Classification: Internal
Domino’s Pizza Group plc 2020 Preliminary Results
Tuesday, 9th March 2021
Transcript produced by Global Lingo
London - 020 7870 7100 www.global-lingo.com
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Overview & Operational Update
Dominic Paul
CEO, Domino’s Pizza Group plc
Welcome
Hello. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to join us this morning for
our Full Year 2020 Results Presentation. I am sorry we cannot meet in person today, but I
am very hopeful that we will meet again soon now that we have a roadmap out of the third
national lockdown. In the meantime, I do hope you and your families are keeping safe and
well.
I am joined here this morning, at an appropriate distance, by Neil Smith, our CFO. Geoff
Callow and Fiona O’Nolan, who you cannot see behind the camera, are both supporting on
Investor Relations.
Agenda
So, let us turn to the agenda on slide two. I am really excited to be taking you through our
new strategic plan. But before we get to that, I will give you a short overview of the year and
operational update. I will then hand over to Neil, who will talk you through our financials in
detail. I will then take you through our new strategic growth plan before we conclude with
Q&A.
The Q&A session will work similarly to the one that we had at half year. So, you should be
able to see a tab on your screen where you can type in any questions you have at any time
during our presentation. Please tell us your name, who you work for at the start of the
question and then when we move to the Q&A session, Geoff will read out your questions in
turn, and Neil and I will answer them.
Strong platform to drive future growth
So, let us go to the overview on slide three. I am really pleased to say that we responded
promptly to the challenges created by COVID-19, prioritising the safety of our customers and
people, while ensuring we were able to continue trading throughout the year.
We have had strong UK and Ireland trading performance, with system sales up 11.4% on a
like-for-like basis. We have seen a further penetration in our digital offering, with UK online
sales up 23.9% and app sales up 26.2%. Online sales now account for 94.3% of delivery
sales in the UK, which demonstrates the strength of our digital offering.
We have seen significant changes at Board and Executive leadership level. I will talk you
through the Executive leadership team changes later in the presentation. However, I think
everyone will agree that with Matt Shattock as Chair, Ian Bull as SID and a number of great
new NED appointments, the Board has been transformed this year with a much more wide-
ranging experience and skill set.
We have a clear focus to grow our core business in the UK and Ireland. So, I am very
pleased that we have made progress in exiting our directly operated international operations.
The Norway disposal completed in May and as announced yesterday, contracts have been
exchanged on the disposal of our Swedish business.
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We are excited to be announcing a multi-year strategic plan, which will drive growth across
the business. We have stated a firm ambition to deliver £1.6 billion to £1.9 billion of system
sales in the medium term. I know the status of the franchisee negotiations is a topic of great
interest, and we have made an attractive offer to Domino’s franchisees that we believe is in
the best interest of all parties. We are engaged in a constructive dialogue but have not yet
reached an agreement. However, we need to continue to move the business forward and
strongly believe the strategic plan we will outline can deliver material growth.
Reflecting our confidence in the new strategy and the strong performance of the business, we
also unveiled today a new capital allocation philosophy that Neil will take you through and we
have announced that we will return £88 million to shareholders.
In my first year with Domino’s, it has been clear to me that we have a great platform to build
from, a uniquely powerful brand, high digital participation and outstanding people and
franchisees. This is a unique, sustainable business model with significant scale economies
that deliver a great and consistent experience to customers.
This gives me very strong confidence in the new strategy we are unveiling today, enabling us
to build upon our proven strength in both delivery and collection, and sharpen our value and
quality proposition so that we can continue to drive growth and amplify the edge our
proposition has over our competitive set.
I am delighted to see the strong trading we saw at the end of 2020 has continued into the
New Year.
Three priorities in 2020
System united behind these priorities and doing the right thing
So, let us turn to our three priorities. Before I hand over to Neil, I want to share with you
how we managed our business over this challenging year. And at this point, I would like to
thank everyone involved within the Domino’s system for coming together and doing a
fantastic job in trying circumstances over the past year. We have top class franchisees, and
they did an outstanding job.
We have worked successfully in close partnership with our franchisees to continue to operate
safely through the various lockdowns and play our part in feeding the nation during the
pandemic. The operational changes we made to keep colleagues and customers safe did
mean we incurred some additional costs, but we have still been able to report a good set of
financial results.
Our Data and Insights team helped us to make the right data-driven decisions at the right
time. For instance, reopening contact-free collection, menu rationalisation and stopping cash
payments. Our corporate stores provided us with an ability to trial and test operational
changes quickly before rolling them out to the rest of the Group.
We also recognised a need to support our communities and key workers during this time. For
instance, we launched two £4 million pizza giveaways for key workers across the country and
have introduced the Domino’s Partners Foundation, which will provide grants to colleagues,
either working directly for us or for our franchisees in times of hardship.
As I said previously, it was of course a challenging year, but by pulling together, we were able
to come through it in very good shape. Finally, helped by our sustainable business model
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with economies of scale and vertical integration, we were able to deliver a strong financial
performance.
And I will now hand over to Neil to walk you through our financials.
Financial Performance
Neil Smith
CFO, Domino’s Pizza Group plc
Welcome
Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Dominic. It is a pleasure to be here this morning to
present the financial results for the year.
Income statement
Robust trading performance generating strong underlying profit
Let us start with the income statement. This slide refers to underlying numbers, so excludes
non-underlying items and charges from our discontinued international activities, which I will
cover later on.
The underlying UK&I EBITDA is £120.8 million, up 6% on last year. And within this number,
we have two significant impacts. Firstly, we have adopted IFRS 16 this year with no change
to our comparatives. This benefits EBITDA in the year by £7.9 million as we effectively
remove lease charges and replace them with incremental depreciation. So, adjusting just for
the IFRS 16 item, EBITDA was actually down year-on-year by around £1 million.
And this decline is due to the second significant impact in the year, COVID. We have charged
£9 million of COVID-related costs to underlying EBITDA in the year, and we have received an
estimated net benefit to our profits of around £3.6 million from the UK VAT rate reduction
that is applied since July.
At the profit before tax level, the IFRS 16 benefit is much smaller at only £0.7 million. So, if
we adjust PBT for IFRS 16, COVID-19, and VAT, then we would have had normalised PBT of
around £105.9 million, up 7.2% year-on-year. Our underlying effective tax rate for the year
was 17%, which benefits from some prior adjustments so that the effective tax rate for the
current year is expected to be 18%. The resultant underlying basic EPS of 18.2p, up 3.4% on
last year, which is a very robust performance.
COVID-19 related costs
Included with underlying items
As I mentioned, we have incurred some significant incremental COVID-related costs in the
year totalling £9 million, a significant investment, but the right thing to do in order to ensure
that the business could continue to trade throughout the COVID-lockdown periods, protecting
our employees, our franchisees and our customers.
In the supply chain, to trade safely, we made a lot of changes, including:
• Changes to shift patterns, so that deliveries were made to stores when they were
closed;
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• Moving to single-driver deliveries to maintain social distancing; and
• Paid premiums to our teams in recognition of their increased workload.
These costs amounted to £4.6 million in the year. And whilst we have reduced the run rate,
we do expect these costs to remain in the business throughout 2021.
In addition, we provided financial assistance to our franchisees paying for the significant initial
orders of safety equipment such as masks, contactless boxes and perspex screens at a total
cost of £3.7 million. And as you can see, these costs are now largely ceased as the
franchisees pay for any additional requirements themselves.
We also wanted to look after our people and our communities. We funded the food costs of
the pizza giveaway to key workers, and we have established a Partners Foundation to provide
financial support to colleagues within the Domino’s system. In total, this cost is £0.7 million,
and we would expect something similar this year.
The UK VAT rate cut from 20% to 5% in July has provided us with financial support of around
£3.6 million in the year, largely in the form of increased royalties from the franchisees. The
recent extension of the VAT rate cut until April 2022 is welcome. And we estimate that for
DPG, this benefit will offset the ongoing COVID-19 costs throughout the current financial year.
Analysis of UK & Ireland EBITDA
Strong performance given COVID-19 costs
As you will be aware, a significant proportion of our EBITDA comes from the supply chain
centre through procurement, manufacturing and distribution of products to stores. And
throughout the COVID period, our supply chain has maintained an excellent service level.
Our EBITDA from the supply chain in the year was £99.3 million after incurring both the direct
supply chain COVID-related costs and the majority of the franchisee support costs.
System sales growth has been strong in the year, up 11.4%, which has driven our net royalty
income growth of £3.9 million. The increase in overheads was due to:
• Increased investment in our people;
• Investments in IT and data analytics; and
• Investments in franchisee support and some other one-offs.
For the coming year, we would expect total overheads to be a little lower as the one-offs are
not expected to recur.
Our investments in joint ventures and corporate stores have also received some benefit from
the VAT reduction, although we have passed much of that benefit on to customers in the
corporate stores with significantly deeper price promotions.
Franchisee Trading
Positive year for the system
Before I look in more detail at our performance, let us touch on franchisee trading.
Historically, we have shared franchisee trading estimates in order to provide a view of the
health of the entire system.
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The numbers are extracted from submissions from our UK franchisees. We aggregate the
submissions to derive these averages. On the basis of the submissions, the average profit
level has increased materially during the year, with average UK EBITDA per store at
£229,000, up 58%. This performance has been achieved by the franchisees and our
employees and their employees working tirelessly throughout the COVID period to serve their
customers.
We have supported the franchisees with financial contributions to cover the cost of safety
equipment, and we agreed a reduction in the contributions to the NAF (National Advertising
Fund) from 4% to 2% for 10 weeks. In addition, whilst they have passed on some of the VAT
rate cut to customers through deeper discounting, the rate reduction has certainly helped
their numbers.
Sales performance
Reported system sales growth aided by effect of UK VAT reduction
System sales have grown significantly, up 12% across the UK, with system sales in Ireland
down a little. And I will provide more colour on system sales in a moment.
In terms of our reported revenue, we have delivered £505 million in the year, down a little on
the £508 million reported last year. This is largely due to the IFRS 16 adjustment, which
removes £25 million of property-related rental revenue in the current year. If we adjust for
that item, then reported revenue would have grown by around 3.7%.
Our corporate stores have seen revenues largely flat because these 36 stores are all based in
London, which has been particularly impacted by lower footfall during the COVID period. And
in addition, we were keen to pass on the majority of the VAT reduction to customers through
deeper discounts.
Looking at EBITDA margin as a percentage of system sales, then if we adjust for IFRS 16,
VAT and the COVID costs, the normalised margins would have been around 9.2%, down a
little on last year as we invested in people, infrastructure and capabilities to drive the
platform for future growth.
UK & Ireland Trading Performance
Strong system sales: order count impacted by reduced collections
Let us dig into system sales and orders in a little more detail. During the year, we had a
number of factors to contend with, which impact our quarterly profile. In the chart on the top
right, you can see total sales and order count profiles quarter-by-quarter.
In Q1, it was before COVID and like-for-like sales were up 3.5% and the order count was
growing. In Q2, COVID-19 hit, and we suspended our collection business. Order count
dropped significantly as collection accounted for 31% of orders in 2019. In Q3, the VAT rate
cut was introduced, which is evident in the like-for-like sales performance, and many
lockdown restrictions were lifted so that we were able to reintroduce our collection offer,
although with much reduced footfall on the High Street. And therefore, we have seen
collection operating at around 60% of the levels of 2019 throughout the second half, and
hence, the continued negative order count growth.
On the left-hand chart, it is pleasing to report that our delivery business during the year has
increased sales by 23.7% and orders by 10.3%. The increased orders from delivery have not
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been sufficient to offset the orders loss from collection, so that total order count in the year
was down 6%.
Whilst orders are down, the average value per order are higher through the delivery channel,
which along with the VAT benefit, meant that total system sales were up 11.4%.
Non-underlying & discontinued operations
Significant reduction of charges arising from discontinued international businesses
As I mentioned earlier, we have so far concentrated on the underlying performance of the
business. But we have some significant non-underlying items and discontinued charges.
First, we have the trading losses from our international businesses in Iceland, Norway,
Sweden and Switzerland. These entities are all classed as discontinued activities, as we are in
the process of disposing of them. Each of the businesses have suffered some impact from
COVID-19 and the Norway results are for the period until its disposal on 22nd May.
In total, the drain on Group resources is much better than it was a year ago with losses at
£20.8 million, halved to £10.1 million. As well as the trading losses, we have accounting loss
on disposal. For Norway, the total accounting charge on disposal was £10.8 million. For
Iceland and Sweden, we have written down their valuations to the expected disposal value,
which means a total impairment of £22.6 million.
There has been no impairment for Switzerland, which is held in the books at nil value.
Yesterday, we are pleased to announce that we have reached agreement to sell the Swedish
business, which is scheduled to complete on 2nd May. This means the two most significant
loss-making international businesses have now been sold. So, the ongoing drain on Group
resources will cease, and we can focus all energy on the execution of our strategy to grow the
core business in UK&I.
Free cash flow
Strong generation of free cash flow from the business
We generated £99 million of free cash flow this year compared to £57 million last year. The
large proportion of the increase is a one-off benefit of £21 million arising from the timing of
payments around last year-end. Effectively cash payments were made just before the end of
FY19 as opposed to the first few days of this financial year, which has resulted in a working
capital swing.
In addition, as I have just mentioned, we have reduced the cash outflow from the
international discontinued operations. The tax cash outflows are high relative to last year,
but in line with our expectations as they arose from the accelerated HMRC quarterly payment
requirements.
Use of free cash
We will return £88m of cash generated to shareholders
In the year, we have largely used free cash flow to reduce net debt by some £60 million. We
have continued to invest in the business with total investment of £19.4 million, largely within
our supply chain, where we have increased capacity and resilience with the opening of a new
facility in Scotland. And we expect capital investment this current year to be in the region of
£15 million.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we initially suspended the payment of the FY19 final dividend
of £25 million to preserve Group cash flow. However, as we realised, we could continue to
trade, we paid that dividend in September. Prior to today, no dividend has been proposed or
paid in respect of the 2020 financial year.
And as you can see here, we have generated cash flow available for distribution of £91.2
million in the year. And today, we have announced that we plan to distribute £88 million of
that cash to shareholders via dividend of £43 million and a share buyback programme of £45
million.
Net Debt Bridge
Strong cash generation from core business
By utilising free cash flow to largely reduce net debt, we have seen net debt decline to £172
million at the year-end, which on a reported EBITDA basis, produces leverage of 1.57 times.
The core UK&I businesses generated cash of £106 million, whilst the international
discontinued business consumed £9.6 million, plus the £6.4 million of cash outlay on the
disposal of Norway.
Capital allocation philosophy
This is an asset-light, high returns business with strong free cash flow
As we have developed our operational strategy, which Dominic will share in a moment, we
have also considered the approach to capital allocation and how an effective capital allocation
strategy can amplify the benefits and returns from the cash generated by the business.
As we have demonstrated this year, we do have an asset-light, high returns business, which
is strongly cash generative. We want to retain a sensible level of leverage, which we believe
to be around 1.5 times to 2.5 times. And working within these parameters, we will allocate
cash in a disciplined way.
• First and foremost, we want to ensure we continue to invest in the core business and
drive long-term sustainable growth and support the strategic ambitions that Dominic
will cover.
• We will also aim to maintain a sustainable dividend with an EPS cover of at least 2
times. For the 2020 financial year, this means we are proposing a final dividend of
9.1p.
• We also want to remain open to additional growth opportunities where we will assess,
in a disciplined way, the potential to enhance returns and drive future cash flow. For
the year gone, our focus has been divesting the subscale international operations that
were a drain on Group cash.
• Finally, we will look to return surplus cash to shareholders, not as a one-off exercise,
but as a sustained programme, whereby we will regularly assess the optimal use of
cash generated by the business. And for the FY20 year, this means that we have
today announced a share buyback programme of £45 million.
2021 guidance
I have summarised here some modelling guidance for the current year. From an earnings
perspective, you should remember that PBT in FY20 was impacted by the COVID costs of £9
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million and benefited from the VAT rate reduction to the tune of £3.6 million. So, a net hit of
profit of £5.4 million, which we do not expect to repeat in 2021.
In addition to that one-off add-back, we are getting on with executing the new strategy, and
we expect this to deliver further growth in underlying profit in the current year. With regard
to net debt, we expect this to grow a little as a result of the use of cash to deliver returns to
shareholders.
Let me now pass you back to Dominic.
New Strategy: Delivering Future Growth
Dominic Paul
CEO, Domino’s Pizza Group plc
Thank you, Neil, and thank you to all those who have submitted questions so far. Before we
get to Q&A, I will take you through our new strategy, delivering future growth, starting with
slide 19.
We have a great foundation for delivering future growth
On joining Domino’s a year ago, we began a wide-ranging programme:
• Assessing our internal capabilities;
• Digital strategy;
• Growth avenues; and
• The optimal capital allocation policy for the Group.
In completing this excise, it is clear that there are some real strengths within the business,
which provide a great platform from which to launch the new strategy and deliver future
growth. Domino’s is a brand that customers love.
• We are a leader in a growing delivery market;
• We are accelerating the pace of digital adoption for collections and delivery;
• We operate a world-class supply chain; and
• We have high-quality franchisees achieving best-in-class returns.
A compelling market backdrop
An evolving market which offers growth opportunities
Let us look at the market backdrop. The market in which we currently operate is evolving,
and this has created opportunities that we will seek to capitalise on through the new strategy.
On the left-hand side, you can see that the delivered food market is growing. We are a
leading brand within the space and the opportunities for us in collection where we are under-
penetrated are compelling.
We get asked a lot about aggregators. The aggregators are helping grow the overall
delivered food market. We enjoy the fact that we have a clear customer and operational edge
versus the aggregators. We control the whole customer experience from manufacturer right
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through to delivery to a customer’s door. If you insert someone else into that chain, then
either prices have to rise to deliver the product or margin will fall.
Furthermore, delivery times are hard to keep consistent. This gives us a clear advantage.
• Our delivery times are best-in-class;
• Our product quality and value are extremely strong;
• We have a sustainable, vertically integrated business model; and
• We have a direct relationship with our customers.
This is particularly powerful now that over 90% of bookings are made digitally. And that
digital growth is impressive, with an increase of over five million customers in 2020. In line
with this, 90.5% of system sales are now made through the web and app channels and 94%
of total delivery sales are made online.
And our customer service performance is exceptional. In 2020, I am delighted to say that our
overall customer satisfaction score has increased by 8 percentage points compared with 2019
from 61% to 69%. The score increase was driven by improvements in four areas:
• Taste;
• Accuracy;
• Time; and
• Appearance.
Compared with the average overall satisfaction score for our peers, as provided by the third-
party agency we work with, our score is 11 percentage points above the average UK
benchmark, which is a result that we are extremely proud of.
I am also very happy to say that our average delivery time across the entire network was
24.9 minutes. Freshly made pizza from order to door in less than 25 minutes, despite the
peaks we have seen in our business. This truly is a unique business model and customer
proposition.
And the good news is that we believe we have an important role to play as we come out of
this COVID crisis. We played a critical role for the nation and millions of customers during the
pandemic. As we come out of the crisis, many millions of people will be meeting up with
friends and families.
Yes, restaurants will get busy, but people cannot afford to eat in restaurants every night.
People also want to be sharing food with friends and families at home. With our strong value
proposition and superb consistent quality, what better food to share than Domino’s pizza.
And that is an opportunity both for our delivery, but also for our collection business.
So, as you can see, we have a number of industry-leading strengths, and we operate in a
market that is expected to continue expanding and offering opportunities. We will now look
at how we intend to capture the growth opportunity with our new strategic plan.
Delivering a better future through food people love
We spent some time debating our purpose. And what we are really passionate about is to
deliver a better future through food people love. This is supported by our vision to be the
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favourite food delivery in collection brand with pizza at our heart. The five key objectives that
will underpin the strategy are:
• Nobody delivers like Domino’s. We are a market leader and can build from a position
of strength;
• We will turbocharge our collection business, where there is an opportunity to grow
market share;
• We will amplify our product quality and value through continued innovation and
marketing effectiveness;
• We will uphold our industry-leading economics by maintaining the world-class
profitability of our system; and
• We will model excellence as a franchisor through increasing capability and attracting
the best franchisees.
I will expand on each of these points in more detail in a moment.
It is appropriate that as we grow the business, we do so in the right way, and our values are
important to us as it underpin everything we stand for as a company. As we look to grow, we
will make sure we continue to do the right thing and work as one team. And I think we have
shown that brilliantly during COVID. We will put our customers first. We are bold. And we
will celebrate success together.
I know that both I, the Board and the Leadership Team, are hugely excited about the
potential of our new strategy. In line with our values, we are boldly setting out our ambitions
for the medium term. And we firmly believe that in that time horizon, we can grow system
sales to £1.6 billion to £1.9 billion and add 200 new stores in the UK and Ireland. Neil and I
look forward to updating you on our progress on that in the coming years.
We have reorganised our business to deliver the future
Underpinning this strategy is a transformation programme, which will be managed by our
newly established transformation office and delivered by my Executive leadership team.
Talking of which, let us look at this slide.
I mentioned in my opening slide, the changes we have made to transform the Board. We
have also made significant changes across the Executive leadership team, providing enhanced
clarity and focus. Our new hires include:
• Neil as our Chief Financial Officer, previously Interim CFO;
• Mark Grimes as our new Chief Information Officer, who brings us an industry
experience that is key for our future innovation; and
• Sarah Barron, our new Chief Marketing Officer, who will lead our digital team and
brings with her deep brand building, digital and innovation experience.
We have also established a Data and Insights team to help us really commercialise the data
that we hold. Our operations performance and continued innovation in this area is going to
be increasingly critical for us. And I am delighted to announce that Nicola Frampton will be
joining us as our new Operations Director. Nicola brings deep multi-site experience to us, as
she was most recently Managing Director of William Hill Retail with over 2,000 stores.
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Scott Bush, our current Operations Director, will be moving into a newly created role of CEO
Ireland, where he will be working with our Republic of Ireland franchisees to accelerate
growth in this successful market.
Finally, Simon Wallis, who has extensive experience of our business, has been appointed
Chief Transformation Officer, and is responsible for delivering our strategic transformation
program. The new team has a drive, energy and skill set, that I have no doubt, will help us
to achieve our ambitions.
We are doing the right thing for…
Our customers, our people and the environment
But our new strategy is not limited to financials. It includes conducting business in a
sustainable way that not only values financial performance and returns but recognises the
benefits of creating wealth through other forms of capital, including social and environmental
capital.
Alongside our strategic plan, we will be working to drive forward our wider sustainability
programme and credentials. Important work has been done throughout the year to develop a
more systematic understanding of our issues. We are committed to minimising:
• Our environmental impacts;
• Acting on climate change; and
• Providing our colleagues with opportunities so that they can prosper in a diverse,
inclusive and safe workplace.
We have realised this is very much a journey. And during the course of 2021, we will refine
our plans in this area and align our reporting with external frameworks promoted by the
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial
Disclosures.
Objective one
Nobody delivers like Domino’s
These considerations have played an important role in the formation of our new strategy. So,
let us move to our first objective of strategy, nobody delivers like Domino’s.
Delivery is at the very heart of our business, and it is what we are best known for. We have
built a brand that people love, enabling us to hold a leading position in the UK delivery
market. Growth in the delivery market has accelerated over this past year, as consumers
flock to use delivery services during lockdown.
Our opportunities to remain the leading QSR delivery brand. We will maintain our position
through being relentless in our approach to:
• Improving the customer experience;
• Continuing to build our brand;
• Building ever closer digital relationships with our customers; and
• By leveraging our unique-scale economies, our best-in-class digital assets and our
supply chain expertise.
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New initiatives in this area include launch of new digital platforms that will provide a
personalised experience to our customers, such as an upgraded GPS tracking solution to
improve the delivery experience.
We already believe we have major strengths versus our competitors, and we plan to continue
to build on those strengths by aiming to reduce average delivery time for our customers to
below 20 minutes versus the current time of just under 25 minutes.
Objective two
Turbocharge our collection business
Our second objective is turbocharging our collection business. We are confident that the
collection market will bounce back swiftly as we start to emerge from lockdown. And we see
this as a strong future growth avenue for Domino’s. Our market-leading position in delivery
is an indication of what we could aspire to achieve in the currently under-penetrated carryout
business.
We also have the opportunity to extend our reach into different collection occasions, such as
lunch, as well as different customer segments. In the short-term, we are well placed to play
a role in helping friends and families come together post-lockdown.
There are a number of evolutions we are planning to make our overall customer experience
better for collections, such as:
• Rolling out targeted collection offers;
• Enhancing our food offer to include products just right for the collection customer.
Our measured success will be to grow our collection business faster than our delivery
business and to double our market share in the UK collection market over the medium term.
This still provides headroom for future growth when we look at other Domino’s markets.
Objective three
Amplify our product quality and value
Moving on to the next objective, amplifying our product quality and value. Our customers
love our product, and we see a great opportunity to drive product innovation to stay ahead of
our competitors.
We know there is an increased number of people demanding plant-based healthy alternatives,
and the success of our vegan options over the last year demonstrate this. We also
understand from our customers, there is room for us to improve the perceived value for
money. Here, we will really be able to use our Data and Insights team to:
• Improve segmentation;
• Understand specific customer demand; and
• Tailor promotions.
For example, with our recent Absolute Banger offer, it is much more compelling and results in
higher conversion. If we target that product at customers who order meat pizzas and
promote vegetarian offers to those that order meat-free pizzas. Future segmentation is going
to be critical.
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Our aim is to become the undisputed number one delivery player in terms of net promoter
score and make sure that our customers feel they are getting an even better deal than they
do today.
Objective four
Uphold our industry-leading scale economies
Turning to the next slide, which is upholding our industry-leading economics. Over the years,
we have built a system which rewards both franchisees and DPG for the great performance of
the brand for which we are responsible.
We will continue to invest in the system to exploit technology and drive further efficiencies
across the value chain. Identified opportunities include:
• Dynamic routing of our logistics operations;
• Sophisticated new logistics technologies; and
• Smarter ingredients contracts.
In our stores, we can deploy our operational technology to support franchisees’ productivity.
Tackling both should allow us to maintain our best-in-class profitability for both franchisees
and DPG.
Objective five
Model excellence as a franchisor
And moving on to our final objective, modelling excellence as a franchisor. The Domino’s
system in the UK and Ireland has grown to a point, where there are now 66 very successful
franchisees with over 1,200 stores across our network, but we can do more.
We will work even harder to reinforce our industry-leading capabilities to better position all
franchisees for success and attract new franchisees into the system. We will build on our
business review process with our franchisees to make sure they get the personalised support
they need to perform at their full potential.
We are investing in our franchisor toolkit, including:
• Building key capabilities across data science, transformation and store operations; and
• Continuing to upgrade our supply chain and IT infrastructure.
We are also undertaking an exciting project to review future store formats, which will unlock
the next wave of growth in the system. All of this will enable us to reach our goal of
attracting and retaining the best talent in the industry.
Investment to enhance our core business, and drive sustainable growth
Annual capital investment of £10m to £15m
Let us look at our capital investment plan, which Neil touched on. We are confident we can
sustain growth of our core business through capital investment in the range of £10 million to
£15 million annually. We will operate a rigorous and disciplined approach to assessing
additional growth opportunities.
In our supply chain, we will utilise our scale to capture efficiency opportunities. Technology is
a key to future growth, and we will be launching our next-generation web platform that will
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provide a personalised experience for our customers. And finally, our store operations will be
transformed.
What's different in the new strategy vs current situation
So, I thought it was worth just recapping in terms of the current plan and how we intend to
enhance it with a new strategy. We are a leader in digital and delivery, but we cannot stand
still. We intend to revolutionise our digital experience to stay ahead of our competition.
Our focus has been on delivery. But whilst looking to grow in delivery, we will also invest to
turbocharge our collection business. Our marketing is very brand led. We will use customer
data and digital insights to tailor offers and focus on marketing that amplifies the edges we
have in value and quality.
Like everybody, we are under increasing cost pressure. So, we will continue to optimise the
supply chain to really underpin the advantage we have in value and quality and the best-in-
class system profitability. We have a successful but standardised offering, and we intend to
accelerate our menu innovation to drive repeat purchase and attract new customers and
innovate our store experience.
Franchisee alignment
We are stronger together
Now let us talk about the status of the franchisee discussions. As I mentioned at the start of
the presentation, we have made our franchisees what we consider to be an attractive offer
that aligns our interest. Specifically, the offer includes:
• A revised food rebate mechanism that would encourage growth;
• New store incentives, that would support accelerated store openings;
• Investment in our capabilities to enhance marketing effectiveness through data and
insights;
• An agreement from franchisees to participate in national deals; and
• A phased increase in marketing funding as marketing effectiveness improves to
enabling enhanced investment in the brand.
Discussions with our franchisees are constructive, and they remain ongoing. We all recognise
that the system is even stronger with all of us fully aligned.
However, we do believe that our medium-term ambition of £1.6 billion to £1.9 billion worth of
system sales can be achieved with our franchisee agreement, although an agreement would
accelerate that growth.
We are making material progress on our strategy execution
Multiple initiatives driving our strategic programme
Now whilst we have set ambitious but achievable medium-term ambitions, there will be many
steps along the way. And here, we have outlined some of those to help you benchmark our
progress. Some of the key things we will deliver in 2021:
• A further digital acceleration and personalisation;
• New innovation; and
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• Improved marketing effectiveness.
And we have also given an early indication of some of our objectives for 2022.
We look forward to updating you on the implementation of these initiatives at the next
results.
Summary: Delivering a better future through food people love
So, to wrap up this presentation, let us now go to the summary. I know we have got a lot of
questions waiting, so I will keep this brief.
As I have mentioned several times, I am really, really proud of the way the whole Domino’s
family pulled together during the past 12 months to keep providing our customers with an
outstanding experience in challenging and unforeseen circumstances. The strong financial
results we announced today are the result of this effort.
We have established a clear capital allocation policy that will provide the investment required
to grow the business and deliver material returns to shareholders as evidenced by the £88
million return announced today. I am proud of the foundation for future growth that we have
put into place over the past nine months. We have transformed the plc Board and brought in
great talent to the executive leadership team.
With the exchange of contracts to our Swedish business, we are making good progress on our
international exit. The Domino’s business already has many great strengths:
• A sustainable business model with scale economies;
• A world-class supply chain;
• A very powerful brand;
• A highly digital business;
• An amazing product and delivery system that has clear edge over our competitors;
and
• A group of top-class franchisees.
Critically, we see great opportunity and have a clear plan of how we will accelerate the growth
of this business over the coming years. And we are confident in our ambition of growing
store numbers and in growing the system to £1.6 billion to £1.9 billion in the medium term.
We have demonstrated we have a flexible and robust business model that is been able to
adapt the uncertain and changing market conditions throughout 2020. The current trends
and demand expectations, in addition to investment and capabilities we have and are making
gives us confidence in delivering further operational and financial progress in the coming
year.
And we have clear building blocks for our growth:
• Strengthening our position in the fast-growing delivery market;
• Turbocharging our collection business;
• Further amplifying our product quality and value;
• Building on our industry-leading economics; and
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• Continuing to improve our capabilities as a franchisor.
We have a clear plan, and we are excited to be executing it.
So, with that, I am now going to hand over to Geoff for the Q&A session. Thank you.
Q&A
Geoff Callow: So, the first question, and we have had multiple varieties of the question on
the same topic, is the status of franchisee negotiations. Can you give any more colour on the
nature of the offer? Is there a particular sticking point in the negotiations? And if the offer
was to be accepted, what is the likely financial impact of that going forward?
Dominic Paul: Well, I think the first thing I outlined was that I think we have all worked
really well together as a system during this pandemic. It has been an exceptional situation. I
think the franchisees have done an extraordinary job to keep their businesses operating, to
keep trading and to keep serving the nation.
Whilst we have been doing that, we have been doing a few things. We have been investing in
our own capabilities in DPG. We have been clarifying what the strategy is moving forward,
and we have been getting into a set of constructive conversations with the franchisees about
how we can help them accelerate growth.
I think everyone is aligned on the fact that we all want to grow the overall business and the
overall system. And we have been having conversations about how we best do that. We
have not found a way through to agree a deal at the moment. But we have made really good
progress in delivering the business and coming up with a strategy. And I think we have got
real clarity now on what that strategy is, and we can go ahead and execute it.
If we find a way through the talks and we make an agreement, we would see that what that
does is it gives us an ability to accelerate the medium-term goals that we have already set
out.
Neil Smith: I would probably just sort of reiterate what Dominic had said in the presentation,
which is the sort of broad outline of the offer is clear in terms of improvement in the food
rebate, improvement in new store openings incentive, investment by us in the system and
investment by us in capability, offset by, if you like, an ask that the franchisees participate in
national offers with a modest increase in the NAF, all designed to grow the total system
profitability, both for the franchisees and for ourselves.
We cannot, and I do not think people would expect us to, give you a quantification of that in
terms of impact upon profitability in the near-term or long-term. We will only do the deal if
we think it is the right thing, both for franchisees, for DPG and our shareholders.
Geoff Callow: A couple of questions now from Anubhav Malhotra at Liberum. First one, as
the franchisees have not yet accepted the new proposal and probably not yet bought into the
new plan, I was wondering why you have decided to announce the plan before finalising the
dispute?
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Dominic Paul: So, I think the thing that works really well with the strategy is it is an
evolution, not a revolution. It is building on the core strengths that we have already got as a
business. We know that we have got really strong edges versus our competitive set. We
know that there are really clear unique advantages to the business model versus our
competitors. The fact that we have got scale, the fact that we are vertically integrated, I
think, gives Domino’s an enormous advantage in the marketplace.
The strategy we have laid out today is actually further amplification of those edges and
acceleration of that growth. I think everybody within the system is behind the concept of
growing the business and behind the concept of us taking the fight to our competitive set and
really amplifying the edges that we have got versus our competitors.
It is also really important that we get on with executing the strategy. We see great growth
opportunity for the brand moving forward. We want to get ahead and get ready for that
growth. A lot of getting ready for that growth is getting our capabilities right, investing in the
product, digital, innovation. We are just going to get on and get ready for that growth
because we think we have got a great opportunity ahead of us.
Geoff Callow: And final part of two-part question from Anubhav. How satisfied are you with
the delivery order growth rate?
Dominic Paul: Can we take that first part of the question? Yes, so we have had strong
growth in our delivery order growth rate. So, it is about 10% in terms of order count. We
have attracted over five million new customers to the system overall. So, we have grown the
number of new customers into the system. We have grown the number of order count. But
within that, customers are ordering more when they make the order. So, you will have
probably seen in the data, it is about up about 10% per order in terms of the size of the order
they are making.
And a lot of that is for reasons because families are buying and either they have got larger
families altogether or they are buying food that is going to last, maybe dinner for the
following night. So, when we look at all of those things together, we think we have had a
really strong performance in terms of bringing new customers into the brand and driving and
bringing new customers into the delivery space.
Obviously, that has been offset by a softening of the collect, but we feel we have had success
driving that increased delivery volume and bigger orders per customer.
Geoff Callow: How satisfied are you with the delivery order growth, given that you are like
to lose significant delivery market share when compared to over 50% order growth at food
aggregators such as Just Eat?
Dominic Paul: So, I mean, the thing that the aggregators have done, of course, I think a
couple of things. One, they are growing the size of the overall market, relatively easier for
them, of course, to add restaurants. They are not necessarily building restaurants. They are
signing up new restaurants. So relatively easy for them to drive that kind of growth.
But they are doing a good job of driving the overall delivered space. Definitely what we see
from customer behaviours, once they enjoy food delivery, they will generally use it again. So,
I think that is growing the overall food delivery market. That is good news for us. What I
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think is particularly powerful is as that market continues to grow, we have a unique
operational and customer edge.
You can see that in terms of our delivery times. We got record customer satisfaction. And
customers rate us extraordinarily highly in terms of the freshness and the quality of the
product when they get it. So as that delivery market grows, we have an opportunity to
continue to grow within that market because we have a clear edge versus the aggregators
and versus our competitors.
Geoff Callow: Moving on to Ross Broadfoot at Investec. Do you have a store target, which
would lead you to five years having around 1,350 stores versus the previous target of around
1,600 stores? It would be great if you could give us some colour on what changed in the
Group’s assumption to lead to this revised number?
Neil Smith: Well, what we are saying in terms of the medium-term is that we think it is a
sensible aspiration to shoot for 200 additional stores, which is a step-up from the current run
rate of new store openings. We are not distancing ourselves from the 1,600 number. We
just do not think that is probably likely within the time frame that we are talking about.
Geoff Callow: And a follow-up question on data disclosure. What can we expect moving
forward in terms of data per address or per store in terms of metrics?
Dominic Paul: Geoff, we are not as focused, I do not think, on addresses per store as we
have done in the past. We are actually much more interested in tighter analytics, not just the
number of addresses, but also the financial wealth effectively of those addresses. You might
have fewer addresses, but it might be in a wealthier area, therefore has higher orders.
So, I think, as part of this work, we have got a much tighter analytics programme that gives
us confidence about that 200 number.
Geoff Callow: A couple of other questions on the same theme of store openings from
Natasha Brilliant at Citi. How do you think you will be able to get to 200 store openings a
year without a resolution with the franchisees? And does the target include any corporate
stores? And second part of that question. Assuming we reach an agreement quickly, how
many stores do you think we could open in full year 2021? And if there is no agreement, the
same question.
Neil Smith: Well, we know that there has a pent-up demand from our franchisees wanting to
open stores, even though we have got, say, dispute franchises are still keen to open stores,
which is demonstrated by opening the 19 stores we did last year. We think for this current
year, we should be able to get to 25-30 with franchisee alignment, further than that for sure.
So, we are confident from our analytics of the data and where we think economically viable
stores sit, whether that is a split or a virgin, that the 200 number is a good number.
Franchisee alignment will probably deliver that quicker.
Geoff Callow: And a final question from Natasha. Could you talk a bit more about inorganic
opportunities you might consider? Will they solely be in the UK, or would you consider going
into new markets?
Dominic Paul: So, I think what we have outlined today is a very clear strategy focused on
the Domino’s brand in UK and Ireland. You have seen, as we are exiting the international
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markets, we are really doubling down on our focus in the UK and Ireland, and I strongly
believe that is the right thing for us to do.
We have also got an amazing platform for the business. That is whether that is supply chain,
our digital assets, our IT assets, our capabilities, which I think will stand us in very good
stead for future growth. At the moment, we are very, very focused on doubling down on the
core Domino’s business and growing that within UK and Ireland.
As we come out with pandemic, and Neil just touched on it, we know that a number of our
franchisees are very keen to open stores and there will be and actually some opportunities
will arise coming out of the pandemic to open stores in locations and maybe they would not
have had access to.
So, doubling down and focusing on our core businesses is priority number one. Within that,
what we are clearly demonstrating is we have an amazing platform and system for future
growth.
Geoff Callow: Next question from Owen Shirley at Berenberg. You mentioned a strong start
to the year. Can you comment on order momentum relative to Q4, please?
Neil Smith: Yes, I can do that in that what we have seen was that in Q3, we had delivery
order growth of about 11.8%. In Q4, that did come down to about 5.1%, that is what is
driving the apparent softening in Q4. So, when we looked at that, what happened was that if
you look at the performance this year versus last year is that around the Christmas period,
there is a lot of pent-up demand for our product through offices, through Christmas parties,
etc. So, the December like-for-like number in terms of order count growth was just shy of
2%. I think, it says 1.5%, so pretty soft December.
The encouraging thing is, to Owen’s question, we have seen that recover quite very strongly
through the New Year period and through January and February so that we are tracking more
around 8% now in the year-to-date of 2021.
Geoff Callow: Final question from Owen. Switzerland losses improved a lot. Could you
comment on what is behind that, please? And you have mentioned you have written down
Iceland and Swiss assets to expected disposal value. What is that value, please?
Dominic Paul: Can you handle the second part?
Neil Smith: Sure.
Dominic Paul: So, I will handle the first part. Just operational focus. The team in
Switzerland has done a good job. We have worked with them on tightening up the plan for
delivery in Switzerland, and they have done a good job of actually improving the performance
there in the Swiss market.
We still believe, fundamentally, it is right for us to focus on the UK and Ireland. But whilst
doing that, we wanted to make sure we were reducing cash burn. So, selling in the Norway
and Swedish markets are a big move to that, but also improving the core performance in
Switzerland has helped us there as well.
Neil Smith: I think there were two remaining territories that we have, Switzerland, which is
held at nil network value, so there has no write-down to be taken there. And Iceland, we
took it down to £13 million.
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Geoff Callow: A couple of questions from Douglas Jack at Peel Hunt. Given the likely exit
value of £80 million to £110 million from the German JV and your high free cash flow, is it
sensible to assume that share buyback programme is repeated as a similar rate in future
years?
Dominic Paul: I think there is two questions in that really. So, is it sensible to assume share
buybacks will continue at ongoing rate? The capital allocation philosophy that we have laid
out is one that, says, let us look at what cash we generate each year. Let us, firstly, fund the
capital investment required to grow the core business, rest ensured that we have that
sustainable dividend.
And what we have left, unless there are other opportunities to invest in it for great returns,
we will probably return to shareholders likely through the share buyback. So, there should be
an annual review and likely expectation for share buybacks. I think that is sort of question
one.
Question two related is, I think, what Doug is suggesting is that if we end up selling the
German investment, we could see a circa £100 million cash inflow, that will go into the pot of
cash that we have generated in that year to say, okay, what do we do with our surplus cash.
So that could be returned to shareholders? Absolutely.
We are not saying necessarily that we are planning to or expecting to sell the German
business, but that is the mass of the philosophy that we would adopt in terms of how we use
the cash flow.
Geoff Callow: And a follow-up question from Doug. How does that 55% NPS compared to
your peers, both traditional pizza delivery and the aggregator deliveries?
Dominic Paul: So really strong. I mean, I think I mentioned when I spoke, we have our own
customer satisfaction data. We are 8 percentage points better in 2020 than previous year.
We also benchmark overall satisfaction effectively. It is a stable of different leisure and
hospitality businesses, most of which are in the similar space to us. And according to that
data, we are 11 percentage points better than the average. So very, very high.
Customers particularly have enjoyed the speed and consistency of delivery, the product
quality. And again, our franchisees do an amazing job in this area. And actually, the value
proposition as well, that has driven that high customer satisfaction. So, we are super proud
of that. And it is all part of the sustainability of the business model moving forward.
If you are delivering a product that customers do not like, it would not support your growth.
The fact that we have got such high customer satisfaction is one of the key areas that gives
us confidence about the future growth.
Geoff Callow: Moving on to Richard Stuber at Numis. What percentage of collection could
curb side get to? And how quickly do you expect collection to recover to pre-COVID levels?
Dominic Paul: Let me take the first one. You take the second one. So, we are relatively
early on in the in-car collection. So what Richard is asking about is in-car collection. So, we
are in about 200 stores at the moment, where you can order your pizza on the app or online.
You then go to your local store. We are doing it in stores that have either their own car park
or car park very close by. When you arrive there, it is geo-targeted, and someone will bring
your pizza out to your car.
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We see it as an amazing opportunity to actually take share from some of the drive-through
type restaurants. So, we are in about 200 stores at the moment. The sales are encouraging.
We are going to continue to roll it out with franchisees who see that opportunity within their
estates.
We do not think in the short-term, it is going to overtake the number of usual collection
business of people coming. But we think it has got good growth potential. But we have not
actually been clear on what the percentage target is, but we see good growth potential. I
know the US is having success with that product as well. So, it will be one of the weapons
that we will use within our battle to drive the collection business over the next few years.
Neil Smith: And the speed at which we get to 2019 levels, let us say, it is very difficult to
determine. It really depends upon the speed at which the economy reopens post-COVID.
Hopefully, if the country reopens at the planned timeframe outlined by the government, then
come June, people will be back on the High Street and we should see, let us say, 70%, 80%,
90% of levels of 2019. But I think it might take a little bit longer. It is a bit of a personal
view. I think it will take a little bit of time to get back. So probably the autumn, I would
have thought, we should be targeting for return of the collection business.
Geoff Callow: Another question from Richard. It has two parts to it. DPZ discussed the
benefits of the loyalty programme. Have you considered introducing one in the UK? And
then over the last 12 months, has there been any change in peaks during the week, e.g.,
more orders midweek or times of day? Do you expect this will revert to pre-COVID patterns?
Dominic Paul: So, I think let us take the first one. The biggest opportunity I see in terms of
customer data and personalisation is that we are pretty unique in the sense that all of our
customers are direct to us. So, as a system, we get all of those customer details. We have
grown by more than five million customers during this pandemic. We have got all of those
customer details. That gives us incredible information with which to build a closer relationship
with our customers.
So, we segment that data, we put them into our different customer demographics and then
we can over time personalise offers and products and services to those customers.
A further iteration of that could, in the future, be some form of loyalty programme. I know a
number of markets have tried that and had success. I think loyalty programmes, if they are
done right, can be very successful. We will consider that as part of our ongoing rollout, but
we do not have a plan to do that right now. Our plan at the moment is really focused on
really mining that customer data that we have access to.
And the second part of the question was?
Neil Smith: Consumer patterns.
Geoff Callow: Are you seeing different trading patterns during the week?
Dominic Paul: Yes. We have seen consumer patterns change markedly through the
pandemic. And again, the franchisees have done a phenomenal job of managing their
business through very, very different peaks compared to normal. So, what we normally see
is business more spread out during the week and more spread out during the day within each
of those days.
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What we have seen during the pandemic is the demand get really concentrated, primarily
between 16.00 and 19.00, particularly at weekends. And I think that plays a lot to the fact
that we have been feeding millions of families through the pandemic. So, we have really had
to change operational procedures within stores and our franchisees put a lot of effort into
changing shift patterns, for example, of drivers and riders to feed those peaks.
I am sure that, as we come out from pandemic, the patterns will start to become more
normal. I think we will see as pubs open, for example, as friends start getting back together
again, more late-night business will start coming in. I imagine, freshers, later this year will
be a pretty turbocharged event. Students will be getting back together face-to-face.
So, I think we will see, as Neil says, as we come through the summer into the autumn, I
would expect to see patterns normalising more.
Geoff Callow: A couple of questions from Wayne Brown at Liberum. Firstly, is it prudent to
do a share buyback programme in the middle of a franchisee dispute and order count is falling
so badly? Surely at some point this will start to threaten the supply chain profits.
Dominic Paul: So, I think the order count falling so badly, I think Wayne is talking about the
overall account with collection. One of the interesting things that we did in terms of data and
analytics during the pandemic is we really got to the bottom of the fact that a collect
customer is fundamentally a different customer to delivery customers.
So, the fact that we have seen collect soften but delivery grow is not actually collect
customers becoming delivery customers. It is new customers that we have got to go into
delivery. We also see, as we come out of the pandemic, we think that there will be an
opportunity. There will be an opportunity to continue to grow the collect business and an
opportunity to grow the delivery business over time. It is clearly a growing segment of the
market.
The franchisee discussions that we are having, the franchisees are generally all interested and
focused on profitably growing their businesses. And we want to find a way to support them to
profitably grow their business. We are all interested in achieving the same thing. Within that
context, we also have to do the right things for our shareholders and our investors, and that
is part of the decision about a share buyback programme and the capital allocation plan that
we have done.
But be under no illusion, priority number one is to successfully and profitably grow this
business for the long-term. We think we have an amazing opportunity to do that. We want
to do that hand-in-hand with our franchisees. We have shown that during the pandemic. We
can achieve amazing things by working together.
Whilst we have those constructive conversations, we are going to get ahead and start
executing that strategy, which will we are confident deliver that long-term successful growth,
which will actually boost franchisee profitability over time. It is really important we do that
because a healthy system is a growing system.
Geoff Callow: Next question from Wayne was, have the franchisees agreed to the NAF
increase, and if not, why should they? What return would you target from this extra spend?
And what would you spend this on?
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Dominic Paul: So, one of the aspects, I think, of the plan that we think we have an
opportunity on is actually to improve our marketing effectiveness overall. So, the marketing
money that we spend, we want to make sure that we spend that optimally. We have an
opportunity to do that. For example, what I have just spoken about in terms of the direct
relationship we have with our customers.
We have an opportunity, I think, to be smart about how we use some aspects of media, and
we want to do that in full cooperation with our franchisees. Over time, we would like to see
that marketing fund continue to grow because we think it is an important part of investing in
the brand.
We also think it is really important that we display to our franchisees that we are serious
about driving that improved marketing effectiveness, because, overall, that will improve the
returns of the system.
Geoff Callow: And then this will be the final question. So just to say sorry to everybody who
have not got answer to all of your questions, but if we have not, then please e-mail us and we
will try and get back to you. A follow-on from Wayne. How will you drive system sales
without franchisee buying?
Dominic Paul: So, I think what we have shown during the crisis is we have driven system
sales collectively as a system by working so well together. We have a great group of
franchisees. They want to continue to grow their businesses. They understand that growing
their business is really important to them, as do we. We want to do that in full cooperation
with our franchisees.
And the programme that we have put on the table, both in terms of strategy but also in terms
of future investments, will support that longer-term growth. And longer-term growth is what
is going to drive franchisee profitability up, and we are very focused on and happy to support
them in doing that because it makes a healthier system.
Okay. I think that was all the questions and answers. So, thank you very much. I would like
to thank you all for your time today. It is a bit hard doing these things virtually. But thank
you very much for your time and for your questions as well. Thank you.
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