Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of David Tarantino with Robert W. Baird.
David Tarantino - Robert W. Baird
Congratulations on another good quarter. My question first is about the July comps trend that you mentioned. I was just wondering if you could maybe provide a little perspective on what you think might be going on in terms of this lower trend -- is it really related to the economy or is it maybe a shift in your marketing programs? Or maybe if you could just explain what you think might be the cause of that.
Sally J. Smith
Sure. You know, July is typically, or summer is typically a lower sales volume time for us and we are going up over some pretty nice comps from the prior year. Our marketing focus has not changed July ’09 over July ’08. We rely on our teams in the field to do a lot of local store marketing. We are gearing up, however, for our busiest time and look forward to a strong football season. I am sure that the economic headwinds probably are affecting us a little bit but again, on the positive same-store sales throughout the month of July, we’re pleased with that. The Fourth of July, we don’t think had a significant impact. It was a Friday instead of a Saturday, could’ve seen a little bit there. A little bit of cannibalization as we've opened some stores close to some of our high-volume units, and then a couple of restaurants that we looked at in particular that are coming into the -- had very high openings and had restaurants open nearby -- Buffalo Wild Wings open nearby.
So it’s a bunch of little things but again, July typically tends to be a slower time period for us.
David Tarantino - Robert W. Baird
Thanks, that’s helpful and then Mary, maybe if you could provide a little perspective on -- I know you don’t want to give comps guidance for the second half but if you could give us a flavor for whether you’d be able to achieve your full-year earnings growth targets, if that sort of low single-digit comp trend continues in the back half of the year.
Mary J. Twinem
Yes, we definitely do. Our annual guidance of 20% to 25% net earnings growth had implied in it just a very small positive same-store sales for the year. Obviously when we are going into the first six months of the year, we are firmly -- we are at 27% net earnings growth for the first half of the year so we feel very confident about hitting the bottom line target that we have for the rest of the year.
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