The Wendy's Company (NASDAQ:WEN) Q4 2022 Preliminary Earnings Conference Call January 13, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Kelsey Freed - Director of Investor Relations

Todd Penegor - President and Chief Executive Officer

Gunther Plosch - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Brian Bittner - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Andrew Charles - Cowen & Co.

Dennis Geiger - UBS Securities

Christopher Carril - RBC Capital Markets

Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Danilo Gargiulo - Bernstein

Chris O'Cull - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc.

John Ivankoe - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Gregory Francfort - Guggenheim Securities

David Palmer - Evercore ISI

Eric Gonzalez - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Alexander Slagle - Jefferies LLC

Joshua Long - Stephens Inc.

Lauren Silberman - Credit Suisse

Peter Saleh - BTIG

Jake Bartlett - Truist Securities

Nick Setyan - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Jim Sanderson - Northcoast Research

Jared Garber - Goldman Sachs

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the Wendy's Company Preliminary Earnings Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

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 a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures at the end of this presentation or in our earnings release.

On our conference call today, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Todd Penegor; and our Chief Financial Officer, Gunther Plosch, will briefly review our preliminary Q4 and full-year 2022 results and provide an update on our capital allocation actions. 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 pleased to speak with all of you a bit earlier this quarter to announce our preliminary fourth quarter financial performance and revisit our capital allocation policy. Before diving into our strong results, I did want to take a moment to comment on Trian Partners amended 13D that was filed this morning. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Trian Partners with a shared goal of delivering value for all shareholders.