Thank you very much. So that's, I guess, the response to our question, Ann.

Just one more comment for your question, Ann. Last year, with the platform subsidies, Yum China in general, we are quite disciplined with our trading, particularly in food, because the cost of sales in food is quite high. So we are very disciplined. We do take some subsidy and invest in the emerging business, like the Levasse, the smaller emerging business, and drinks. Drinks for us, for KFC, is about McTeens in terms of mix. It's about low teens for Pizza Hut in our mix. And both drink business actually for quarter three grow quite nicely. actually had positive growth because we have quite a few new drinks launched which were proven popular among customers. So I think that is the context I can share with you, Anne. Thank you. Thank you, Joey.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Christine Peng from UBS. Please ask your question, Christine. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for the comments given by the management so far. So I have a question specifically for Adrian in terms of your earlier comment about labor costs. So basically, your comments point to a steady cost of labor, a percentage revenue in 2027. But having said that, we do notice that the Chinese government is putting into place a stricter policy and many more. The Pizza Hut China acquisition is bringing 30 bps margin expansion in a third quarter alone. But when I look at the details, the cost of occupants and others of the revenue for Pizza Hut actually is a percentage drop of more than 200 bps on a yearly basis. So I just want to understand the 30 bps margin expansion. You know, how that compare with the 200, more than 200 bps of margin savings in the cost of occupancy for Pizza Hut in the third quarter alone. Thank you.

Thank you, Christine. The final part of our question, I think the 30 basis points of margin expansion is for the group. And then if you were to calculate the impact on Pizza Hut, I believe it will be around 170 or 160, 170 basis points for Pizza Hut. So that kind of is the difference there. and the second part of the question, I guess I'm responding in a reverse order. Please bear with me. The second part of the question is on the assumptions on COL. So the reasoned stricter compliance or requirements by the government on social benefit and social security has no impact on us because as you and hopefully everyone else on the call know that we are super compliant in terms of the different regulations. And specifically on social security, our social security base for our full-time employee is calculated on the actual wage, which includes the base pay, the bonus, the overtime, et cetera, et cetera. It's not calculated on the minimum wage. So hopefully that's kind of the core part of the second part of the question. The first part of your question is on the COL outlook for next year. You mentioned broadly stable. I think, yeah, that's kind of what we mean. But more specifically, what we mean here is the pressure on COL. And the pressure on rider costs will be much more moderate next year compared to this year, right? Because this year, we're having mid-50s delivery mix for the full year, lapping last year, especially in the first half of last year, it's around 40% in the mix, right? So that's a significant pressure on the rider cost. But coming into quarter three, if you look at the rider cost, it's only 30 basis points of cost increase. So the pressure already meaningfully moderated compared to more than 150 basis points in the first half of the year. And then so hopefully that moderation on rider pressure will last into quarter four and next year. Because next year, as we mentioned in the earlier part of the Q&A, The delivery sales mix will be broadly stable compared to where we are right now. And if you use, you know, the broadly stable figure, the mid-50s percentage of delivery sales mix lacking this year, which is, you know, let's say 53, 54%, I believe, for a full year, it will be only slightly increased or broadly stable, right? And then if you take into account the wage inflation and all that, the CUL, hopefully the pressure will be much more moderate. and the key levers in driving CUL efficiency to mitigate wage inflation is really the digitalization, the process optimization and centralize of many of the tasks, including recruitment, training, interviewing, inventory replenishment, labor scheduling, even some of the preparation work of the raw materials, we centralize some of those. So these are the measures, as we mentioned in this training and previously, to drive our COL efficiency. But overall, COL, that will not decrease, just to be clear. It's just the pressure will be much more moderate compared to previously.

Just one comment on the other side of the course. While we'll maintain the stable COL with all the factors Adrian talked about, I just want highlight that our store managers really are the hero to help us manage the COO. Because right now, between KFC and Pizza Hut, somewhere between 70% to 80% of the stores are run by what we call mega-RGM, mega store manager, who run two to four stores with the help of the centralization, digitalization, automation. The other side of the equation I want to emphasize is, one, these mega-RGM, their take-home pay has been increasing by mid-teens in the last two to three years, despite we keep the overall labor cost stable. And the turnover rate is somewhere between mid to mid-single digits for the mega-RGM. So not only we kept the COL stable, but we are Retaining the best store manager and we continue to give them very nice salary increase so that we have the best people to run our stores, which is the best way to protect the business in the short term and long term. Thank you. Thank you.

In the interest of time, we will take our last question today from Siyang Wang of CICC. Please go ahead, Siyang. Your line is open.

Okay. Thanks for taking my question. I'm Siyang Wang from CICC. Dear, congratulations on delivering resilient growth. My question is on new store openings. You have raised the year's net opening target to 2,400. What new market opportunities have led you to increase the target? And how do the sales and the profit of new stores compare with those of mature stores? That's all.

Thank you, Suyang. So indeed, we raised our target from $1,900 to over $2,400 for the year, which represents roughly 13% of the store base in the last year. and we do see a vast opportunity, ample opportunity on white space here in China. And as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, over half of our new store openings have been in lower tier cities, strategic channels and areas or trade zones with no existing dying or delivery coverage, right? So those we call double white space. So that's actually incremental opportunity for us and it's important for us to open store there quickly to better service our consumers there and build our brand equity because we firmly believe, you know, the strong brand equity and one of the leading brand equity here we enjoy the Western QSR space here in China is, you know, with the past four decades, you know, hard work, you know, building a lot of our stores in high tier city followed by mid tier city. And now we are actually quite Expanding to lower tier cities in a fast fashion. Leveraging on our new store model like KFC Small Town, Pizza Hut Wow, and KFC and Pizza Hut Gemini model. We are conscious of achieving a balance of comp sales, i.e. limiting the sales transfer at the same time grow our top line as a whole and profitability as a whole and that's why you know we we give the color on over half of our new store open we're in locations with limited or no sales transfer yeah so so that's kind of how we look at it and you know it's exactly because of the ample white space that we see here in China that we believed you know this step-up pace of store opening is something that we'll continue to do over the next few years as well. And hopefully with that, coupled with the solid consoles, we will be able to deliver our three-year guidance as shared on investor day for both the top line and bottom line last year in November.

For both KFC and Bizaha, we still have 1,000, 1,500 cities that does not have our stores, particularly for pizza. There's still 1,500 city plus that has KFC, does not have pizza.

It's just very, very simple math there.

And one last comment about new store opening is above all the new store target or new store opening, we are very disciplined, very, very disciplined. We want our new store to deliver two to three years payback. And that's the quality requirement before we talk about the numbers. Therefore, buying back the Pizza Hut brand helps Pizza Hut new store opening because we don't have to pay 2.8% royalty anymore and expand the margin, allow more stores to meet our requirements. and we can up the target. And now we also have the modules that is very suitable for entering the lower tier city. It really helps. Thank you. Thank you, Joey.

And thank you, Aiden, as well. This concludes our Q&A session. Thank you for joining the call today. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect your lines.