The Wendy's Company (NASDAQ:WEN) Q4 2022 Results Conference Call March 1, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Kelsey Freed - Director, IR

Todd Penegor - President, CEO

Gunther Plosch - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Dennis Geiger - UBS

Brian Bittner - Oppenheimer

David Palmer - Evercore

Brian Harbour - Morgan Stanley

Silberman Lauren - Credit Suisse

Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays

Andrew Charles - Cowen

Chris Carril - RBC Capital Markets

Alex Slagle - Jefferies

Jeff Farmer - Gordon Haskett

Brian Mullan - Deutsche Bank

Andrew Strelzik - BMO

Gregory Francfort - Guggenheim Securities

Danilo Gargiulo - Bernstein

Peter Saleh - BTIG

John Ivankoe - JP Morgan

Joshua Long - Stephens

Sara Senatore - Bank of America

Jim Sanderson - Northcoast Research

Jake Bartlett - Truist

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the Wendy's Company Earnings Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions].

Kelsey Freed, Director of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Kelsey Freed

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Today's conference call and webcast includes a PowerPoint presentation, which is available on our Investor Relations website, irwendys.com.

Before we begin, please take note of the safe harbor statement that appears at the end of our earnings release. This disclosure reminds investors that certain information we may discuss today is forward-looking. Various factors could affect our results and cause those results to differ materially from the projections set forth in our forward-looking statements. Also, some of today's comments will reference non-GAAP financial measures. Investors should refer to our reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure at the end of this presentation or in our earnings release.

On our conference call today, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Todd Penegor, will give a business update and provide details on our plans to deliver accelerated growth behind our strategic initiatives; and our Chief Financial Officer, Gunther Plosch, will review our 2022 fourth quarter and full year results as well as our 2023 and long-term outlook. From there, we will open up the line for questions.

With that, I will hand things over to Todd.

Todd Penegor

Thanks, Kelsey, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to speak to you all again this quarter to share more detail on our strong close to 2022 and how we expect our continued momentum will drive accelerated growth in 2023 and beyond. As we shared in January, we are incredibly proud that last year marked our 12th consecutive year of global same-restaurant sales growth. We continue to drive momentum in our U.S. breakfast business, which grew versus the third quarter and peaked at over $3,000 per restaurant per week in Q4. This growth was driven by the continued success of our first major breakfast menu innovation, French Toast Sticks and our traffic-driving $3 Croissant promotion.