Via Reuters:
- Starbucks Corp (SBUX) raised its fiscal year forecast above Wall Street's estimates, banking on its relatively well-heeled customers visiting more often and shaking off price increases. The world's biggest coffee chain, which is coming off a years-long restructuring that involved closing poorly performing stores to rekindle growth, on Thursday reported better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter earnings.
- Seattle-based Starbucks joined a raft of other premium-positioned companies -- including burrito chain Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) and Whole Foods Market Inc (WFM.) -- in reporting out-sized same-store sales gains. "The higher end is alive and well," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Larry Miller.
- Sales at Starbucks' U.S. cafes open at least 13 months, and which yield about four-fifths of its revenue, jumped 8 percent in its fiscal third-quarter ended July 3. Analysts expected a 5.3 percent increase.
- Traffic in its home market climbed 6 percent, while average spending per visit rose 2 percent.
- Chief Financial Officer Troy Alstead told Reuters menu price increases accounted for the bigger part of the rise in spending, but customers were also buying more food.
- Starbucks targets more affluent consumers than the typical U.S. fast-food chain. Those customers have fared better than their lower-income counterparts as the U.S. economy sputters, and they have resumed spending on discretionary items like $4 lattes and organic foods.
- Starbucks shares, which have benefited from a massive restructuring that slashed costs and shut over 900 poorly performing cafes around the world, are up 60 percent from a year ago. On Thursday, it said it would be adding a net 800 stores globally in 2012.
- Starbucks boosted its earnings forecast for this fiscal year to $1.50-$1.51 per share from $1.46 to $1.48 a share, previously. Analysts, on average, were expecting a fiscal 2011 profit of $1.50 per share.
- It also forecast a 15 percent to 20 percent increase in earnings per share in 2012 and a 10 percent increase in revenue. The forecast is based on mid-single digit comparable store sales growth and the opening of net 800 new stores.
- Starbucks' third-quarter net income rose 34 percent to $279.1 million, or 36 cents per share, beating analysts' average estimate by 2 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue rose 12 percent to $2.93 billion.
