Texas Roadhouse F1Q08 (Qtr End 3/25/08) Earnings Call Transcript

  • download
  • Print
  • Recommend
  • 0

2008-04-28 19:14:06.0

Tags: Texas Roadhouse Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We’ll take our first question from Jason West, Deutsche Bank.

Jason West - Deutsche Bank

Thanks a lot, guys. I was wanting just to talk about the development plan a little bit. First of all in ’08, the 30 -- is that a net or a gross number? And then if you are -- how you guys are thinking about ’09 now, given the environment and maybe longer term as well?

Scott M. Colosi

The 30 is a gross number, so we will open 30 restaurants. So if you subtract that one that we’ve closed, that would be a net of 29. And then if you add back the three that we acquired, that would be a net of 32, would be additional company stores by the end of the year.

As far as 2009, we are not prepared to say anything about 2009 at this point.

Jason West - Deutsche Bank

Okay, thanks.

Operator

We’ll go next to John Glass, Morgan Stanley.

John Glass - Morgan Stanley

Given your comments on the inflationary environment, have you thought about ways you could take out costs of building new units as a way to maybe improve returns over time?

G. J. Hart

In terms of just taking cost out of the building --

John Glass - Morgan Stanley

Yeah, lowering the capital cost of building, because I am assuming those costs are going up at the time as well and the volumes have come down slightly.

G. J. Hart

Every year we get together and take a look at everything related to our development costs and see what we can do and this was the first year -- I think we mentioned it on the last call, that we actually got a little bit of cost out of the building. It wasn’t significant. But we continue to evaluate those alternatives all the time.

In terms of anything relative to our prototype, we have not done anything at this point.

John Glass - Morgan Stanley

Okay, and then Scott, you mentioned a worst case I think of a minus 1% traffic in the guidance, which would presume I guess traffic would get better from here, so maybe you could explain -- is it a comparison issue, is it -- what is it or is it maybe your current run-rate of traffic that gives you confidence that it gets better?

 

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Please add your comment:

  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  2.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)

advertisement
advertisement
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
  • Click Here