Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Michael Wolleben - Sidoti and Company.
Michael Wolleben - Sidoti and Company
I know during the fourth quarter conference call you said that you saw the strong fourth quarter trail into the first quarter. Did that maintain through the whole quarter?
Nigel Travis
I think it’s fair to say that all quarters have ups and downs and we had obviously free promotional periods and some performed better than others but I wouldn’t say it was totally consistent. But as we don’t break down our monthly comps anymore, I think I would say that if there was some unevenness but overall we were clearly pleased with the quarter.
Michael Wolleben - Sidoti and Company
Can you give any color on what the second quarter has started like?
Nigel Travis
We don’t normally give guidance about future quarters. We are obviously in the middle, as I commented, of the new specialty pizza roll out. We are excited about that. We think that’s going to build steadily over time and I think the level of confidence we have in our business is demonstrated by our reaffirmation of our comps guidance for the year.
Michael Wolleben - Sidoti and Company
On the G&A line, that came in a little lighter than I was looking for. Can you speak to what was the cause of that and if we can see that moving forward throughout the rest of this year.
David Flanery
Yes Michael, there were a couple of specific things on the G&A that we can probably give a little more color about. As we mentioned in the press release, the first were some severance costs related to some organizational restructuring that should be a one-time factor and the second, we couched it as employee benefit related costs. Some of that,
or a large portion of that was actually related to the way our deferred compensation plan works.
Deferred compensation is basically where all of our employees are deferring their own salary. The company does not contribute to that from an expense point of view. However, the way it’s accounted for, it is funded with life insurance and there can be times depending upon how the underlying assets perform in the funds that the team members choose and Papa John stock is also one of the elections there.
There can just be some unusual timing on how that’s accounted for and there was a little extra expense in first quarter related to that deferred comp timing but over time that washes to zero. And in fact, over time, it actually, because it’s funded with life insurance, in a morbid sense, it actually has some upside to us, but we don’t look at it that way obviously.
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