BJ's Restaurants (BJRI) Q3 Earnings & Revenues Top Estimates

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. BJRI) reported third-quarter fiscal 2019 results, wherein earnings and revenues surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate. This marked the company’s eight straight quarter of revenue beat. Moreover, it came up with an earnings beat, after missing estimates in the preceding quarter.

Adjusted earnings of 18 cents per share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 10 cents by 80%. However, the bottom line decreased 53.8% year over year.

BJ’s Restaurants’ earnings in the quarter suffered from an expense of $0.03 that is related to the adoption of ASU 2016-02.

Moreover, during the reported quarter, the company opened its first Connecticut location in the city of Manchester and sixth restaurant in the state of Indiana.

Revenues & Comps

Total quarterly revenues were $278.7 million, which marginally surpassed the consensus estimate of $278 million by 0.2%. The top line also grew 3.1% year over year, driven by 2.9% rise in operating weeks.

Comparable restaurant sales in the quarter under review decreased 0.3% from the prior-year quarter. This decline was attributed to Hurricane Dorian that affected approximately 10% of its restaurants and weakness in certain markets of California. Nonetheless, the company believes that robust sales-building efforts and improving labor productivity will continue to drive comps in the quarters to come.

Expenses & Operating Margins

Labor costs, as a percentage of sales, increased 80 basis points (bps) to 37.5% in the third quarter. Occupancy and operating costs (as a percentage of sales) were 23.3%, up 70 bps year over year.

Restaurant-level operating margin was 13.5%, down 190 bps from the year-ago quarter. However, in order to counter high costs prevalent in the industry, the company is undertaking various cost-saving and efficiency initiatives to drive margins.

Balance Sheet

As of Oct 1, 2019, cash and cash equivalents totaled $24.4 million compared with $29.2 million on Jan 1, 2019.

Total debt increased to $158 million at the end of the third quarter from $95 million at 2018-end.

BJ's Restaurants declared an increase in the quarterly cash dividend by 8.3%, payable on Nov 25, 2019 to its shareholders of record at the close of business on Nov 11, 2019.

Additionally, in the quarter under review, the company repurchased and retired roughly 1.1 million shares of its common stock for $41.3 million.

Guidance

As part of sales building efforts, the company anticipates to open its last two restaurants of fiscal 2019 in the fourth quarter. This will enable the company achieve the goal of opening seven restaurants this fiscal year. Notably, it also expects to open eight-ten new restaurants in fiscal 2020.

It expects general & administrative expenses to be around $15.5-$16 million.

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

 

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | BJ's Restaurants, Inc. Quote

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

BJ’s Restaurants currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks from the Zacks Restaurant’s industry include Chuy's Holdings, Inc. CHUY, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. CBRL and Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc. DNKN. While Chuy’s sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Cracker and Dunkin’ carry Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Chuy’s, Cracker and Dunklin’ have an impressive long-term earnings growth rate of 17.5%, 10% and 9.8%, respectively.

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