Earnings Labs

BJ's Restaurants, Inc. (BJRI)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 21, 2016

$37.45

-0.11%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Please stand by. We are about to begin. Good day and welcome to the BJ's Restaurants First Quarter 2016 Earnings Release and Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. And at this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Greg Trojan, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to BJ's fiscal 2016 first quarter investor conference call and webcast. I'm Greg Trojan, BJ's Chief Executive Officer, and joining me on the call today is Greg Levin, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have Greg Lynds, our Chief Development Officer; and Kevin Mayer, our Chief Marketing Officer on hand for Q&A. After the market closed today, we released our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2016, which ended on Tuesday, March 29. You can view the full text of our earnings release on our website at www.bjsrestaurants.com. Our agenda today will start with Rana Schirmer, our Director of SEC Reporting, providing our standard cautionary disclosure with respect to forward-looking statements. I will then provide an update on our business and current initiatives. And then Greg Levin, our Chief Financial Officer will provide a recap of the quarter, and some commentary regarding the remainder of fiscal 2016. And after that, we'll open it up to questions. So, Rana, please go ahead.

Rana Schirmer - Director, External Reporting

Management

Thanks, Greg. Our comments on the conference call today will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, April 21, 2016. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required to do so by the securities laws. Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Rana. Well, fiscal 2016 is off to a very solid start, with record Q1 financial results extending our concepts momentum following our record setting 2015. We again generated positive comparable restaurant sales, while improving efficiencies throughout the organization and executing our long-term new restaurant opening strategy. BJ's positive 0.6% comp restaurant sales marked our seventh consecutive quarter of positive comp sales and lapped our most difficult quarter of last year at a 3.2% comp gains. Once again BJ's sales and traffic outpaced both Knapp-Track and Black Box by a solid margin during the quarter, an average of about 170 basis points in both sales and guest traffic, respectively. Our $0.47 of EPS was a 32% improvement over last year's Q1, and our restaurant level…

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

All right. Thanks, Greg. As noted, our strong first quarter bottom line results reflect a continuation of the trends established over the last seven quarters and were driven by positive comparable restaurant sales, our ongoing success with productivity and efficiency initiatives, and the continued execution of our return-focused new restaurant development plans. Revenues for the 2016 first quarter increased approximately 8.1% year-over-year to $243.4 million, while net income grew 21.1% to $11.6 million and diluted net income per share grew 32% to $0.47. Reported first quarter net income and diluted EPS were impacted by approximately $370,000 or $0.01 per diluted share due to a California employment practices lawsuit settlement. Excluding this one-time settlement charge on a non-GAAP basis, our net income and diluted net income per share increased 23.8% and 33%, respectively. Our comparable restaurant sales rose 0.6% during the quarter, as an increase in our average check of approximately 1.8% more than offset an approximate 1.2% decline in guest count. As noted, when we reported Q4 in February, we continued to see softness in our Texas restaurants, which were offset by solid comps in California and other areas. In general, the Western part of the U.S. continues to demonstrate some of the strongest comp sales for us. As Greg Trojan mentioned, we had nominal menu pricing in the mid-2% range during the quarter, though our average check was up about 1.8%, as we focused our new menu and marketing promotions on the lunch daypart and value. Overall this drove positive lunch traffic for us during the quarter and reconfirmed value message with our guests. Our weekly sales average for Q1 was a little over $109,000, which was down about 0.9% from last year's first quarter. Our Q1 cost of sales at 24.9% was 10 basis points better than a…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. We'll take our first question from Matthew DiFrisco with Guggenheim Securities.

Matthew Kirschner - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey. This is Matt Kirschner on for Matt DiFrisco. I was wondering if you could just go into the quarterly trend and the cadence of last year? I see that at this time it is 1.5%.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

I said our quarter-to-date comps right now are about 0.5%, positive 0.5%. Last year at this time, I think they were also about 0.5% I think from earnings call a year ago. Is that what you're asking, Matt?

Matthew Kirschner - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Yeah, that's correct.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Okay.

Matthew Kirschner - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Is there a cadence through the quarter?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

We don't get specific on the quarter, I would tell you last year on the call, we said that our comp sales were about 0.5% as we went into this call and we finished Q2 at a 0.5%.

Matthew Kirschner - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then just on the loyalty program, do you guys breakout or can you just kind of offer anything on the number of users that have downloaded the app along with the percent of transactions? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Go ahead, Kevin. Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. We have – as a percentage of transactions?

Matthew Kirschner - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Yes. Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: Let me think here. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I know, the percent of transactions is in the mid teens, and have been consistent on the loyalty front and we're seeing good acceleration on that in both spend per user and that number has been heading in the right direction as we've been using that database and rewarding our guests.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

And Matt on the app, you mentioned as well, we've always mentioned that's kind of in the low single digits. We continue to push that forward. I think that's a great opportunity to drive business, make BJ's faster, which is something that we've always talked about. Speed is a – it's not one of our competitive advantages and we believe the mobile app gives us that advantage as we get more guests to use that. But as we are today, that's still in the low single digits with a huge opportunity for increases over time. Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: The only thing I'd add there Matt is, we're seeing good growth on the app actually, given some of the features that we keep improving and when you combine some of our lunch marketing into the app. So we are seeing nice growth but admittedly off of a low base, right. So we like the direction it's headed, we like it to happen more quickly there, but are pleased that it is growing.

Matthew Kirschner - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Joshua Long with Piper Jaffray. Joshua C. Long - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Great. Thank you for the question or for the time. My first question was regarding your read on the consumer environment right now and just from an industry perspective? And then secondarily as we get some more – as you get some more time working with marketing the BJ's brand, I was curious if you would be able to share any sort of takeaways that you've learned? Is there an emotional connection with the brand that you had not been able to tap into previously that now is showing up, is it overwhelmingly price point driven, just any sort of read you can talk about as you try to work with the guest in driving awareness and trial of the BJ's brand? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. I'll give that a shot. In terms of the overall consumer, I think we're continuing to see sort of better economic news particularly or maybe even solely sometimes, it seems like from a U.S. perspective and around the world and in terms of employment growth, et cetera. But there's no question the consumer is still nervous about what's in front of them, right. And so, therefore, I think we're still not seeing the level of retail spending you might expect otherwise with similar economic news and employment and et cetera. So, that results in still pretty choppy environment in restaurants and in retail, in general, more so than you might suspect. And so, I don't have any other sort of forecast or crystal balls in terms of that and on that front. But I do in terms of our marketing and our opportunity and I think…

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yes, Joshua, we always opportunistically look to lock when we can lock. At the end of the day, we want to run restaurants and not have to worry about commodity inflation. So if we knew the exact price of where everything was going to go, we would go long all day long and get into just pure focus within the business. At the same time, there are just certain items that you can't necessarily lock, except on those monthly basis from that standpoint. So it gets a little bit harder to lock in a significant amount above the 60%. But when we have the opportunity for now, let's say, to even buy out into the first quarter of 2017 or further, we will. So, again, it's a little bit of art with science there, but generally speaking, we don't want to be out there fluctuating with the environment. We'd rather lock it in because, again, it allows us to plan our promotions and just worry about executing within the four walls of the restaurant. Joshua C. Long - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): No, that makes sense. So good way to think about is 60% is fully locked for your brand on a regular ongoing basis?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

As best we can. Joshua C. Long - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Yes. Okay. That's helpful. And then my last question is on the labor side. I think previously we had talked about labor on a margin basis being elevated and then maybe slowly coming down over the course of the year. Is that still kind of the look? You had mentioned that it could be up slightly for the year, so just curious on what you're thinking about the cadence of that given the minimum wage pressures and just the overall labor pressures as we go through the course of the year?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yes. I am still expecting it to be up slightly over the next few quarters, as I mentioned earlier, just looking at how things are playing out. We did get a benefit here in this first quarter, as I mentioned, on lower incentive compensation. Last year we came out of the gate with a 3% plus comp that allowed for higher incentive compensation, and we did get a benefit this quarter on our workers comp that brought it down. So you start to stripping those things out and you see the pressure from the minimum wage, as I mentioned on the call. And therefore I'm assuming absent of that in those benefits in Q2, Q3, and Q4, I would see a slight uptick there. As I mentioned before, I don't think this changes. That would be offset with, in this case, now holding cost of sales in line because of the way we're changing our internal allocation, but then seeing lower operating occupancy cost. So, ultimately, I still think there is ability to get margins above where they were last year. Joshua C. Long - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Great. That's helpful. Thank you.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jeff Bernstein with Barclays.

Pratik Patel - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays.

Great. Thanks. This is Pratik Patel for Jeff. Just wanted to see if you could talk about the unit performance in your newer markets. As you mentioned before, the brand is a little bit less familiar to folks in these markets and just wondering if you could comment on the initial sales and margins relative to the rest of the system and the trajectory you expect over time as you infill some of these markets? Thanks.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Yes. This is Greg Levin. Those restaurants are actually they're doing the sales levels we internally projected and are frankly consistent with other restaurants in those markets that might have been some of the newer prototypes. And, look, like any portfolio, you have restaurants that outperform, you have restaurants that are a little bit lower in that regard and we tend to have that. As we mentioned on the call today, our Victorville, California restaurant did $184,000 and continues to hold up with some strong sales. That's our home court of California, but it does prove one thing, and that is the smaller prototype, which is about 20% smaller than our existing 8,400 square foot prototype, can do sales volumes at the level of some of our existing prototypes. So we don't think that there is any reduction in sales, because we decided to build our newer prototypes a little bit smaller. When we go into some of these newer markets such as the Northeast Ohio market, we're seeing some pretty strong sales coming out that are in line with our sales if not better than some of our other sales in that Ohio Valley market. Same thing in the Mid-Atlantic with their newer restaurants. When I look at our restaurants in Alabama and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, they are doing what you'd expect compared to restaurants in Florida putting them in there or restaurants in the Mid-Atlantic or even restaurants in Texas. So, overall, we feel very good. I do reiterate the point that with BJ's and we've always said this, our restaurants in California give higher volumes. They have higher pricing. There is more density, so we expect them to be higher. As we move outside of California, again, to other markets, we expect those to be a little bit lower in volumes and that's what we're seeing and there's been no difference with this latest class versus restaurants we built four years or five years ago. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'd just take on the margin one...

Pratik Patel - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays.

Thanks very much. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: ...what I'd say, just in general is, they're opening up and getting to steady-state margins more quickly. Literally on a very consistent basis, we're seeing the benefits of that new layout and is more efficient to open our restaurants, both in terms of preopening and our opening margins and are seeing them operate at compared to the larger restaurants at the same sales level and more efficient labor and other operating costs, as you would expect, but that's actually happening in real execution in these new restaurants.

Pratik Patel - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays.

Great. Thanks very much for the color. Appreciate it. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Welcome.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Chris O'Cull with KeyBanc.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Chris.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Greg, you mentioned that you're pleased with the targeted promotions that you ran in Texas. Can you quantify how it impacted the traffic or comps in the markets that you ran it? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We don't really roll it up that way from a cumulative perspective. We do analyze the individual promotions for when they are running there, Chris, but I don't know, Greg, I don't think there is something from a cumulative perspective that we have that can answer that. But...

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

I'm just trying to figure out if you noticed a difference in the same-store sales after you started running these targeted promotions? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, yes. I mean, we look at every single one of them, as I mentioned. So I can tell you on a cumulative basis, but on an individual basis, they are needle movers. And I think the most important thing to understand where we're trying to get to on this front and I tried to cover this in my remarks is what we don't want to do is on a consistent basis have it become an expectation in order to come to BJ's, I just have to wait for a deal, so to speak. But we do know that and we've just done some pretty recent or actually very recent market research where there are folks out there that because of their economic circumstances are making that decision on a Friday night based upon what deal is in effect where. So, the idea is, let's target those guests, whether they're loyalty members or externally as folks that we know are more deal sensitive, and we're not obviously anxious to drive incentives towards people that were going to come anyway. So we're trying to do that, understanding behavior from a loyalty perspective, which is easier to do, obviously, because we know those folks' frequency and spend, but also think of different other ways that we can target the more value-conscious folks with some incentives that also change up over time and celebrate whether it's things going on in the market or things about BJ's that make it fun and more brand positive than here's just a discount. Look, we're not all the way there on that, by the way, but we're making some good progress. We've done some things like – institute some just pretty frankly old school basic franchise night kind of ideas where we're doing half off family pizzas at certain dayparts and that's building over time and it gives people a chance to come to BJ's who otherwise might not think that they can. And so it's not just offers, it's finding other way through bundled combinations and some of these day part focused promotions that we think are brand positive, because at the end of the day that's the fine line here is incrementally, frankly, given the marginal economics of our business, you almost always are in a place where you are driving enough traffic to make money, per se. But over time, if you've just like anything overdone, it's going to erode the brand and that's not something we're going to let happen.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

I noticed that a lot of your competitors in Texas have used bar promotions or pretty aggressive value promotions at the bar to try to drive traffic. Have you guys tested any type of alcohol value promotion? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We have added some value to our Happy Hour. And I won't go into excruciating detail, but we have done a bit of that. But given Texas alcohol incidents has always been on the higher side, which we love and respect, so there may be some more opportunity to go further in that direction, frankly, but we have done some of that.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

And certainly, I was a little confused on your comments. It sounds like you're trying to target more check growth to drive same-store sales this year, but it also sounds like the recent trend, the check growth has waned a little. Can you help me understand what should we expect in terms of same-store sales growth? More check driven or....? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, really what we set out and the way I described this year I think starting back in December was striking a balance, because 2014 was more about given the investments we made and the price points, a more traffic-oriented focus. Last year we took advantage of some opportunities to grow check a bit more and, frankly, we're trying to do a bit of both here. So the early part of this year with lunch and value is a bit more focused on the traffic side and look we're always going to try to drive traffic as the most important metric, let's not get confused, but we do think there is continued opportunities. What we are seeing time and again, Chris, in things that we're both testing and some of these new products, I wouldn't put the lunch items in this category, is that we have the permission to stretch on price point and quality. People trust us to do a bone-in New York Steak where we've done our Atlantic salmon and we do a good job with those products and there are opportunities like that in future center-of-the-plate and elsewhere in our menu to drive check but still provide a great value and people leaving saying, well, that was an amazing whatever, even though it was on the higher end of our range of check. And so let me try to make sure in terms of my comments that they are not confusing is look we're going to use that guest check growth. The reason our guest check wasn't quite as high as it was trending before is we are dealing more of that check back in incentives and in discounts. But that's giving us some very important air cover to still relative over the last couple of years 1.8% of check growth is pretty healthy. So again we are trying to strike that balance between traffic and check, but think of it as with a mid-2% pricing, we had mix in our favor, we consciously dealt that pricing back through incentives where we needed it most and ended up at a level that wasn't that far different from where we were pricing. Does that make sense?

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

It does, that was helpful. And then, just last one, there has been a greater focus from chains on takeout sales and you guys were really early with the digital ordering platform, not just the app, but online and have a very good system. But yet if you look at your takeout business as a percentage of your food sales, it's pretty low relative to the rest of the segment. Is there an opportunity to drive growth there? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, yeah. Actually it is one of those things that we are growing it and it is one of the faster growing elements of our business, but we agree with you. It's an opportunity to grow even higher. We are doing more with the app in terms of capabilities there and improving that, but also our website. If you look at the percentage of our takeout sales that are coming from online orders, that's a healthier percentage than one might think as well. And so, we're also making an important investment in our website and mobile site to make it easier and for a lot of things translate a lot of the features if you will that are in the app to website as well. Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. If I could just jump in. This is Kevin. We are on your way of building out a new web platform that will be a lot more contemporary to what you see that Google is looking for in regards to SEO, search engine optimization. So we think there is not only an opportunity to build an website that's little more custom to a personalized experience for the guests, meaning the site will have the data, the login state, it will know you've ordered in the past, et cetera, which I think will hopefully create frequency, but also allow our site to be stronger in regards to guests just looking for takeout at any given night. So we do think there's some upside here in the back half of your early next year.

Chris O'Cull - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Great. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Jeff Farmer with Wells Fargo.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Thanks. Just following up on an earlier line of questioning. It looks like over the last three years, you guys have opened up something like, looks like more than 25 restaurants outside of California, Texas, Florida, so those core markets for you. As a group, are those units entering the convertible store base as a headwind or a tailwind of same-store sales? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: There's really been no change in our discussion on that, Jeff in the sense that when newer restaurants come into the comp base, they come in negative. And I will tell you right now, the class of 2014, it came in negative. I don't know what these act – hit was on comp sales, in the past we've talked about being around 50 basis points and looking at the trend, it looks pretty consistent. If you go back though and I look at the class of 2011, class of 2012, those classes at least in the first quarter here, all were positive. If I look at the class of 2013, the first half of 2013 restaurants, meaning restaurants that opened July and back on aggregate were positive. The restaurants that opened in the second half of 2013 were still negative. As they kind of come out of their honeymoon, they're less negative they were in this first quarter than they were two quarters or three quarters back. So, we're seeing the same patterns that we've always seen and that is, as a growth year company, we have probably a 50 basis points drag on our comp sales because of new restaurants.

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Okay. That's helpful. And just Greg, sticking with you on this one, again another question that was touched on, but over the last four quarters, you basically pretty handedly outpaced your labor cost guidance, looks like by about an average of 50 basis points to 60 basis points. I understand you guys made it clear Project Q is an ongoing effort, there is multiple moving pieces to it. But if we are looking at the guidance today, is there any reason to think that we should not be viewing this as conservative. Is there anything you are about to lap or implement? Any reason again that we shouldn't be thinking that this guidance that you've outlined and the labor line still isn't conservative? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. I think, when I look at this data, kind of look at our cost for operating week and so on from that standpoint, which is one of the ways I look at at the size is just we're kind of lined-up from a percentage standpoint. And that is, as we start to head into the second half of this year, actually let's just call it Q2 going forward, we've taken that next step down below 35%, meaning beginning in Q2 of 2015, we are running labor all-in in the 34% range, prior to that we are running labor in the 35% and 36% range. So, we are – which you guys have written about every time and I know we've tended to do a little bit better from a performance standpoint. We are now coming up against really our toughest comparisons from a margin standpoint. Even if you look at restaurant level margins starting in Q2 of last year, they move up to 20.9%, 19.7%, and…

Jeff D. Farmer - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Okay. Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Will Slabaugh with Stephens.

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens.

Yeah. Thanks, guys. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about more about the trends you saw throughout the quarter, just given the weakening industry data we've been seeing. Has there been any notable distinctions maybe for you from week versus weekends or I mean you talked a little bit about your focus on lunch versus dinner. I'd love to hear that or any additional color you may be able to provide about what you think is happening, is it sort of decelerating broad casual trends in the market? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I'll start it. I'd just start-off by saying, our trends were consistent with what you've seen in terms of timing from an industry perspective, from Knapp-Track or Black Box, from that perspective. And I'd say because of our focus on lunch and value, lunch was a bit stronger from a year-over-year perspective, as we run promoting broader or much on the dinner front, so. But in terms of weekends or weekdays or other than things that are explained promotionally or from a menu perspective, there weren't big shifts. The only other thing that we don't have an exact explanation for, but it just did seem like spring break timing was not as beneficial in those traditional high volumes, spring break is helpful for everyone, but we tend to see nice bumps during those weeks. And when the laps were going against us, it seemed to hurt a little bit more than when they were back and helping us. And overall, it's just our perspective that we just didn't see the benefit from the Easter and spring break season that we have had before. Some of that's probably weather, but in general, the calendar just didn't seem to benefit as much seasonally as it has in the past, is the only other color I could give. Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I would say with...

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens.

Got it. Kevin E. Mayer - Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President: Jumping on to Greg's comments there. Our weekdays are stronger than weekends, but that's as expected because we were promoting lunch. And most of our lunch offers were through the weekdays, so we saw that's stronger. I still believe, Will, what you tend to see in casual dining is when there is a reason to celebrate events, casual dining tends to be stronger I think and that's because the way the competition might be with fast casual as well. So, you start off January pretty strong because people are still in celebratory modes, some people still have vacations those first couple of weeks, and then as you start to get back into the rest of the normalcy of your patterns, it seems to have gotten softer. I think we tend to see that through our business. And there's reason to celebrate, whether it's Valentine's Day, even days off at school, whether it might be a Memorial Day, a Veterans Day, et cetera, those tend to be very big days for us. And that's kind of what we've seen frankly over the last two years or so. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We're looking forward to Mother's Day and Father's Day and graduation season, just around the corner.

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens.

Got it. That's helpful. Also I just wanted to ask about pricing a little bit, I know you mentioned where you're going to be, mid-to-high 2% this quarter, curious just given all the talk about California minimum wage continuing to increase, kind of what your thoughts are there over the longer term? Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, we're not going to make any long-term forecast, it's going to – obviously somewhat dependent, that's why we're working as hard as we are on the cost structure side. So our point of view is the more progress we can make on that front, then we can take less price and even widen our value benefit and gap here, so that's our strategy around it. How that works out is going to be somewhat dependent on how successful we are on that front and whether what's happening competitively et cetera, but all the data that we're looking at is if you balance it regionally, like when it's a little deceiving or not deceiving, or you just have to keep in mind that when we say mid-2s%, we have a disproportionate amount of California pricing in that number, right, more or so than other concepts that aren't as California focused, right. So when we look at it regionally, we think we're doing a good job of sticking to that strategy where both our nominal pricing is in line, but our effective pricing after our promotional spend is if anything, widening the gap from a value perspective competitively.

Will Slabaugh - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst · Stephens.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, we'll take our final question today from Sam Beres with Robert W. Baird. Sam J. Beres - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hi. Good afternoon. And then just one quick clarification and then I have a follow up, Greg Levin maybe, first I know trends have been volatile here in the last few weeks, but any sense of what the impact of the Easter shift on that quarter-to-date comp you provided was, any thoughts on the quantification of that would be helpful.

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

I don't think it's that impactful. We pick up the Sunday, but as a result the rest of the week is a little bit softer because that would have been a spring break week in that first quarter, so you get a Sunday, but then you lose it during the middle of the weeks on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays when everybody would have been on the spring break, Sam, so I think net-net it's actually immaterial to where we are right now. Sam J. Beres - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. And then maybe just in terms of the Texas trends, obviously been a bit softer than the overall system here. So I know you've talked previously maybe not so much energy market-related and more or so just competitive environment in Texas. Any thoughts though on how you're thinking about Texas trends moving forward, and maybe factors that you think could help alleviate the strain that maybe it's putting on the overall comps for the system?

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

Well, I'll try and take most of that question, I don't know if somebody wants to add on at the end here. But we internally still believe that Texas is going to continue to be softer, I mean, the amount of new restaurants still coming online from a competitive intrusion standpoint as well as frankly construction in a lot of our or a few of our big restaurant areas is really kind of impeding a acceleration of comp sales there. So when I think about building models for BJ's and where comps are going to be this year, I take that into consideration even though we're seeing a little bit more pricing outside California or seeing stronger sales maybe in other markets with Texas still kind of taking us down from that standpoint. I do think, as Greg Trojan mentioned, part of our plan will be to be a little bit more incentive-based in some of those Texas markets because we do know, as Kevin also mentioned, that our guests – certain guests in those markets, they are looking for deals, that's a market with a lot of restaurants out there and sometimes they're making the decision based on what they think could be the best value of that day and that best value tends to be a deal in front of them versus maybe everyday low pricing. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, there is also no question...

Gregory S. Levin - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary

Management

It will be combination of those two things. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: There is no question that the energy may not directly impact family income, but it's a darker cloud in Texas than it's going to be elsewhere, right. So I do think for that reason, people are a little more or less confident about their future than elsewhere and that's clearly impacting it. But look the other thing I would add here is, like we're looking at this as an opportunity to make our concept even better, like there is nothing we can do about oil prices and frankly the number of restaurants that are being built out there and our attitude about it is, look, we run great restaurants, we run still among if not the busiest restaurants in the State of Texas and we love Texas and we make a lot of money in Texas. So, it's how do we leverage that position, the volume we're already doing, to offset these negative trends, maybe a little differently and it's a challenge that maybe we get better as a concept that we can take to other geographies and as part of figuring out this challenge of how we get better as a concept in doing this. So look, we all wish that we're all smooth sailing and that's why we built restaurants all over the country is, you're going to have these kind of ups and downs and counter balances and we look at it as a challenge to get better, but at the end of the day, to Greg's point, the reality of the map is, Texas is going to in all likelihood continue to be growing at a lower rate and being a drag on comps for this year, but it's our goal to make that as little a drag as possible. Sam J. Beres - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Great. That's helpful. Thanks guys. Gregory A. Trojan - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. We appreciate your participation.