“I think we expect probably that the first half will be likely a little stronger than the second half, and that's just largely a reflection of kind of the benefit of the favorable year-over-year comparisons that we're up against.”

In context

“e a lot of dynamics in the consumer environment. It sounds like you have a really strong playbook. Can you give any color on how we should be thinking about, I guess, Q1, knowing there's some weather there, still have a little bit of the E. coli lap? And then thoughts on the same-store sales progression as we move through '26. Ian Borden: Lauren, it's Ian. Let me take a crack at that, and I'm sure Chris will add on here. Look, I think as we've talked about already, we feel really good about the underlying momentum and kind of the consistency of that across each of the 3 operating segments. I think we expect that momentum to kind of continue in '26. And obviously, what we're focused on and we've talked about a lot is really going 3 for 3, focusing on the things that are within our control. I think we expect probably that the first half will be likely a little stronger than the second half, and that's just largely a reflection of kind of the benefit of the favorable year-over-year comparisons that we're up against. Maybe just to give a little color by segment. I think for the U.S., we've had a solid start in January. We had good kind of underlying momentum, as you've heard us talk about today, supported by, I think, what we've done with extra value meals, obviously, McValue more broadly. I think we would say we expect Q1 comp sales growth to decelerate sequentially from the 6.8% in Q4 that you saw. I think there are 2 key reasons for that. One is Q4 growth was particularly strong, obviously driven by 2 really strong activations in MONOPOLY and Grinch. And then as is well known, you've heard from many others, obviously, we had severe weather impacts in the U.S. kind of beginning in late January that pressured the industry traffic, pressured our traffic, obviously, and caused quite a few restaurants t”