Good morning, and welcome to the Restaurant Brands International Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. . Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Stephen Lichtner, RBI's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Restaurant Brands International's earnings call for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2021. As a reminder, a live broadcast of this call may be accessed through the Investor Relations web page at investor.rbi.com, and a recording will be available for replay. Today's earnings call contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks set forth in the press release issued this morning and in our SEC filings. In addition, this earnings call includes non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are included in the press release available on our website. During portions of the call today, we will be referencing 2-year comparisons for system-wide sales growth and comparable sales to provide a cleaner indication of how the business is trending versus a more normalized period. These 2-year comparisons are calculated on a geometric stacked basis by using the 2020 and 2021 disclosed growth metrics. In addition, consolidated system-wide sales, digital sales, net restaurant growth and organic adjusted EBITDA growth do not include the results of Firehouse Subs, which we acquired on December 15, 2021. And now I'll turn the call over to Jose.

Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all doing well. Joining me on the call this morning, as usual, are Josh Kobza, our COO; and Matt Dunnigan, our CFO. I'm also excited to have Tom Curtis, the President of Burger King in the U.S. and Canada, as a special guest this quarter to share what he and his team have been up to since he took the helm in August. We made significant progress over the course of 2021 on key near-term initiatives, including opening over 1,200 net new restaurants, seeing early progress at Burger King U.S. and good momentum exiting the year at Tim Hortons in Canada. As we look to 2022, we have a number of clear objectives for the year ahead and remain focused on: first, continuing to build sales momentum in our home markets and around the world, while driving franchisee profitability and unit economics. Second, accelerating global unit growth through our best-in-class franchise network. Third, leveraging recent investments in our field teams, training and equipment to improve restaurant operations. Fourth, utilizing technology initiatives, including our growing loyalty and e-commerce platform to enhance the guest experience. And finally, making meaningful strides in our restaurant brands for good plan, including executing against our climate strategy and furthering what sustainability means for our brands. I'm confident we're well positioned to execute on these priorities as we work towards our big dream of building the most loved restaurant brands in the world. I want to thank our restaurant team members, franchisees and employees for their continued dedication. Our people are the lifeblood of our business, and for that reason, I was incredibly proud to see us earn the Great Place to Work Certification with our strongest scores ever, reflecting our commitment to our team and culture. Turning to a few…

Thank you, Jose, and thank you all for having me here today. Over the past 6 months, I've had the pleasure of traveling throughout the U.S., meeting with and learning from our dedicated franchisees and doing important foundational work with our BK team and franchisees to build a multiyear plan to reclaim the flame at Burger King. While we intend to share additional details of this plan later this year, I'd like to take this opportunity to walk you through some of the near-term initiatives we recently shared with our franchisees. I've been an operator for most of my career, including 2 decades as the franchisee. So I'm going to start with our initiative to improve operations, which is an important unlock for driving comparable sales. The opportunity is evident when we look at performance across our top operators compared to our bottom operators as measured across a number of metrics, including hours of operations, staffing, speed of service and average complaint ratios. In 2021, for example, comparable sales from this top quartile operators outperformed bottom quartile operators by over 400 basis points, and this is why we are focused on working with our franchisees to implement initiatives that will improve operations. At the end of December, we rolled out our first of 2 waves of menu simplification, removing low-volume items so the team members can focus on serving our most loved products and providing guests a fantastic Burger King experience consistently. The first wave had no material impact on comparable sales, and we are confident that the improved execution we're starting to see will drive guest retention and frequency for our restaurants. In addition, we're streamlining some product builds across the menu and simplifying our menu boards to make production and ordering easier for team members and for guests.…

Thank you, Tom. It's clear, the team's hard work is paying off, and I'm personally equally as energized as you and our franchisees about Burger King's opportunity in the U.S. Let's turn now to our Burger King international business, which comprise nearly 60% of the brand's global system-wide sales in the quarter. During the quarter, we once again achieved a sequential acceleration in system-wide sales growth versus 2019, growing over 12%, up from last quarter's 10%. This result included sequential 2-year comparable sales improvements in some of our largest international markets with Spain and Brazil notably returning to pre-pandemic levels during the quarter. Canada, up high single digits versus 2019, and Australia, Korea and the U.K. generating double-digit growth. We also ended the year with our 3 largest international markets, France, Spain and Germany, each generating over $1 billion in system-wide sales. Outside of the benefits from easing restrictions, one of the largest contributors to business performance in our international business remains digital growth. As Josh shared last quarter, we've seen a correlation between our most advanced digital markets and our largest and fastest-growing markets. In addition, our plant-based products continue to be an important sales driver in Europe, where we are a leader in plant-based offerings. We continue to introduce new products, including the veggie version of our iconic Long Chicken, which made its debut in Spain and Germany during the quarter. We've been pleased with the results, including a doubling of plant-based product incidents in Europe in the quarter and are looking for new market opportunities in Europe and around the world to expand the platform. We, of course, expect the international business to see continued improvements as restrictions ease. And as we look forward into 2022, we also expect to accelerate our unit growth in Burger King's…

Thanks, Jose, and good morning, everyone. Technology remains a key pillar of our long-term strategy and one we view as a powerful business driver across all our brands and markets. We're focused on creating an even more convenient and seamless experience for guests with the ultimate goal of driving sales. That means being available across all channels, making it easier and faster to order and creating a joyful experience each and every time anyone interacts with our brands. To help us achieve this goal, we've added roughly 300 team members in the last 3 years across our consumer facing, restaurant technology and data analytics teams, putting ourselves in a position to move quickly and build critical capabilities ourselves. In addition, we have accelerated adoption of key skills across our broader organization through hiring, education and training programs. One way we're integrating digital into our brands is through new service modes built into our restaurant image. For example, at Tim Hortons, our design team has added new order and pickup channels into various restaurant types. These include developing a walk-up order window, a dedicated curbside pickup area and a drive-through conveyor system. We look forward to sharing more on each of these exciting design innovations that enable digital experience as we roll them out to more restaurants in 2022. And a quick update on our digital sales progress. We ended 2021 with over $10 billion in global digital sales, representing just over 30% of our total system-wide sales. Tremendous progress from just over 4 years ago when we had virtually no digital sales in most of our major markets. During the fourth quarter, Tims Canada derived over 1/3 of its sales from digital channels, an all-time high for the brand. And Popeyes and Burger King home markets generated 16% and 9%, respectively, while our international markets drove over 50% of sales through digital channels. We attribute this improvement to a combination of factors, including growth in delivery, an increase in mobile order and pay and continued traction from loyalty. 2021 marked the first year we had royalty across all our brands in home markets. While Burger King and Popeyes are earlier on in their journeys, during the year, Tim Hortons transitioned its loyalty program from one focused on building a strong user base to consistently driving comparable sales and as a result, saw the highest sales contribution from royalty to date. I'm confident that the investments we are making across our digital and technology capabilities will play a critical role in enhancing the guest experience and advancing our growth in the future. With that, I'll hand it over to Matt to take you through our financials for the quarter.

Thanks, Josh, and good morning, everyone. For the fourth quarter, our global system-wide sales grew 14% to $9.3 billion, and our adjusted EBITDA was $584 million, up about 15% organically. Beyond the growth in system-wide sales, there were some factors that contributed to slightly higher EBITDA growth versus system-wide sales growth this quarter. These include benefits related to a few things. First, a positive shift in sales mix at Tim Hortons Canada, where we have additional lines of business benefiting from our same-store sales growth of over 11% year-over-year. Second, cash distributions related to joint ventures and other ownership positions as we've seen the health of many of our markets around the world continue to improve. Third, the release of bad debt provisions while lapping cautionary provisions that were set up in 2020. And lastly, the continued growth of our retail business at Tim Hortons, including new product launches and further expansion into U.S. channels. These tailwinds were partially offset by anticipated increases in our G&A expenses as well as year-over-year ad fund timing. As discussed throughout 2021, we've ramped up G&A investments within core areas of the business such as expanding and improving our field operations, including the 50% increase in field headcount at Burger King U.S. and Canada that Tom mentioned, and meaningfully growing our technology capabilities. In the fourth quarter, we saw this flow through largely as expected, with our segment G&A increasing to about $104 million, excluding Firehouse, reflecting these investments as well as a few million of additional discrete compensation expense driven by business performance exceeding expectations into year-end. As it relates to ad fund timing, our year-over-year growth this quarter reflects the fact that advertising expenses exceeded revenues by approximately $11 million more than they did in the fourth quarter of last year, resulting…

. We'll be taking our first question today from Brian Mullan of Deutsche Bank.

Tom, thanks for the prepared remarks. You talked about a lot of things, but I believe you mentioned potentially being willing to further invest in the brand to be in physical real estate, which will presumably more of CapEx. But I'd imagine perhaps, that could also mean ongoing G&A or OpEx to support system. So if you could just elaborate on that comment and what you had in mind. Is one thing even more than the other? Are both equally important? Just any thoughts would be great.

Brian, thanks for the question. It's Jose. I'll just open it up here and then pass it over to Tom, who's sitting right next to me. As we've said in the past and we commented in our prepared remarks, we've got an incredible business generating a lot of free cash flow and it gives us the ability to invest back into the business to return capital to shareholders, to do strategic M&A, or all 3, as we've done in this fourth quarter of 2021. As it relates to the Burger King business, we've talked -- touched on this quite a bit. And Tom just got into a position and he's working with the team on the game plan going forward. I'll let him go into a bit on the G&A front as well as the work we're doing on real estate and the capital side. Tom, do you want to touch on that?

Yes. And thanks for the question, Brian. It's important to remember that we're already investing a good bit of G&A behind the BK U.S. business as we expanded the field team last year, increasing over 50% the size of the field team from January to January of this year. And those team members are critical partners with our franchisees. They're helping drive the operational improvements that we're seeing and that we need to continue to see, and they're also helping the franchisees implement some of the new initiatives that we have going forward. Also, we've invested in our analytics and insights team, led by a fantastic colleague of mine, Julia Oswald, and we're putting money behind technology and digital. But image is perhaps the area where we can accelerate the most with capital. We exited 2021 with about 30% of our home market system remodeled to the BK of tomorrow. We've been going at a run rate of about 500 remodels per year, but we're looking at ways to make step changes while maintaining quality. And this year, we'll be going site by site and working with our franchisees to execute on what that looks like so that they can drive good return on investment and also create a more endless or seamless end-to-end experience for guests and improve operations for the restaurants. So we certainly are anxious and eager to share more with you, and that will probably come later this year in the coming quarters.

We'll take our next question from Chris Carril of RBC Capital Markets.

I wanted to circle back to development. You noted recently and again today that you see development accelerating, but I was hoping you can expand on that a bit more. I mean, Tim' clearly showed meaningful acceleration in the 4Q, and you've signed a number of new agreements for Popeyes. I know you've layered in Firehouse. So curious on how all the pieces fit together for the overall development outlook for this year? And to what extent you see more balanced growth going forward longer term?

Chris, thanks for the question. Yes, we were excited with the progress we made in 2021. We saw the power of diversified growth this year with Popeyes in the U.S. as well as internationally beginning to really be a big contributor as well as Tim Hortons gaining traction in international markets, especially in China, but also in other international markets like the Middle East and the U.K. and Mexico. And we saw the first time in a long time, positive growth out of Tims in the U.S. So we're excited about Popeyes and Tims contributing. Obviously, BK is the engine of growth and has been for some time for our company internationally, in particular. And we're confident in the ability of that business to get back to levels of growth of what we saw back in '17, '18 and '19. And we're encouraged by the broad-based growth that we saw internationally in many markets. We saw some markets where we have large franchisees getting back to growth in 2021 and seeing some good momentum there, but not quite to pre-pandemic levels. And examples of that include China, Brazil and Russia growing, but not quite at the pace that we saw in 2018, 2019. In some cases, there are macro environmental issues like we saw with Brazil, although we did see signs of improvement in the fourth quarter. In the case of China, as an example, we've been working through some open issues and disputes that we've had with our master franchisee there. We're working through them, working closely with the master franchisee. I'm not going to be able to get into too much of that into this call here, but I've known these guys a long time and believe that we have a good path forward to help accelerate growth in China, which is one of our biggest priorities. And overall, we're pleased with the huge bounce back we saw in 2021 from basically flat in 2020 to meaningful growth in 2021. And we have a lot of confidence in our long-term outlook. We continue to see a lot of the white space in many markets in Asia. We're still -- our competition has 3:1 versus us, and we think we have an opportunity to grow in the chicken space, in the coffee space, in the burger space and now in the sandwich space. In EMEA, Europe, Middle East, Africa, it's 2:1, and North America, it's also 2:1. So lots of room for growth. We have 4 great brands that have strong unit economics and lots of interest from franchisees. And in particular, as it relates to BK, we're confident that we can accelerate in 2022 and beyond and get back to really strong growth across the entire company.

We'll take our next question from David Palmer of Evercore ISI.

For my question, I wanted to focus on the impact of inflation in supply chain in Canada. You mentioned how Tims supply chain was a drag to the EBITDA this quarter. And I would imagine costs would be running high in supply chain in Canada this quarter. But looking to the future, I would imagine that the relationship of pricing to cost in the supply chain business would be improving, and some of these COVID-related friction costs that we see across all sorts of supply chains out there would also be going away. So could you talk about how much COVID and perhaps, the temporary dislocations of price to cost might be a drag to Tim's EBITDA right now? And how much of that might be easier comparisons later? And then how much higher are Tims Canada prices at the menu level for the franchisees versus a year ago to pay for this?

Yes. Dave, thanks for the question. It's Matt here. I was just going to share some comments on your question on supply chain margin, and I think Jose was going to jump in with some thoughts as well. But specifically as it relates to the quarter in the supply chain, we had talked last quarter about some pressure on the sales, cost of sales margin, and we were expecting it to come down a bit given the volatility that was out there. And I think that's generally what we saw in the quarter. We did come in a bit lower than we had expected when we spoke in the third quarter. I called out in the prepared remarks, there was an impact there related to inflation, obviously. And if you think about it, the way our business works in terms of commodities where we're seeing a bunch of volatility and inflation, where we have pass-throughs, those pass-throughs are going through both the revenue and expense lines in the P&L. And so they have a little bit of a disproportionate impact as they flow through, which is kind of what we saw in terms of the impact to our percentage margin in the quarter. But that being said, I think we're very positive on the trajectory of the business, and I think that's the most important thing. We're very excited to see the progress in the business at Tims in the quarter, both in terms of sales and volumes falling along with that. And as a result of that, it didn't really have a material impact on our dollar profit, right? So we saw healthy year-over-year growth on a dollar basis in the supply chain. I think where we are now, we're obviously still facing a bunch of volatility out there. We aren't giving specific margin guidance, but we are managing costs and pricing in a really disciplined way and focused on really driving guest experience and delivering great value to our guests and maintaining best-in-class service levels from our supply chain, which we think is a pretty key advantage for the system in Canada. I'll let Jose jump in with some other thoughts as well.

Thanks, Matt. And yes, David, your second -- the second part of the question was on pricing to the consumer. And as we've mentioned before, we work closely with our franchisees and also third parties to help guide and determine the right pace and level of pricing. We're quite structured and data-driven in that regard, and we run the process on a regular basis just to keep an eye on what's happening. We also look closely at what's happening in the marketplace and trends with competitors as well. In Canada as well as in the U.S., we've tended to price in line with CPI, and CPI in Canada is -- has been probably in '21, about half or even slightly below half of what we've seen in the U.S. And so pricing for Tims in Canada has been right around CPI, just -- actually just under it. And so we'll continue to monitor this. It's really important for us to ensure that we manage -- control the demand side of it and not get too far ahead of the consumer from a pricing standpoint. And our teams work closely with the owners in Canada and with our supply chain teams to ensure that we have the right pricing going forward and continue to create that strong demand for our beverages and food throughout all dayparts. Thanks for the question.

We'll take our next question from John Glass of Morgan Stanley.

Tom, you mentioned franchisee profitability at Burger King being under some pressure just given inflation in the sales results. Can you maybe frame what the average profitability looked like in '21 versus '19 or some way to sort of measure how you think franchisee profitability is today. Do you think that system has the wherewithal to continue to reinvest in the business the way you want them to just given that profitability? And do you think the solution has just help them operationally improve profitability, and therefore, they can reinvest? Or do you think there's a more significant role in corporate investment to help them achieve those goals of reimaging the system?

Yes. Thank you, John. Franchisee profitability is going to be a big key to our long-term success. And as we came out of 2020, we had very strong profitability despite a difficult time, and that really speaks to the resilience of the business model. But that said, we worked through a lot of headwinds last year and saw an overall decline in profitability in 2021. We did see some positive signs in Q4 where we were flat to Q3 nominally and as a percentage of sales, despite the inflation headwinds. And just positively, we started to see some progress at the end of the year from our profitability initiatives specifically. So as we go forward, we're doing a lot on this front, and we're positive, and our franchisees are also very optimistic that this will have a positive impact in 2022 and beyond and help create the ability to invest more. So on the cost side, we're helping to diversify sourcing to alleviate cost pressures and supply chain risk. On the labor front, I talked a lot about simplifying life in the restaurants and addition of tech -- of restaurant technology opportunities that can help drive efficiency as well. So our near-term plan in next year is to try to drive about $500 million of annualized price and price-related efficiencies to the system. Part of that comes through utilizing those new approaches in guest insights. We started to roll those out in Q4, by the way, and expect to complete those in 2022, once again, providing us with a road map and a backdrop for future investment. And as we mentioned earlier, we do think we have a role to play. Matt, Jose, myself are working closely together. It's something we talk about almost every day, and then we'll have more later in the year on what that will look like. And also we'll be working closely with our franchisees on that plan.

We'll now be moving over to our next question from Dennis Geiger from UBS.

Jose, I appreciate all the color on Tim Hortons and the improvements that the brand saw through the quarter. Wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you view the brand has positioned this year to make further gains based on everything you highlighted and the work the team has done across menu and marketing and digital and more, particularly as the restrictions in Canada begin to ease and mobility improves. Maybe specifically, if you could kind of touch on sort of the strength maybe that you're seeing on those brand, customer brand closeness scores that you've highlighted previously or whether the brand is taking market share currently in Canada?

Great. Thanks, Dennis. Appreciate the question. Yes, as I mentioned, we were excited and encouraged by the progress in Q4. It was a well-balanced plan that was executed well by the owners and by our team. We saw growth in our core performance and kind of the underlying core business was moving in a really good direction. Our digital business, as I touched on and Josh mentioned as well, is really strong. And we saw some really good execution of the promotions in the quarter, including the promotion around hockey cards as well as the promotion with Timbits, something we've done consistently over the years, and we think we can continue to do going forward, relevant promotional activity to create engagement with our consumers, both digitally as well as in restaurants. We're encouraged by the progress, and obviously, towards the end of the quarter and the beginning of '22, we saw a bit of a surge in -- with the Omicron variant, and we saw some restrictions being implemented in Canada as we've seen from time to time. Those are easing now. There are some announcements earlier this week, which we believe will kind of continue down the road for us. We believe our business plan is focused entirely on addressing our food -- our excellent food and beverages. We're also quite focused on the digital side of the business. And so trends continue to be encouraging. The brand metrics, as I touched on, are positive and also encouraging, and we continue to see good momentum as we head into the second half of the quarter and look forward to sharing progress. And Matt, maybe you can touch on some of the comments here.

Yes. Thanks, Dennis. Just related to market share, just a couple of ones to kind of throw out there for you. We did see in the important area of food innovation, which we've been focused on, and we've seen a lot of good results so far against the plan. We did see breakfast food market share grow over 300 basis points year-over-year improvement based on high single-digit growth in breakfast foods versus '19. And we also saw a really, really nice strong growth in lunch foods as well, which were up over 20% versus 2019, and also improving in terms of market share.

We'll take our next question from Jeffrey Bernstein of Barclays.

Great. Tom, welcome to the call. It's great to have brand leadership contributing. Just following up on the Burger King franchisee profits being under pressure. Just wondering whether you think that, that limits certain investments or initiatives that you want to implement in '22. I know you mentioned working with Jose and Matt and others, is there a chance for maybe some sort of contribution to the Burger King system similar to what you made at Tim Hortons this past year, which seemed to be a big positive for you? And just on that franchise profit front, I'm just wondering whether you can share your thoughts around the menu pricing for that specific BK brand. Maybe you're -- where you think the system closed in '21 to protect that profit and maybe some suggestions for 2022 to balance traffic and value and margin? Any thoughts there would be great.

Thank you, Jeffrey. On the contributions, like I said, we're working thoughtfully on what that plan could look like. And yes, there's a thought that, that can -- that we can help there and work with our franchisees on what an investment -- a multiyear investment plan would look like. However, in the short run, we're very focused on the operational improvements that we can make to help profitability and also some interventions that we could do on the marketing front to improve profitability there as well. On pricing specifically, in late '21, we did lift some price caps on some selected items, and we've removed WHOPPER from our core discount, although we'll look for opportunity for some incremental discounting there in the future, but it won't be every single day. We have shown that we have some good price elasticity in a variety of areas. And I think anything -- as we do those things over the course of the next couple of years, what's going to be very important to us and our operators is going to be keeping that guest experience great. And we've also seen that those operators who outperform from a traffic perspective after taking price also perform well in terms of -- they can basically do pricing and maintain traffic. So all of that, those efforts really work together. Those operational efforts alongside any real targeted pricing interventions to make sure that we can grow the business as well. And we saw some pretty good evidence of that in Q4, and once again, as I said, with our high-performing operators.

Our next question comes from Andrew Charles of Cowen.

Great. Guys, really impressive traction in the first 3 years in Tim Hortons China. Could we just get an update, though? I think with the master franchisee plan go public, they did share some store level details. And just want to learn a little bit more around how it impacts your income statement. Based on their disclosure, it looks like AUV is around $450,000 to $500,000 or so. And also I'd love to know just the royalty. I think it steps up over time, but it starts at around 1% to 2%. Just want some help just connect the dots between their store economics and how it impacts your income statement. Obviously, that becomes a larger percentage of growth.

Yes, Andrew, thanks for the question. We are really excited about the progress we're making in Tims in China. Obviously, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we crossed the 400 threshold there or kind of milestone in January, only opening the first one less than 3 years ago. We have a very ambitious long-term target for growth in China and view that as a great path to build the Tims international business throughout the region in Asia and also in other markets around the globe. So we're really excited, and they're seeing some good growth as well from a comparable sales standpoint in 2021. Tremendous digital business as well. Around 90% of the business is through digital channels, and we're seeing significant improvements as well from an operational standpoint at the store level, guest engagement and feedback there is really good. Similar to what we see with Popeyes and we also saw with Burger King early days, as you build the brand internationally, there are different formats that we use. You'll see less -- especially in Asia, you'll see less freestanding drive-through locations, and you'll see the formats that are more in line and smaller footprint. We also see differing economics, as you pointed out, on the royalty, but also in terms of how -- our business internationally is principally a royalty-based business. We do, in some cases, have had ramp-ups in royalty, but the goal is to get back to kind of standardized royalty rates across the globe for all brands. And in many cases, with these international businesses, as you're starting from scratch, you're building awareness. These are startups in many of these markets. And so you'll see AUVs grow over time as we connect and engage consumers better with the brand. They understand the brand better. Frequency is being driven more and more. We have strong loyalty platforms in these markets, which allows for even higher frequency. So we're really excited and looking forward to sharing more on how we progress with Tims, but also Popeyes and Firehouse alongside our BK international growth engine. Thanks so much for the question.

We'll take our next question from Lauren Silberman of Credit Suisse.

I wanted to ask about Popeyes U.S. You talked about competitive pressures at the brand, and given these competitive pressures are unlikely to abate, how are you thinking about the strategy to reaccelerate comps and market share gains? And then to what extent is the sales performance weighing on franchisee economics and the appetite for development in the U.S.?

Great. Thanks for the question, Lauren. I think it's important to remember how significant the step change for Popeyes in the U.S. was in 2018 heading into '19 and then throughout 2020. The business has changed dramatically in terms of AUVs or volumes on a per store basis as well as 4-wall EBITDA for the franchisees. We've seen tremendous appetite and engagement from all the franchisees around the country, existing and new ones as well, coming into the system because of the exciting unit economics. We are facing as we do with all brands in the U.S. and in more mature markets, we -- there's a lot of competition. That's part of the business. But we think we have a differentiated product with the chicken sandwich as well as our nuggets that were launched and a lot of the innovation pipeline that we have on handheld chicken, we believe allows us to continue to grow long term the business investments in digital as well, we believe, are key drivers of growth for the brand in the U.S. in quarters and years to come. And we think there's a tremendous opportunity here. So we'll continue to innovate and develop our menu to continue to address trends in the industry. But the key for Popeyes in the U.S. will be to continue to deliver the great tasting products that we have and do so in a really efficient way in our restaurants. And that's the focus that the team has investing in drive-throughs, investing in outdoor digital menu boards, investing in operations and continuing to be there for our guests day to day. much for the question.

We'll take our last question today from Mark Petrie of CIBC.

Tom, I'll echo the other comments this morning. But just regarding the approach to marketing, I heard your comments about the opportunities in the menu as well as in digital, but I wanted to ask about the Burger King brand perception. And I understand you're in a review of your creative accounts, but where do you think the Burger King brand has lagged? And where do you see the most opportunity this year?

Thank you, Mark. I think that where we have the most opportunity is really redefining or defining who we are, having a relevant and distinct voice. And that is one of the reasons that we took -- we went out to agency review. So we're excited to kind of work on that brand positioning and defining our brand essence going forward. I think we'll be focusing on our core, on the WHOPPER, flame-grilling, having it your way, those are really the things that made us great and the things that will make us great going forward. So I think just focusing on those things and doing it in a simplified way with added firepower to the distinct messages that we'll be out there with are going to be key for us to growing market share over the course of time going forward.

Great. Thanks to everyone for their questions and for joining us this morning. I'm incredibly proud of the progress we've made this quarter and throughout the year against a number of our key priorities, including driving sequential improvements at Tim Hortons in Canada, at Burger King in the U.S., enhancing our global digital capabilities and building a robust development pipeline to accelerate unit growth in 2022 and beyond. I'd like to thank our team and franchisees for their contributions and their continued dedication and effort as we work together towards our big dream of building the most loved restaurant brands in the world. Thank you again for joining us, and have a great day.

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.