The press release for period 9 sales trends at CKE Restaurants hit at 1am today. I wonder why? Here is one clue - Carl’s Jr. sales trends are troubling…….
BAD NEWS AT CKE - CKE reported P9 sales trends of -3.3% on a consolidated basis. This includes a decline of 5.5% at Carl’s Jr. and -0.6% at Hardee’s. Carl’s Jr. saw a 0.4% decline in its 2-years average trends on a sequential basis from period 8. The company did not make a lot of excuses in its press release other to say that California is struggling and it was sticking with its premium product strategy.
CALIFORNIA STRUGGLES – The two most recent data points from CPKI and CKE suggest that sales trends in California are not getting any better. On the margin this is negative for CAKE and PFCB.
TWEEKS IN BOSTON - SBUX said it is withdrawing its Clover Brewed premium coffee offering from seven of its Greater Boston stores as it looks to fine-tune a test program of the Clover system. Plans call for the seven Clover systems that will be removed from some stores to be redeployed in other Greater Boston stores over the next few months.
