On Wednesday, Wingstop (NASDAQ:WING) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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The full earnings call is available at https://event.choruscall.com/mediaframe/webcast.html?webcastid=YjJIWuwu
Summary
Wingstop reported a disappointing 8.3% decline in same-store sales for Q1, attributing it to atypical winter weather and elevated gas prices, but achieved a 5.9% increase in system-wide sales driven by unit growth.
The company is focusing on strategic initiatives such as the Wingstop Smart Kitchen, a new loyalty program called Club Wingstop, and targeted marketing campaigns to drive future growth.
Wingstop opened 97 net new restaurants in Q1, reflecting a 17% unit growth, and maintained strong franchisee margins, demonstrating resilience in its asset-light model.
Management expects a return to same-store sales growth in the second half of the year, driven by operational improvements and strategic marketing efforts.
Wingstop is preparing for a national launch of its loyalty program by the end of Q2, which has shown promising results in pilot markets with increased guest retention and engagement.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Wingstop Inc. fiscal first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, April 29, 2026. On the call today are Michael Skipworth, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alex Koleidis, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Sarah Niehaus, Senior Director of Investor Relations. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sarah. Please go ahead.
Sarah Niehaus (Senior Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you and welcome to the fiscal first quarter 2026 earnings conference call for Wingstop. Our results were published earlier this morning and are available on our Investor relations website@ir.wingstop.com our discussion today includes forward looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from what we currently expect. Our SEC filings describe various risks that could affect our future operating results and financial condition. We use certain non GAAP financial measures that we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. Presentation of such information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with gaap. Reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are contained in our earnings release. Lastly, for the Q and A session we ask that each of you please keep to one question and a follow up to allow as many participants as possible to ask a question. With that I would like to turn the call over to Michael.
Michael Skipworth (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you Sarah and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining the call. We believe 2026 is going to be a transformational year for Wingstop and remain extremely confident in the long term opportunity in front of us. Our focus is on execution execution against unique brand specific strategies which include strengthening our operations through the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™, expanding our reach to new guests and launching our new and highly differentiated loyalty program, each of which we believe are structural changes that will drive sustained growth towards our AUV target of $3 million. As I step back and assess the current state of the business, we are making significant progress against our strategic priorities. We are seeing measurable improvements in speed, accuracy and consistency that are being enabled by the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™ along with early signals that our marketing is reaching new guests and driving deeper engagement. That said, our same store sales result in Q1 was disappointing and fell below our expectations as we started the year domestic. Same store sales trends from Q4 carried into the first month of Q1 suggesting more consistency in the trend. However, as the quarter progressed, two factors came into play. The first was atypical winter weather resulting in temporary restaurant closures in over 6, 700 restaurants and secondly, elevated gas prices as a result of the conflict in the Middle east. Not too dissimilar to what we experienced in 2022. Rapidly rising gas prices stress the balance sheet of the lower income consumer that our business over indexes to. As a result, our same store sales trend worsened during the quarter and resulted in a decline of 8.3. If you exclude these unusual external factors, performance would have broadly been in line with our expectations. We have updated our full year outlook to reflect our results for Q1 and now anticipate same store sales to be down low single digits. But we believe our business can return to growth in the second half of the year as these strategies we are executing all come together. While the macro backdrop is masking some of the near term impact, we can see measurable progress across our key initiatives. Our Asset Light highly franchise model continues to demonstrate its resilience. In the quarter we delivered double digit adjusted EBITDA growth and we opened 97 net new restaurants translating into 17% unit growth. This performance reinforces the strength of our model. Central to our strategies is our disciplined focus on protecting our brand partners margins and maintaining strong unit economics which we believe is foundational to sustaining long term unit growth. And despite the challenging macro backdrop, we saw brand partner margins strengthen in Q1 and we believe this helps reinforce the strength of our development pipeline, a pipeline that remains one of the strongest in the industry, showcasing the durability of our model and confidence of our brand partners who continue to invest in the long term growth of the brand. We believe we have significant opportunity in front of us to scale Wingstop to over 10,000 restaurants globally. We remain focused on what we can control and our strategy remains unchanged. Let me start with the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™. The Wingstop Smart Kitchen™ is a meaningful operational transformation requiring fundamental changes to how our restaurants execute day to day. We are making clear progress in strengthening our operations with improvements in speed, accuracy and consistency across the system. And while the full benefits from our new back of house technology have not scaled to the entire Wingstop system yet, we are seeing clear evidence it is working. Last quarter we discussed the need to focus on Friday and Saturday dinner day parts where we see the highest volume of new guests entering the brand. With approximately 50% of new guests trying us for the first time during those windows. Within these dayparts we are now seeing an approximately 16 point improvement in the number of restaurants hitting our targeted speed of service in Q1 compared to Q4 along with a roughly 5 percentage point improvement in accuracy. Restaurants are driving greater consistency during these peak periods, ensuring we deliver on those moments that matter most for both new and existing guests. In addition, customer satisfaction improved across both digital carryout and delivery in the quarter, with delivery improving approximately 17 percentage points in customer satisfaction driven by gains in speed and execution. We are also seen in restaurants consistently achieving our 10 minute speed of service. Standard delivery times are now moving closer to our goal of less than 30 minutes, reinforcing that stronger execution translates into a better end to end guest experience. The most impact is in our lowest performing restaurants, reinforcing that we are raising the floor of performance across the system. This is a significant operational transformation and scaling consistent execution across the system system of our size is a deliberate ongoing focus. As we continue to build consistency across restaurants, dayparts and channels, we expect to more fully unlock the demand and conversion benefits of the platform. To further highlight the progress we are making on speed of service, we’re targeting a launch of our Order Ready Tracker by the end of Q2 that is designed to reinforce our speed of service through enhanced communication to our guests and drive measurable impacts and guest satisfaction. This feature directly connects into the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™ with real time status updates guiding the guests through the cook to order high quality experience only Wingstop can deliver. In early testing, the order tracking feature created greater confidence into the guest quote time, better highlighted the craft associated with each Wingstop order and reduced status related complaints and improved accuracy. The takeaway is clear when we deliver that high quality cook to order Wingstop experience and execute with speed, accuracy and consistency, we drive stronger conversion, improved retention and incremental sales. As we closely analyze the data, it is what we see in the data and the results that gives us strong conviction in the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™. As a key unlock for our restaurants, we are building momentum and as we execute at a high level consistently across the system, we expect the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™ to be a meaningful contributor to scaling AUVs towards our target of $3 million. Another key strategy in 2026 that we believe can position Wingstop for sustained growth is the launch of our loyalty program which we are referring to as Club Wingstop. This is not a traditional discount driven rewards program. Club Wingstop is built around a single simple premise. Members eat first, giving our most engaged guests access experiences and benefits that go beyond points and discounts. What differentiates the platform is how it enhances the guest interaction through capabilities like group ordering, point sharing and personalized offers that adapt based on behavior. As part of the latent design of this platform, we built an AI enabled tool that will allow us to achieve personalization at scale. This includes generating hundreds of pieces of content that drive relevant and adaptable messages to specific segments in our database. We have features embedded in our Club Wingstop technology that are designed to strengthen the emotional connection to our brand and drive sustainability frequency over time. In our pilot market we are seeing this translate into improved retention, higher reactivation of lapsed users and increased engagement from our most valuable guests. Engagement is strong with roughly half of active guests enrolled and approximately 40% of new guests are signing up. Members are also demonstrating higher check and stronger retention relative to non members. Results in our pilot market are being achieved with limited marketing support and only a partial feature set, which to us reinforces the strength of the platform and the opportunity. As we scale, we are preparing for a national launch by the end of Q2, supported by a full 360 degree marketing strategy and a robust pipeline of features including personalization, merchandise and experiential elements that extend well beyond traditional points based programs. We believe loyalty will be a meaningful driver over time, particularly as we scale nationally and integrate more deeply into our digital ecosystem. Widening the top of the funnel and capturing our fair share of our demand space is another key priority for us. In 2023, we estimate we are capturing only about 2% share in a demand space. We believe we can win a 20% share, highlighting the significant Runway ahead. But execution is foundational to this effort. It starts with driving acquisition through brand awareness and innovation, particularly flavor led innovation, which we know is a key driver of consideration, especially among the consumers we are targeting in our demand space. Our Wingstop is Here advertising campaign is designed to expand the top of the funnel and we are beginning to see early signs that it is working. New guests are increasingly skewing towards higher income cohorts, particularly in the $50,000 to $100,000 range, one of the fastest growing segments among new guests we’re acquiring. This gives us confidence that our marketing is resonating with a broader audience and is reflective of the opportunity we’re targeting in our demand space. Looking ahead, we have a strong pipeline of innovation and marketing initiatives including continued flavor led innovation. And the next phase of Wingstop is here, which we believe will showcase the quality and premium experience our guests have come to love. Together with the Wingstop Smart Kitchen™ and Club Wingstop, these efforts are designed to strengthen acquisition, improve conversion and support sustained traffic growth over Time. Another significant factor for building brand awareness and acquiring new guests is what we’ve been able to accomplish in expansion of our footprint. Our unit growth is supported by the strength of our unit economics underpinning the strong demand from our brand partners. In the first quarter we opened 97 restaurants globally at a more than 17% growth rate versus the year. As we grow our restaurant base, development itself becomes a demand driver, expanding brand awareness and amplifying the impact of our marketing, reinforcing the flywheel across the system. We continue to scale Wingstop in a disciplined manner and believe our market level strategies will allow us to do so in the most sustainable way outside of the US Momentum remains strong with newer markets such as Ireland and Thailand thriving and already delivering attractive unit economics as well as reinforcing the portability of the brand. Looking ahead, we remain on track to enter our largest new market to date, India in 2026, representing a significant long term opportunity. What fuels our growth is our brand partners returns which we believe are industry leading. It’s why we believe addressing near term challenges for our core consumer should not compromise our long term fundamentals. That mindset has translated into incredible growth. Since the beginning of 2023 we have opened over a thousand restaurants and more than doubled system wide sales to over $5.4 billion on a trailing twelve month basis. All while systematically growing our global pipeline to a record level. While the level of uncertainty in the current operating environment remains high, our path forward and strategies are very clear. We are focused on strengthening our operations through the Wingstop Smart kitchen, expanding our reach to new guests and launching Club Wingstop. Each of which we believe will drive a return to same store sales growth and further strengthen brand partner profitability and returns. We are confident in the strength of our asset light model, the resilience of our brand and the significant Runway ahead. Together we believe these position us to scale average unit volumes towards $3 million, expand our global footprint and continue advancing our ambition to become a top 10 global restaurant brand. And it is important to note that none of this would be possible without the dedication of our team members and the continued commitment of our brand partners who are executing every day to deliver a great guest experience experience and grow the Wingstop brand around the world. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Alex.
Alex Koleidis
Thanks Michael and good morning. Our first quarter results reflect the resiliency of our highly franchise asset light model. In a more pressured consumer environment, we delivered system wide sales growth, double digit adjusted EBITDA growth and unit growth that well exceeded our long term algorithm. Development continues to be one of the most compelling proof points in our model and the long term opportunity to scale Wingstop into a top 10 global restaurant brand. We opened 97 net new restaurants in the first quarter, a 17% growth rate and with domestic AUVs at approximately $2 million on a roughly $580,000 upfront investment to build a Wingstop, our brand partners are seeing on average a payback of less than two years. Our unit economics are what drive the demand we see in our pipeline which is evident in a pipeline that stands at more than 2,200 restaurant commitments under development agreements and that demand remains broad based across our brand partners. System wide sales increased 5.9% to $1.4 billion in the quarter fueled by net new unit development and more than offset the 8.7% decline in same store sales as a result of our system wide sales growth. Total revenue increased 7.4% to $183.7 million versus the prior year. Royalty revenue, franchise fees and other increased $8.7 million to $87.5 million. Company owned restaurant sales increased by $2.9 million to $33 million driven by six additional corporate stores opened or acquired since the prior year. Comparable period company owned restaurant cost of sales decreased 110 basis points versus the prior year to 74.9% of company owned restaurant sales, primarily driven by a 160 basis point decline in food, beverage and packaging costs. Our supply chain strategy continues to provide great visibility and predictability into food costs for our brand partners throughout 2026. With this current operating environment, we are encouraged by how our strategies improved profitability for our brand partners. This quarter SGA increased $3 million versus the prior year to $34.4 million primarily driven by a $2.4 million non recurring restructuring charge related to the corporate realignment announced in January this year. This was partially offset by lower system implementation costs. We continue to take a disciplined approach with our SGA investments ensuring we are investing appropriately in people, capabilities and technology to support our long term aspirations. Adjusted EBITDA a non GAAP measure was $65.4 million during the quarter, …
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