Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of John Glass with Morgan Stanley.
John Glass - Morgan Stanley
A couple of questions -- one is on the international comps and understanding they are still better than the U.S. but they have slowed sequentially, is there anything behind those numbers? In other words, are there markets that are significantly underperforming or outperforming that that would make the numbers slow sequentially?
David A. Brandon
Yeah, we had a couple of events in the quarter in a couple of our key markets that we would characterize, at least at this point, as more extraordinary than anything that we see as a pattern or a trend. And one of the reasons that I particularly emphasized the fact that we think that 3% to 5% growth rate in international continues to be a good kind of long-term expectation is for the fact that we still think that that’s a very good run-rate for that business. So it was a little softer than that by a small amount in this quarter but we don’t see that at -- at least at this stage, we don’t see that as any kind of a trend or problem.
John Glass - Morgan Stanley
What were those events or where did they occur? What was the nature of them, I guess?
David A. Brandon
That would be a much longer discussion than we should have -- we can have today and probably one that I would need some help from the team in terms of being as thorough and as specific as I would like to be.
John Glass - Morgan Stanley
Okay. You mentioned that the -- you’ve invested in marketing and franchisees and technology. I just want to clarify -- you talked about those investments as largely being in the past in the script but in the release, you talked about being prepared to invest in the future. Are there future investments that are material that we need to be aware of in any of those areas that might have an impact in either the capital spending or the margins of the business in the upcoming quarters?
David A. Brandon
Well, in the release when I talked about how we are now prepared to invest, it’s really an affirmation of the investments that we’ve already talked about, the fact that we have done a lot of work in retraining our franchisees, the whole initiatives around our F-rated franchisees and forcing some of those transactions, the new OER program that we’ve got out there that’s lifting the quality performance of our stores. What I am really relating to is the ongoing initiatives that we continue to invest in. I’m really not announcing anything new or different.
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