BJ's Restaurants, Inc. Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

  • download
  • Print
  • Recommend
  • 0

2009-04-24 07:58:11.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Quarter, Earnings, BJ's Restaurants Inc., Sales Strategy, Sales Force Management, Sales, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions). Our first question comes from the line of David Tarantino with Robert W. Baird. Please go ahead, sir.

David TarantinoRobert W. Baird

Hi, good afternoon, and congratulations on a good start to the year.

Jerry Deitchle

Thanks, David.

David TarantinoRobert W. Baird

One clarification question on the comps. I think, Jerry, you mentioned that the Easter shift had an impact on the early Q2 comps. Can you quantify what the impact was on that early Q2 figure that you mentioned, and I guess (inaudible) in Q1?

Jerry Deitchle

Sure. I'm going to turn – I'm going to let Greg comment on that I think he's got the data. Greg?

Greg Levin

Yes, David, the flip flop was worth about 0.2% in regards to comp sales, and the reason for that is you get the pickup in the middle of the week related to spring break all around Easter time, then you lose it on the Saturday, Sunday. So in essence, you probably picked up about 0.1% to 0.2% in the first quarter and then down 0.1% to 0.2% here in the second quarter.

David TarantinoRobert W. Baird

Okay. That's on a quarterly run rate basis so –

Greg Levin

That's correct.

David TarantinoRobert W. Baird

Right. Okay, great. Thank you. And then on your average weekly sales guidance down 2% to 4%, what – look like the gap between the comps and the average weekly sales narrows this quarter, presumably because of the good new unit performance. Do you expect the spread between those two numbers to continue to be in the Q1 range or would it widen as the year progresses?

Greg Levin

Well, there's a couple things. In regards to the first quarter, I think we got a little bit of a narrowing spread. Some of that might have been due to we – due to January, which frankly, was a good month for us overall all weeks in January. And as we come in to this quarter with Easter and so on, we're seeing kind of that continued trend as the flattish numbers that we've seen. I do think it maybe you get back towards the second half of this year with a little bit more California restaurants in there that, that spread would narrow.

David TarantinoRobert W. Baird

Okay. So I guess the implication then would be your guidance would contemplate negative comps for the rest of the year? Is that how you're thinking about it?

 

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
advertisement
Click Here