Image source: The Motley Fool.
Chuy's Holdings Inc (CHUY 1.80%)
Q1 2019 Earnings Call
May. 7, 2019, 5:00 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good day, everyone and welcome to Chuy's Holdings First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the lines will be open for your questions following the presentation. On today's call, we have Steve Hislop, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jon Howie, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Chuy's Holdings, Incorporated.
At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Mr. Howie. Please go ahead, sir.
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, operator and good afternoon. By now everyone should have access to our first quarter 2019 earnings release. It can also be found on our website at www.chuys.com in the investors section.
Before we begin our review of formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. And therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition.
With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve.
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Jon. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on the call today. On a high level, we improved our top line performance during the first quarter, as we grew revenues by almost 9%. Comparable restaurant sales also improved by 3.2%. While we are pleased with our sales trajectory, which we believe has been augmented by our recent marketing efforts, we also remain focused on the opportunities we have to improve upon our profitability. For 2019, we intend to leverage on a variety of initiatives we've laid out previously to drive sustainable top line growth over the long-term. In addition to marketing, these initiatives include renewed push on technology, labor and off-premise strategies.
Let me update you on each of these items. Starting with marketing, our strategy for the first half of the year will lean heavily on paid search, paid social media campaigns and location based mobile advertising that will cover all of our markets. In addition to these overall efforts, we are also focusing on certain markets particularly this quarter Chicago and Houston with only three locations in Chicago, our goal is to improve brand awareness and educate the market and the Chuy's experience.
In Houston, where we currently have 10 restaurants. Our focus is to drive increased frequency to our restaurants. To that end, we launched targeted marketing efforts in these two markets in late April, following a successful media test during the fourth quarter of 2018. In addition, we are employing promotional radio, strategic highly and stadium signage and advertising on digital platforms like YouTube, Hulu and Spotify. We also leverage the Cinco de Mayo celebration to create excitement and further drive traffic to our restaurants.
On the technology initiative front, we continue to see an increase in our online ordering adoption rate despite the lack of advertising in it. As of the end of the first quarter, our to-go sales through although Olo represents approximately 13% to 15% of all our to-go ordering. Starting in May, we will begin promoting online ordering in all markets, which should drive increased adoption and strengthen our off-premise business. As I said in the past, we view this platform as the foundation to our future loyalty program which we'll explore in the back half of this year.
Further, as it relates to off premise initiatives, we continue to believe that catering is an important part of our off premise strategy. And it gives us another platform for top line growth or at the same time improving awareness of the Chuy's brand. Beginning in the second quarter, we will add two catering, provide catering for two additional markets and on track to launch catering to six new markets by year end. At that time, we'll have catering offerings in 11 markets.
Other important off premise initiatives include delivery and our to-go business both of which continue to gain traction. We believe our guests are becoming increasingly aware of our delivery offerings as we saw our increase in delivery engagement during the first quarter, which now contributes almost 2.7% of our sales. Overall total apprentice business continues to grow and now makes up approximately 13.6% of our sales.
With regard to labor, we continue to improve on store level efficiencies and together with newly integrated POS system, which is still in tests. We look forward to further optimizing our labor productivity. We also continue to make tangible progress that led to new store labor efficiencies, reducing opening labor new hires by 20% and our focus on achieving system average labor targets by month seven and our improved glide path -- with our improved glide path Initiative.
Before I turn the call back to Jon, I'd like to briefly review our 2019 development. During the first quarter, we opened one restaurant in Colorado -- Springs, Colorado. Subsequent to the end of the first quarter, we opened two additional restaurants; one in Hamburg, Kentucky and one in Huntsville, Alabama. All in all, we're very pleased with the performance of these three recent openings. Our operators and development teams continue to do an excellent job of instilling our unique Chuy's culture in these new restaurants.
For the full year, we continue to expect to open between five and seven restaurants as part of our strategy to balance new unit growth while driving sales and improving restaurant level profitability through the initiatives I've laid out. All of our new units in 2019 are improving markets with a history of strong AUVs and we're excited to complete our remaining development for the year.
Lastly, we're in the later stages of building our real estate analytics tool, which will allow us to create a psychographic profile of our top markets and use it to identify new markets for successful expansion going forward. We're not going to open up any new markets until we have this tool fully developed and tested, which we believe will be sometime during 2020.
With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Jon Howie for a more detailed review of the fourth quarter results.
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Steve. Revenues increased $102.1 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2019 compared to $93.9 million in the same quarter last year, driven primarily by comparable restaurant sales growth and $7.1 million in incremental revenue from an additional 99 new store operating weeks. In total, we had approximately 1,286 operating weeks during the first quarter of 2019. Comparable restaurant sales increased 3.2% during the first quarter driven primarily by 2.9% increase in average check and 0.3% increase in average weekly customers. Comparable restaurant sales benefited by approximately 30 basis points due to the timing of New Year's Eve and Easter. Net of unfavorable weather in the Southeast and Midwest regions during the first quarter. Effective pricing during the quarter was approximately 2.6%.
Turning to a discussion of selected expense line items, cost of sell as a percentage of revenue increased 10 basis points to 25.2%, driven largely by 2.4% in commodity inflation. This inflation was largely attributable to unfavorable beef and produce pricing partially offset by favorable pricing and dairy. For the year, we continue to expect commodity inflation of approximately 1% to 2%. Labor costs, as a percentage of revenue increased approximately 20 basis points to 35.9%. The increase was attributable to new store labor inefficiencies, hourly labor rate inflation in our comparable stores of approximate 3.3% and higher labor rates in some of our newer markets, offset by lower training costs for new managers. Occupancy costs as a percentage of revenue increased 20 basis points to 7.8%, primarily due to higher rental expense and real estate taxes at certain newly opened restaurants.
General and administrative expenses increased to $6.2 million in the first quarter compared to $5.5 million in the same period last year, primarily driven by higher management compensation in part due to additional headcount as part of growth, higher performance based bonuses and an increase in professional fees. While we incurred cost of $0.4 million or $0.02 per diluted share related to the closing of two restaurants during the quarter, which we discussed on our last call.
In summary, net income for the first quarter of 2019 was $3.2 million or $0.19 per deluded share compared to $3.2 million or $0.19 per diluted share in the same period last year. Adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2019 was $3.6 million or $0.21 per diluted share compared to $3.2 million or $0.19 per diluted share in the same period last year. We ended the quarter with $7.3 million of cash on the balance sheet and we currently have no debt.
With that, we will now review our outlook for 2019. We continue to expect full year diluted earnings per share between $0.91 and $0.95 for 2019. This compares to 2018 adjusted earnings per share of $0.88. Our guidance is based on the following updated assumptions. We continue to expect comparable restaurant sales growth for the year of 1.5% to 2.5%. We expect restaurant reopening expenses of approximately $2.1 million to $2.9 million. We now expect G&A expenses between $23.6 million and $24.1 million.
Our effective tax rate is now expected to be approximately 0% to 5% versus our previous range of 6% to 8%. And we are now modeling annual weighted average diluted per share or shares outstanding of 17 million to 17.1 million shares. We are maintaining our development plan for five to seven Chuy's restaurants this year. And lastly, our capital expenditures, net of tenant improvement allowances continue to be projected at $24.5 million and $30.7 million.
With that I'll turn the call back over to Steve to wrap up.
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Jon. As we look ahead, our goal is to create a solid foundation for sustainable top line growth. We believe this is achievable through the initiatives that are being -- that are designed to not only improve brand awareness in newer markets, but also drive frequency in our existing markets. Together with our ongoing initiatives, a disciplined development strategy and superior restaurant operations we also believe we have ample opportunities to improve our profitability and drive shareholder value. Before we turn to Q&A, I'd like to thank all of our Chuy's employees for their hard work and dedication to earning the dollar every single day.
With that, we are happy to answer any questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) We'll take our first question from Mary Hodes with Baird. Please go ahead.
Mary Hodes -- Robert W. Baird & Co. -- Analyst
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Could you talk a little bit about the class of openings from 2018. And if you were to back out the units that you closed there, are the remaining units tracking to meet your internal targets?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
In 2018, yes, we're still tracking kind of on the perform that we set with those subtracted out.
Mary Hodes -- Robert W. Baird & Co. -- Analyst
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And then on the newer markets like Chicago and Miami, can you just talk a little bit more about how some of the marketing initiatives are going in those markets at this stage. I know you said a few more for Q -- that are beginning in Q2 here, but anything that worked in Q1 or what you're seeing there ?
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, We believe that how we track we're expecting a 5 to 1 return and we've seen some movement again it's such a small profile and a small time period. We tested it really in the fourth quarter and then we ran a six week run on the those markets in the first quarter. And then, of course, the digital and paid socials throughout the whole company. And we've seen some movement. And again the key for that is to get much, much more awareness even the night because we only have the three stores in Chicago and in DC, we have like the five stores there. So again we need to run a little bit more, but we're pleased with the return on investment so far, as far as store visits.
Mary Hodes -- Robert W. Baird & Co. -- Analyst
Thank you for taking the questions.
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question will come from Chris O'Cull with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Mitchell Zelfden -- Stifel -- Analyst
Yeah, Hi. Good afternoon, guys. Actually Mitch on for Chris. First, could you comment on the performance of your stores in Texas versus those in your non-core markets during the quarter? And then can you comment on how people trended from both a comp and traffic perspective?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
April. Well, let's just -- let's start with April. April started out because we had the Easter switch as well as we had some bad weather, so we were slightly down in April, but we believe there's about 235 basis points worth of the Easter shift and whether that was impacting that on the period basis. And on a quarter basis, that's about a 70 basis point impact. So after adding that back we're still pleased with the trend there. As far as Texas, Texas continues to -- as far as the rest of the country, it continues to do well. However, we had significant sales momentum in all of our geographic areas, but Texas was definitely slightly better.
Mitchell Zelfden -- Stifel -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you. The next I wanted to shift to some the labor optimization initiatives. The Company previously mentioned steps to reduce the number of store level managers and develop an expedited program. Could you comment on where you are on that front and it is initiatives system wide?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, it is. It is uncertain -- there will be some reduction in some of our management parts and any store that has and really for the next part it's mainly on the recruiting side of the business. It's really server expose or basically key hourlies that can work some management functions, but more
importantly we'll be able to be moved up into management positions as we move further.
Mitchell Zelfden -- Stifel -- Analyst
Okay. And then one more for me, on the off premise business you mentioned the plan to extend catering to six additional markets through other major of the year bringing the total to 11. I'm curious, what percentage of the store base at that time will have the service available?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
And again this is by market and how we're doing that is also putting a catering van in the market. And so by the end of the year, we'll have a 11 and we've currently have 19 supervisory markets, so a little bit more than 50%.
Mitchell Zelfden -- Stifel -- Analyst
All right. Thanks, guys
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We'll take our next question from Andrew Strelzik with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Dan -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Hey, guys. This is Dan (ph) on for Andrew today. Thanks for taking the question. I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about your view on the current commodity environment. Given that we've seen some beef and pork inflation so far this year and you guys called it out for the current quarter. I'm just wondering I guess how locked you are on your commodities for the rest of the year and I know you didn't raise the commodity forecast, but I guess I'm just hoping you could maybe add some color about how you're thinking about that going forward?
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Sure. I've been reading a few things in casual dining and where they project, where the restaurant industry projects inflation and they are still projected to be somewhere in 0% to 2%. You are correct. I mean the pork which really doesn't affected that much as we really don't have much mix in pork. And as far as our beef, we're locked in for the rest of the year, so that's pretty well locked in that increase that I've mentioned. We specifically have a specific type of cut with our fajitas that thin meats and that has driven up significantly more than some of the other cuts. And so we've locked that in and we're comfortable with that for the rest of the year. But we believe although is up 2.4% over the same quarter last year, it was actually down about 1.2% (ph) over the subsequent or over the previous Q4 quarter. So we are seeing the prices come down a little bit from the last half of last year. And so that's why we are still comfortable with the 1% to 2%.
Dan -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. And then just one follow up for me, back on the labor subject -- the labor management system specifically. I know you said I think on the last call that we could expect to maybe start seeing some benefits from system implementation in the back half of 2019. Just wondering if that's still on track. I guess given that the system still being tested as I understand it any additional color you can provide on that and how implementation is going?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, we have it all set, there's just -- there's a few and I know there's a few bugs that we're still working out, but we have it -- we have a testing in two or three stores right now. We still expect it in the second half of this year to be in place.
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Specifically it's the clock-in enforcement. The real key of this tool is really on projections and having the proper number of people at the proper times on and off time. So that's the key thing on tool and that's what part we're using a little bit and that's what's worked. We're getting ready to roll but it's clocked enforcement will be in the second half.
Dan -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Got it. Thanks for taking the question.
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
You're welcome.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) We'll move next to Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Brian Vaccaro -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Thanks and good afternoon. Just wanted to circle back on the guidance Jon and that the lower tax rate looks to be maybe a (inaudible) to the guidance. And so G&A was an offset there, but just curious if you call it any other shifts in your store margin outlook inflation outlook etc., that you tweaked within your guidance?
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
I mean the biggest one obviously is the tax. We've got some different things brewing on that. As far as the other guidance, really nothing has really changed that much from a bit standpoint. There's gives and takes on that year-to-date I should say on the full year. Guidance, there is some give and takes within kind of the restaurant margins but overall we're not changing that, that much. The only one is kind of the increase in G&A which we increase at approximate $300,000 really related to kind of the performance bonuses. And preopening expenses may trend up a little bit, given the timing of some of the store openings in 2020. So we'll give you more color on that as that progresses, but that could trend up a little bit.
Brian Vaccaro -- Raymond James -- Analyst
All right. That's helpful. And just on the quarter today I was just curious, does the Cinco de Mayo shift, I know that's moved around in the past and sometimes had an impact on your business, is that movement from a Sunday to a Saturday, have a material impact on sort of the quarter-to-date I guess we're talking about a couple of days ago, but does that have an initial impact?
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
From a Saturday to a Sunday? It's still a weekend and we try to utilize the whole weekend when we do that. So we did add some extra marketing shift to it, but we don't think the shift in the actual day had much impact this year. It'll be a bigger impact when you shift it to a weekday versus a weekend.
Brian Vaccaro -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. And then just last one. Could you spend a minute just on -- I know you launched some new value initiatives and messaging day of the week type of value promotions. And could you spend a minute on kind of comparing how that's impacting your business and the marketing behind those strategies versus the other marketing initiatives that you laid out as you're -- in your prepared remarks, Steve?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. What we've done there as daily specials like we have a Taco Tuesday and we do for Fajita Wednesdays and then we do $5 margaritas in certain stores every single day. And we're busy, we've just started that and we've calculated it. It definitely increased some customer accounts. Jon's doing down and dirty on the profitability of that as we're speaking, but we're pleased with it and the way we're supporting it is, as a group of stores that are doing this is through our social media and our paid social -- our paid digital.
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
And to be clear on that Brian is just a select group of stores.
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
A group of stores. Yeah. I mean our overall strategy is not ever really a discount from a Company perspective. Store-by-store strategy, we'll look at it
Brian Vaccaro -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. So it's a small percentage of your stores, that just happened to be in one of the markets?
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yeah.
Brian Vaccaro -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Understood. Thank you.
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you
Operator
And there are no further telephone questions at this. I'd like to turn the conference back over to management for any additional or closing remarks.
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, thank you so much. Jon and I appreciate your continued interest in Chuy's and we will always be available to answer any and all questions. Again, thank you and have a good evening.
Operator
This does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation.
Duration: 23 minutes
Call participants:
Jon Howie -- Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Steve Hislop -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Mary Hodes -- Robert W. Baird & Co. -- Analyst
Mitchell Zelfden -- Stifel -- Analyst
Dan -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Brian Vaccaro -- Raymond James -- Analyst
