El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:LOCO) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 4, 2022 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Larry Roberts - Chief Executive Officer & Interim Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jake Bartlett - Truist Securities

Andy Barish - Jefferies

Sharon Zackfia - William Blair

David Tarantino - Baird

Todd Brooks - The Benchmark Company

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the El Pollo Loco First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and lines will be opened for your questions following the presentation. Please note that this conference is being recorded today, May 4, 2022.

And now, I'd like to turn the conference over to Larry Roberts, Chief Executive Officer, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed.

Larry Roberts

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our first quarter 2022 earnings release. If not, it can be found at www.elpolloloco.com, in the Investor Relations section. Before we begin, our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including statements related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and strategic actions we are taking in response. As well as our marketing initiatives, cash flow expectations, capital expenditure plans, and plans for new store openings, among others.

These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we currently expect. We refer you to our recent SEC filings, including our Form 10-K for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. We expect to file our 10-Q for the first quarter of 2022, tomorrow, and we encourage you to review that document at your earliest convenience.

During today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP and reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release.

With that, I'd like to touch on our first quarter results and the progress we are making on our strategic initiatives. While the COVID resurgence heavily impacted our restaurant performance in January and early February, I'm pleased to say that the Omicron impact largely dissipated and became negligible in the second half of the quarter.