BJ's Restaurants Provides Business Update Amid Coronavirus

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. BJRI recently provided business updates in the light of the coronavirus pandemic. The company continues to reopen dining rooms, and has been witnessing higher off-premise sales.

As of Jun 11, 2020, the company has reopened dining rooms in 178 of its restaurants throughout 24 states. BJ's Restaurants’ has also stared reopening its temporarily closed restaurants and anticipates getting 208 restaurants operational this week. Further, it expects to start operating dining rooms at more than 85% locations this week.

Comparable Restaurant Sales Update

Comparable restaurant sales for fiscal second-quarter through Jun 9, 2020 have decreased nearly 64%, which includes the impact of full or partial closures on account of latest demonstrations across the United States.

Moreover, for the week ended Jun 9, 2020, comparable restaurant sales were down 42.6%. With more dining rooms scheduled to open over the next few weeks, the company anticipates returning to generating positive cash flow.

Greg Trojan, CEO, said “Early results from our re-opened dining rooms are encouraging, with double-digit weekly sequential sales increases over the last four weeks.”

Productivity improvement initiatives such as a centralized call center to capture more online orders are expected to boost the top line in the days ahead. Notably, the company continues to drive awareness in its key markets through greater and more targeted marketing. During the coronavirus pandemic, digital ordering is likely to be a key catalyst.

Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have gained 5.3% in the past three months, compared with the industry’s rally of 11.4%.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks in the same space include Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. CBRL, Domino's Pizza, Inc. DPZ and Papa John's International, Inc. PZZA. Each of these stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

In the past one month, shares of Cracker Barrel have gained 31.8%.

Domino's and Papa John's have an impressive long-term earnings growth rate of 12.8% and 8%, respectively.

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