Thank you, Joelle. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Empire's fourth quarter fiscal '26 conference call.

Today, we will provide summary comments on our results and then open the call for questions. This call is being recorded, and the audio recording will be available on the company's website at empireco.ca.

There is a short summary document outlining the points of our quarter available on our website as well. Joining me on the call this morning are Pierre St-Laurent, President and Chief Executive Officer; Costa Pefanis, Chief Financial Officer; and Luc L'Archevêque, Chief Customer Officer.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's discussion includes forward-looking statements. We caution that these statements are based on management's assumptions and beliefs, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

I refer you to our news release and MD&A for more information on these assumptions and factors. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pierre.

Thanks, Katie. Good morning, everyone.

We delivered a very solid finish to fiscal '26 driven by disciplined execution across our business and continued progress against our strategic priorities. This translated into 8.7% adjusted EPS growth for the year, which is within our long-term financial framework, and gross margin expansion that is also within our target.

We also continued operating with SG&A discipline that generated operating leverage, especially in the back half of the year. I'll focus on two topics today: our fourth quarter results and market trends, and our expectation going forward, including strategic priorities as we move into fiscal 2027.

Starting with our fourth quarter, we delivered adjusted EPS of 94 cents, up 27% year-over-year. Excluding other income and share equity earnings, largely real estate related, EPS grew 14.8%.

Looking at the full year in fiscal '26, we had a lower dependence on our real estate-related income and delivered a core EPS growth of 11.9%. It is very important to management that we continue to build the strength of the core business and capitalize on market opportunities.

Food sales grew 2.1% with same-store sales up 1.4%. Our two-year same-store sales stack improved sequentially through the year and was 5.3% in the quarter.

This was driven by a strong performance in our full-service network as well as continued momentum in discount. The solid performance that we are seeing across all of our formats give us confidence that customers continue to find value in our stores.

Fiscal '26 marked a clear shift towards new store growth. Following a period that was heavily focused on renovation and conversions, we are now accelerating new stores opening.

With more than 20 stores already planned in fiscal '27 and more than 70 new stores planned over the next three years, we expect total food sales growth to outpace same-store sales more meaningfully going forward. We will remain disciplined in how we allocate capital.

Every new store must deliver healthy returns, but we see significant opportunity and whitespace to capture new customers and drive top-line growth. In Q4, gross margin excluding fuel was flat year-over-year and expanded by 14 bps into the full fiscal year within our target range of 10 to 20 bps annually.

This includes some pressure from higher outbound fuel costs in the second half of the quarter. While our margin has grown significantly over the past decade, we continue to see opportunities for consistent expansion, including through enhancement of our merchandising tools and processes, growth of Empire Media Plus, and expansion of our personalization capabilities.

While quarterly performance may vary, we remain committed to our goal of delivering 10 to 20 basis points of annual margin expansion over time. Now I'll comment on what we're seeing in the current environment.

Reported CPI for food purchased from stores was 4.1% this quarter, and our internal inflation remained well below that level. While we continue to see cost increase requests from suppliers, our national sourcing teams remain disciplined in protecting customer value.

Consistent to our approach on tariffs, we are pushing back on fuel-related surcharges. We know many customers remain stretched, and our focus is on continuing the strengthen of value proposition through the levers we have, including Scene+ and targeted promotion, along with our value size and own-brand assortment.

As we look ahead, our focus is on disciplined execution across our four strategic priorities: customers, stores, growth, and cost efficiency. Each of these pillars are supported by clear, tangible action, and we will highlight a few examples.

First, customers. We continue to strengthen our value proposition across all formats and channels, ensuring customers have a great experience and see clear value wherever they shop.

In Q4, we saw continued engagement across key element of our customer value equation, including growth in Scene+ participation, strong response to our promotional programs, and continued momentum in our own-brand and value size offerings. Our focus remains on being the banner of choice in every market by delivering a consistently strong experience and clear value to customers at every shop.

Next, stores. We are improving retail performance by investing in our store network and enhancing the in-store experience for customers.

In Q4, we completed 24 real estate projects, including five new stores opening, four in discount and two conversions. Over the next three years, we plan to accelerate our level of activity, completing more than 90 projects annually, an increase of 25% compared to fiscal '25 and '26.

At the same time, we are continuing to activate several in-store programs to make it easier for teammates to serve customers. This includes effort like continued rollout in electronic shelf labels nationally as well as evolving in-store processes and ways of working.

Turning to growth. We remain focused on driving growth within our existing network, capitalizing on market opportunities, and accelerating key growth engines in areas such as discount, pharmacy, e-commerce, and retail media.

In discount, we are expanding into Atlantic Canada with three FreshCo location opening in fiscal '26. Similar to our Western expansion, we have identified markets where we believe the banner can perform well, including one conversion from our existing network and two new locations.

We were also pleased to announce that acquisition of Mayrand in April, which provides us with an entry point into the Quebec discount wholesale segment. We recently received court and regulatory approval and expect this transaction to close in the coming days.

Turning to pharmacy. The business is performing well, and we see opportunities ahead.

We finished our last fiscal year with strong results and are looking to continue that momentum. In term of our strategy, right now we're focusing on optimizing the existing business and driving growth.

Some immediate action we are taking include better leverage our central fill capabilities and optimizing labor to improve both productivity and service to customers. In parallel, we will continue to expand selectively, including adding pharmacy to new stores and being on the lookout for targeted opportunities to grow our network.

You should think of this as the beginning of our journey pharmacy, and we will share more details over time. In e-commerce, the closure of Alberta CFCs represents another important step in improving the economics of the business.

With continued sales growth and strong momentum, we see meaningful opportunity ahead through Voilà and our third-party partnerships, including DoorDash, which has performed well since launching nationally in April. The team continues to pursue other initiative to drive growth in our e-commerce business, and we look forward to providing an update later this year.

Lastly, cost efficiency. We are realizing the benefit of investment made over the past several years while maintaining a strong focus on cost discipline.

Costa will speak to this in more detail shortly. We are excited by our strategic direction and have shared our plans with our board of directors with their full support.

As we refine our three years outlook to drive earnings growth supported by a clear set of initiatives, we expect to be in a position to share additional details in due course. Stepping back, our strategic priorities are closely aligned with our financial framework and support our objective of driving adjusted EPS growth through a combination of earnings growth and share repurchases.

We are also announcing 10.2% increase to our dividend, reinforcing our commitment to deliver strong return to shareholders. As we enter fiscal 2027, we are very confident in our positioning and the opportunities ahead.

We expect adjusted EPS growth to be in the high end of our long-term financial framework, supported by food sales growth, margin expansion, cost discipline, and improving in e-commerce economics. In closing, fiscal '26 reinforced the resilience of our business and our ability to deliver strong results in a challenging environment.

We remain focused on delivering value for our customers as well as consistent, sustainable returns for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Costa.

Thanks, Pierre. Good morning, everyone.

We are pleased with our performance in fiscal '26 as we delivered adjusted EPS growth of 8.7% within our financial framework. As Pierre noted earlier, our core business delivered even stronger growth.

We expect to build on this momentum in the years ahead. I'll begin with our fourth quarter results, then turn to our fiscal 2027 outlook, including capital allocation and other income, before closing off with some comments on our new company strategy.

In the fourth quarter, we delivered adjusted EPS of 94 cents, up 27% year-over-year, reflecting good top-line growth, operating leverage, higher contribution from other income, a favorable tax rate, and share repurchases. Excluding fuel, gross margin was flat versus last year.

Stronger performance across our banners were largely offset by the mix impact from higher wholesale contribution and by higher supply chain costs, including higher fuel prices. While fuel introduces some variability, it remains manageable.

We expect to deliver adjusted EPS growth at the high end of our financial framework in fiscal 2027. For fiscal '26, gross margin expansion of 14 basis points was in line with our medium-term expectations of 10 to 20 basis points on an annual basis.

Other income and share of earnings from equity investments contributed $49 million in Q4, modestly above our prior quarterly expectations due to transaction timing. On the full year, this contribution was $129 million, within our guidance range of $120 to $140 million.

Real estate contribution was almost $30 million lower or about 10 cents per share lower year-over-year. This highlights the increasing contribution of our core operations to overall earnings.

Turning to SG&A, we delivered another quarter of operating leverage, marking sequential improvement since the first quarter. SG&A excluding depreciation and amortization as a percentage of sales improved by 31 basis points versus last year.

This reflects a combination of factors with the most impactful being good top-line growth, benefits from the January e-commerce update, and lower year-over-year incentive costs, partially offset by higher labor costs and continued investment in business expansion. Our effective tax rate in Q4 was approximately 19.3%, lower than last year at 25.2%.

This was mostly due to non-taxable capital items, including a sales leaseback transaction with Crombie, serving as partial offsets were a change in deferred tax assets not recognized and the revaluation of tax estimates. For fiscal 2027, excluding the effects of any unusual transactions or differential tax rates on property sales, we continue to estimate that our effective income tax rate will be between 25% and 27%.

Now I'll speak to some of our fiscal 2027 expectations. Our capital allocation plans continue to be supported by our strong balance sheet and consistent free cash generation.

Our business is generating a healthy amount of cash, including about $1.3 billion of free cash flow before CapEx, and we will continue to invest your capital wisely. In fiscal '26, we accelerated new store openings, and we will continue that growth through our new three-year strategy.

We expect fiscal 2027 CapEx to be approximately $850 million. About half is allocated to new stores and renovations, a quarter towards technology initiatives and business development projects, and the balance towards various areas, including logistics and sustainability.

As Pierre mentioned, today we announced a 10.2% increase in Empire's quarterly dividend per share, which brings our five-year dividend CAGR to 10.1% and represents an increase in our dividends for the 31st consecutive year. We also expect to renew our NCIB on or before June 25th, consistent with the timing requirements of the TSX, for approximately 9.6% of our public float, consistent with prior years.

We will remain active with this NCIB, and we are maintaining a level of flexibility as we are open to capitalize on market opportunities like the recent Mayrand transaction. In fiscal 2027, we expect contribution from other income and share of earnings from equity investments to range from $90 million to $110 million as we continue to drive increased performance from our core retail operations.

Based on our current visibility, the quarterly cadence to this is about 15% in Q1, 15% in Q2, 25% in Q3, and 45% in Q4. As announced in January, we continue to expect approximately $95 million in annualized operating income improvement with approximately one-third of that reinvested into the business, including technology initiatives such as advanced analytics and also accelerating our new store expansion plans.

In Q4, we began to realize initial benefits and expect to achieve run rate by mid fiscal 2027. As Pierre mentioned, customers, stores, and growth will be key drivers to improve top line and margin.

Our financial framework also looks to deliver operating leverage across our core business. This will be achieved through the cost efficiency pillar of our company strategy.

We see opportunities across strategic sourcing, supply chain optimization, and also improving our spend across real estate, marketing, and IT. Some of the specific initiatives include electronic shelf labels and central kitchen investments amongst many others.

We expect to continue our momentum on cost control and to deliver operating leverage across fiscal 2027, though this may not materialize in a straight line across each quarter. Finally, I want to emphasize that we expect adjusted EPS growth for fiscal 2027 to be at the high end of our financial framework of 8% to 11%.

This outlook reflects our focus on strengthening our core operations under our new three-year strategy, along with expected contributions from adjacent pillars like pharmacy and M&A. With that, I'll turn it back to Katie for your questions.

Thank you, Costa. Joelle, you may open the line for questions at this time.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to start off with the strategic rationale of the Mayrand acquisition.

Mayrand is a well-known brand in Quebec. They're performing well in four stores.

This opportunity came up, and for us it was a very easy decision to make. It was a great strategy to enter into the discount and wholesale market.

The acquisition cost was very affordable, and for us it was the best way to enter this market with very minimal risk. We see a lot of potential growth with very minimal cannibalization to our network.

This is meaningful for us. We're very excited internally by this opportunities.

It was not on the table a year ago, but when we saw that opportunity, we jumped in, and we're pleased with that. We expect the closing in the next few days, and the team already working on the integration plan and how can we drive this business forward.

Okay. Should we expect that business to grow substantially with network growth?

I understand that the business was under protection in the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. Do you see a quick path to profitability for that business?

Also, you anticipate it being a Quebec-only discount banner, is that correct?

It's early to talk about plan, but I know they had a plan for expansion. I can tell you this going to be accretive day one for us.

It will be profitable day one for us. We will sit with the Mayrand team to look at their plan, to look at how we can support them in their growth, but we see meaningful potential growth with that business.

Thank you. I just wanted to get new management's perspective on pharmacy.

How large is that business? I noticed there's been an appointment in pharmacy as well in terms of the management team.

How should we think about the growth of that business over time? Will it be organic, will it be acquisition?

Any thoughts you can provide would be helpful.

Okay. We have a meaningful network.

Over 400 pharmacy, both in stores and standalone pharmacy with Lawtons. It's a pretty interesting business for us.

As I said before, since 2017, it was not our focus. We had other priorities to fix the core business, which is done.

I made a decision early this year to elevate pharmacy at the LT. Doug Nathanson is leading the pharmacy group, is our lead for that.

Pharmacy is top of mind for us. It's It's an area where we did not focus in the past, and we see meaningful growth going forward in both performance and growth.

We're very pleased with the results we had last year, but just just by giving more focus to that business, we're very pleased with the progress we saw during the year, and we're seeing more opportunity in the next fiscal. To answer your question in term of growth, we're seeing potential growing the existing network through new store new pharmacy in our new stores network because we're going to add more new stores, as as I said.

Pharmacy will be part of that strategy. When we'll be able to do that, we will add a pharmacy in our new stores to grow the pharmacy network.

We made meaningful investment in the past in the central fill, this is another opportunity for us to capitalize on past investment. We we will continue to look at small tuck-in acquisition as well as potential acquisition if it makes sense for us, if the price is reasonable, if the strategic fit is there.

I think, as I said in the past, we see meaningful growth opportunity in that business like we see meaningful opportunity to grow the discount business. It's two area where we are underdeveloped in our mind, and so there's a lot of room for us to grow without cannibalization.

That's why we're excited by the future in those two businesses, and pharmacy is definitely an area where we're going to focus.

Thank you.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Could you provide some color around what you saw in terms of consumer buying behavior through the quarter, whether you saw an intensification of value-seeking behavior as fuel prices went up, and also how you're seeing your current cost environment with fuel prices still, even though supposedly we have a deal, elevated?

There's no one better than our Chief Customer Officer to answer that question. I'll ask Luc to answer.

Thank you.

Of course. Thanks, Irene.

Costa, you may jump in also if you want to at the end, but I would say more of the same is how I would define Q4 versus Q3. No meaningful change in the customer behavior.

Our basket is up. Our trips are stable.

The inflation is very stable, below CPI. Promo penetration remains the same.

Really nothing to declare here on customer behavior. You talked about costs.

If I look at the submissions that we received from the suppliers compared to same period last year, it's actually less. There's no surge on cost increases coming from suppliers, and our position on fuel is very well known.

We're not accepting anything. It's too volatile.

It's too unpredictable. To your point, now there's an agreement apparently.

Hopefully this will also put some relief to the customers as fuel prices should go down from now on.

That's really helpful. Thank you.

Then just a housekeeping question. Can you share what the benefit to the SG&A line was as a result of the changes on the CFC?

Because I believe you said the benefits began in Q4, but you didn't quantify it, I don't believe.

We benefited in the quarter, Irene, at the expectation that we set of about $50 million.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask about your e-commerce growth, which was up I think 6%.

This was reasonably below the 20% that your two public company peers reported. I'm kind of curious as to how much of that might have been caused by scaling back of Voilà's footprint in Calgary, and what you're doing to ensure that you hold your share in the third-party e-commerce channels like Uber and Instacart that are growing faster than the industry.

Michael, I think when we talk about the main cause of that sales growth tapering, it did come because of our closure in Alberta. We had the partial offset with our rollout of DoorDash, which was completed at the end of April.

With regards to Voilà overall, we're still happy with the sales growth that we're delivering in our CFCs in Toronto and Montreal. It wasn't quite double-digit, but it was still solid.

In terms of future quarters, we're not going to be commenting on where total e-commerce growth will be. We're going to be assuming more contribution due to the DoorDash partnership.

We're looking forward to more good things to come as it relates to our e-commerce strategy.

Are you able to give us any sense as to how much of a drag we can expect the closure of the Calgary CFC to have on your e-commerce growth over the next few quarters?

We don't have the exact number, we can come back to you, but it's not that big, and this is why we decided to close the CFC. Again, we have to look forward.

DoorDash joined us at the end of the quarter, in April. We did close the CFC too, and we have strong plan in place to drive growth now.

We did focus on improving the economics in the last year, now it's behind us, and we're going to drive growth, and the e-commerce team is having a very solid plan that we're presenting to our board right now. They are meeting, and I would say we see the future growth very good.

Again, it's below our target. We expect more growth from e-commerce.

Focus has been on improving the economics, but when we look in the future, we see a lot of potential to grow this business. We have a couple of initiatives on the table right now that are going to drive growth on a profitable way.

If Yeah. Go ahead.

You have another question?

I just wanted to ask for a bit of clarity there on some of the trends within the e-commerce, because I'm curious as to whether the difference in the growth rates has something to do with the channels, the discount versus the full-service channel within e-commerce specifically.

I don't think there's a correlation we can make between discount, e-commerce. Third party is growing.

We see that. We see growth continue at a very high pace from third-party e-commerce, I don't think it's related to discount or full service.

It's related to the e-com market more than anything else. Again, into this quarter, it's below our expectation, the results we had in this quarter to be honest.

There's nothing broken. Again, the focus has been on improving the economics.

I'm very pleased with how the team did handle that. They handled that really, really well.

The team is focusing on driving profitable growth right now, and the best is yet to come.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

If I may, Michael, I understand that is your last call with us. I wish you all the best on behalf of the entire Empire team.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, guys. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you, Michael.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Costa, I just maybe have a couple of numbers questions for you.

First, I want to confirm the EPS growth guidance. I just want to confirm that it does include other income and share of earnings from investments.

Is that correct? I ask because the midpoint of your guidance for this year obviously implies a decline versus last year, I want to make sure that growth, 8% to 11%, includes that decline.

It's all included, yes.

Perfect. Okay.

Then just on the gross margin, it was negatively impacted by the wholesale mix. Are you able to sort of quantify how much that was in the quarter and then when will we start to lap that impact?

I won't comment on the first part of your question, but the lapping on the mix will be in Q2. We'll lap it fully in Q1 and then Q2 being a full year.

Okay. That's great.

Then my last question, I guess maybe for Pierre, is, can you comment just when you look at the new stores that have been opened recently, how has the growth been versus your expectations?

We're pleased with what we did open. Farm Boy, Longo's, discount, mostly discount.

It's in line with our expectation. Again, we are very picky in locations.

I'm a big fan of being disciplined on how we allocate capital, and nothing to mention, it's in line with our expectation. The market is soft in general, but honestly, good reaction with every new stores opening and conversion in the last quarter.

It give us confidence to continue, and it give us confidence to open more than 20 stores next year and 70 stores in the next three years. Most of them are discount.

Okay. Great.

Thanks very much and all the best.

Thank you.

I wonder if you could share any observations about or comments on cadence of same-store sales through the quarter. Was the 1.5 roughly stable through F Q4, or was there any volatility month-to-month?

Apologies if I missed it during your prepared remarks, but was there any color you can add on discount versus conventional performance?

We continue to see a slight quite better performance in full service than discount, but almost the same. We're pleased by both formats.

It's not driven by discount. It's driven by both formats.

Like it was last quarter, last quarter I said that full service did deliver stronger same-store sales than discount, and it's not because discount did not perform well. It's because year-over-year trend, last year discount was very strong, year-over-year was more challenging to beat.

Was the opposite in full service, and we continue to see that trend right now. We continue to see strong performance in both format and both are contributing to our our same-store sales growth, and we're expecting that to continue.

Understood. I wanted to follow up on the prior question about the wholesale mix, and just given that there is still some level of increased wholesale sales impacting gross margin expansion, is it fair to expect gross margin gains ex-fuel in F '27 could be on the lower end of the long-term algo?

No, we fully expect to be able to deliver with our expectations of what we've said in the past. I think it's just a matter of us lapping these wholesale mixes.

That's pretty much the commentary in terms of any forward guidance.

All right, understood. Then one last one, returning to the topic of pharmacy.

Can you confirm growth in pharmacy already is above the overall pace of growth for the retail business? Do you plan to add pharmacies to existing stores as part of your regular renovation plans?

Absolutely. We have room to allocate capital to pharmacy if there's meaningful return in project that we have in front of us.

Absolutely.

I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Thank you, and good morning. To circle back on pharmacy, you mentioned the potential to improve the current network.

What do you think you can do better in pharmacy? As you look at potentially expanding, what do you want to be best known for to customers in this segment?

Oh.

Again, just first of all, give love to that business will drive growth in both top line and bottom line. We have a very good team.

We have dedicated leadership at the LT level to drive that business. I did visit central fulfill recently.

I did visit teams. They are very excited.

Again, it will be driven by generating the I would say benefit from the past investment we've made in central fulfill, we will improve productivity and will give more time to pharmacists to give more personalized service to customers. That's the purpose of the central fill.

We are seeing room to continue to grow that operation with investment we made in the past. That's the first thing.

The second thing, it's growth. Adding more pharmacy in our new stores network, even going after small tuck-in acquisition in the market.

The team is focusing on it right now. Both growing top line and bottom line in productivity, it's going to improve our performance.

Last year, pharmacy did outperform the rest of the business, and it's just the beginning. We're encouraged by what we're seeing in front of us to drive that business in the next level.

Pierre, as you reflect on your first six months as CEO, what would you say has been the most significant change to the culture and priorities of the company?

I love the culture of this company. Yesterday, I did celebrate 35 years with this company, I'm very attached to the culture of this company.

It's a great culture, great people culture. People are the most important asset for us.

Right now, I think the challenge is to drive more performance. I'm passionate about performance, I said it before, and I feel a strong support from the leadership team to drive performance of this company to the next level.

I see a lot of energy in the company to drive performance. We have very strong assets.

We have very strong presence across the country, a strong portfolio of brand. I'm just trying to bring this company at the levels the company deserves.

Strong assets, just optimizing things and driving growth. I'm passionate about growth as well.

I think, as I said before, we did fix a lot of things in the past couple of years. It's behind us.

Now we can focus on driving growth, driving performance more than ever. I feel the energy internally.

I feel the strong support from the leadership team and a strong support from our board of directors to drive the performance of this company, and it's exciting. I'm very excited, and I'm having a lot of fun right now.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Thanks, and good morning. I guess just a couple follow-ups, really.

Maybe first, Pierre, just on the store pillar, specifically hoping you can provide more detail on your priorities and the opportunities there, specifically around the operations. I think we all understand the shelf label opportunity, but just given your deep experience and expertise in operations, what changes should we expect to see, and how material do you think that opportunity is?

It's a big portion of our business. Our stores is where most of our transaction are happening.

As I said, when we talk about stores priority, it's how can we make the life of our teammates in store easier. Our tasks that our teammates are doing are not adding value in the customer experience.

Those tasks are not necessarily fun to do by our teammates. By focusing on simplifying their life, we believe we will improve the performance of the company.

More importantly, we are going to give room for teammates to better serve customer and make the experience better. That's the focus we have right now.

We're dedicated, the entire leadership team, to simplify stores teammates' life and to better serve customers. We strongly believe that because the service is part of the value equation.

I said it before. Value equation, it's a combination of multiple factors, including price.

Price is one of the most important one, but it's not the only one. It's not one-dimensional.

The customer service, the emotional connection are equally important in the value equation, and this is a big focus for us going forward. It's a big focus for me.

I strongly believe that it's where the magic happen is in store. We have banners in our network, they are doing extremely well on that.

In my leadership team, as we have a great retailer, probably one of the best, to drive the performance of our stores. Jean-Louis Bellemare is our retail executive at the LT and is committed to create the same type of experience or better that we have in our Farm Boy stores, and Farm Boy is performing extremely well.

We're leveraging strength in a business across the board. This is the goal we have, and having Jean-Louis at the table with the entire leadership team, with Julia Knox are going to be the Chief Retail Officer, and the team they're doing with our Chief Customer Officer, it's where we will create the magic.

It's nothing crazy, but it's the fundamental of retail. It's with fundamental of retail, we're going to win.

Understood. Appreciate that.

Also wanted to follow up on the SG&A opportunity and cost efficiency. Would it be reasonable to expect leverage in fiscal '27, and would that even be the case if same-store sales growth holds at the Q4 level, the 1.5%?

Yes, Mark, our expectation is to continue to drive leverage, really important as we talk about our total sales growing at a bigger portion than our same-store sales. Pressing forward with the areas that we've continued over the last couple quarters, that we've seen some meaningful improvements.

There's been a lot that has gone into that as we look forward to our three-year strategy. We're happy with the cost control, and I just want to reiterate that the expectation is for us to be able to push forward, especially around areas that relate to how we prioritize certain initiatives so that we can do better with the investments that we've made.

That's a key message.

Mark, the way we will achieve it, it's, as I said, we made a lot of investment in the past that we continue to see potential. Investment done to focus on delivering benefit on it.

Central fulfill is a great example. We believe we can do better with that investment, investment we've made in stores, investment we've made in tools and processes in merchandising, for example, and in store.

We strongly believe investment is behind us, now it's time to capture the benefit. More sales are going to give us leverage, we strongly believe that, and focused on being efficient with every dollar we spend.

Internally, we have four strategic pillar, and it's the filter with every decision we make. If it's not good for stores, we won't do it.

If it's not good for stores, it's not simplifying stores' life, it's not driving growth, we won't do it. We will do meaningful investment according to that focus.

Less is more, and we strongly believe this is going to drive the SG&A in the right direction.

Yeah. Appreciate that.

Then my last follow-up, just specifically around the plan for new stores: 20 new in fiscal '27, I assume maybe 25 each year in the following two years. I think you said that skews to discount, but could you just give us maybe a more specific number for fiscal '27?

Then does that mix change in '28 and '29, or is it still about the same?

About the same. As we said before, I think more than 75% of the new stores are going to be discount.

You will see new opening in Farm Boy and Longo's and IGA because there's room to grow. There's new development where we believe full service is the best format for that neighborhood.

Farm Boy is doing extremely well. Longo's is going to open a new store next week.

Farm Boy just opened a store today. IGA is going to open two new stores next year.

It's a combination of all our formats, but more than 75% are going in discount because discount is a whitespace for us. We have a lot of room to grow in discount without cannibalization of our network.

Yeah. Okay.

That doesn't include any new pharmacies, is that right?

In that 70 new stores, no. Pharmacy, we will provide more details in the future, but you should expect seeing growth in the store counts as well.

Yeah. Appreciate that and all the best.

Thank you. There are

Thank you, Joelle. We appreciate your continued interest in Empire.

If there are any unanswered questions, please contact me by phone or email. We look forward to having you join us for our first quarter fiscal 2027 conference call on September 10th.

Talk soon.