what our member mix looked like, and where we were more heavily weighted towards our premium Platinum package naturally without a concerted effort internally to drive premium membership. It was really a natural – customers gravitating towards the value that we had put into that program, and now with this additional value stack that's in the Titanium program, we're very optimistic that we're going to continue to enjoy a stronger premium member mix over time. But we're going to do it again in a way that is not trying to spike member mix. We want folks to naturally gravitate towards it, because they see the value in it. And that's how we've had such a sticky and strong member base throughout the years.

Very helpful. Thanks guys.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from Chris O'Cull with Stifel. Chris O’Cull: Yeah, hey. Good afternoon guys. I was wondering how the company is thinking about capital allocation for next year. Is the plan to develop a kind of a similar number of washes or do you think there's opportunities for more acquisitions? And I'm just wondering Jed, is there a similar level of gross CapEx? Is that a reasonable expectation for next year as you have this year?

Yes, right now, I mean we'll provide more specifics on 2024 as we get into our next call. But what I would say, kind of at a high level from a capital allocation perspective, the current plan right now is to self-fund our growth into our investments that we plan to make next year. But it's really kind of four main variables as we think about that capital allocation. Just what happens on the acquisition front, what happens in the broader interest rate environment where our existing debt load is 100% floating at this point. That's a variable in the capital allocation strategy. Sale leasebacks and cap rates and what happens there, but then also just the existing human capital within this team and what we're able to bite off. I would say that as we think about 2024 greenfields, so this year we feel good about the approximate 35, that we'll develop more greenfields in 2024 than what we plan to do here in 2023.

Yes. And Chris, if I can add to that, we are committed to not sweating the assets if you will. And when we look at our core portfolio, again, we're very proud of the year-over-year investments that we've been making in those stores. That said, given the size of our portfolio, there are a number of stores that we've identified that are in need of some additional love, if you will, in reinvestment. And so we're going to be chipping away at that pile too. So while Jed is famous, he's the – capital allocations are internally and wields a lot of power as a result. But if we use as our sole measure, the highest return of invested capital, obviously greenfields is a really strong case. That said, if we neglect some of those older stores over time, that's going to ultimately show up in reduced AUVs. So we're going to be chipping away at that pile as well, again at a pace that we can handle. But I'm happy to report that it's a very small sliver of our overall store count, because the bulk of our stores are in great shape. Chris O’Cull: That's helpful. Jed, are you seeing any changes in the cap rate given the falloff in bonus depreciation and just overall yield environment?

Not at this point, Chris. I mean we're still getting deals done. We've got another number of stores that are at market – that are out to market right now, and we're signing LOIs and getting good favorable cap rates on those. Part of the analysis that we do, when we're looking at sale leaseback versus funding through external debt, is we'll look at what is most accretive to EPS and calculating cap breakeven from a sale leaseback cap rate perspective relative to what the interest rate is, prevailing interest rate is at the time. So we believe there's still a lot of cushion there, but we continue to see very favorable economics. I think it's a testament to having been doing sale leasebacks for longer than anybody in this space. We've got a great track record of paying our rents and a great operations team, great relationships with our brokers and with our – with the national REITs that are out there, and that's something that's important to us, and we pride ourselves and we continue to invest time to make sure that we're nurturing those relationships and keeping that market open for us.

Yes. Jed, if you're going to underwrite a project, you're going to underwrite a project with a company that has a strong track record, a great management team and a long history of doing it right, and I think we check those boxes. Chris O’Cull: Yes. No, that makes sense, okay. Just also, I mean the company has seen declining retail traffic for several consecutive quarters now. And I'm just wondering, if you guys have completed any consumer research to try to understand the root causes of the softness. And I know that the – I believe the industry has been soft as well, and I'm just wondering if there's any kind of discussion with any other companies? And just in terms of what's driving or what do you guys think is driving this retail softness?

Yes. So Chris, this is John. We don't have a consumer study that we can point to. There's a lot of theories you know. One of my beliefs is that as an industry, there's been – a lot of folks have been pushing the pricing envelope relatively aggressively, and at certain points this is not a completely inelastic service that you could – at $12 or higher for a base wash, it's going to have an impact on retail frequency. And again, I think we have been very prudent in our approach and relatively conservative in not being overly aggressive in pushing that pricing envelope, and as a result we're happy with that, but I think that has had some effect, and that's just my theory. Chris O’Cull: Great. Thanks guys.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Tristan Thomas-Martin with BMO Capital Markets.

Hey, good afternoon. Tristan on, first, and then just two questions. There's been a lot of, obviously talk about the competitive landscape and how more competitive it's gotten. But now the people are starting to pull back. Does that create any specific opportunities for you?

Absolutely, 100%. So I would say that right now people are being much more calculated and measured and really focusing on growing their existing footprints than expanding into new markets. We're definitely seeing less encroaching than we have in the last couple of years, which is good and healthy. So we anticipate new unit growth to moderate, and we're actually seeing some platforms pair back on their growth plans for a variety of reasons, but primarily its access to capital. So in the end, as we look at multiples that are starting to come down, and it feels like the market right now is reset to about a 10x number, which literally two years ago things were trading at north of 15x. And there's also more of a focus, which has been our focus from the get-go on quality versus quantity, because for a while during the craziness over the last several years, there were certain platforms that were all about scaling just to scale and buying whatever they could, and the chicken is coming home to roost, if you will. So we, like others, are being cautious and measured, and this will create a number of opportunities for us as an organization, but we're going to be very disciplined and highly selective in choosing when and where to pull the trigger on M&A.

Okay, thank you. And then just, you mentioned the macro is softer. If it continues to get worse, what is the Mister Car Wash recession playbook?

Well, I'd start with you know, we have super strong AUVs right now, really healthy margins. We run a tight ship. We have a staffing model that we're really proud of, but we do err on the side of – and there's a right – there's the idea around right staffing, running lean and running too fat. And higher-volume stores, it's actually easier to operate a higher volume store than it is a lower volume store, but what we're doing is making material investments in people in the human capital front. We have over 150 MITs in our pipeline that are part of our operating expense line and we're happy to make that investment, because it's going to be the future for our organization is these high-potential future leaders running the stores that we have in our pipeline. So if stuff hit the fan and things got really tight, we could pull back on some of those levers. And it may mean a temporary slowdown for us, but I think we'd be able to weather the storm. So last thing I'd just add on that, we have managed – so we've been around for 25 years. We have managed through multiple economic cycles and have emerged stronger, quite frankly, from each one. And so we don't anticipate – we believe that we'll be able to manage through this one as well as we're managing through it, and we're going to emerge just fine.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. And this concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the floor to management for any closing comments.

Well, thank you everybody. As Car Wash Operators, we love what we do, we love who we serve, and we feel very fortunate to be a leader in this space that's grown year-over-year. We look forward to checking back with you guys on the next quarterly call. Thanks everyone for joining.

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation and you may now disconnect your lines.