MARYVILLE, Tenn. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - July 29, 2014 - Ruby Tuesday, Inc. (NYSE: RT) today reported financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and year ended June 3, 2014.
Results for the fourth quarter include:
Results for the 2014 fiscal year include:
JJ Buettgen, Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO, commented, “We are pleased with our progress in fourth quarter sales and restaurant-level margin given a difficult environment. During Fiscal 2014, we continued to lay the foundation for the new strategic direction of the Company as we started implementing our plan to transform Ruby Tuesday into a more energetic, affordable, and casual brand – a brand that is more broadly appealing and appropriate for a wider variety of dining occasions. We believe our results for the full year do not reflect the value of the improvements we have made to our business, our strategy, and the steps we have taken to strengthen our business model. While completing our brand transformation is a multi-year process, we made considerable progress during the year:
These efforts allowed us to better connect with our customers and resulted in building top line momentum with sequential improvement in quarterly same-restaurant sales and guest counts.
As we look to the year ahead, we remain focused on our goal of driving profitable and sustainable guest count growth by continuing to improve the quality, variety, and affordability of our menu, improving our guest experience by partnering with our Operations leaders to elevate our in-restaurant execution, improving the effectiveness of our marketing communications, and continuing to improve our cost structure. We believe our continued brand transformation efforts will position the Company for long-term success and will generate sustainable improvement in shareholder returns.”
Consistent with our fiscal 2014 policy, we are not providing quarterly or annual earnings guidance for fiscal 2015. There are, however, certain items which we would like to highlight for fiscal 2015, including the following:
The Company has a three-year cumulative pre-tax loss, which we considered when evaluating the realization of $141.5 million of gross deferred tax assets, a significant portion of which will be available in future periods to the extent we have sufficient levels of income. In accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, even though we have expectations for earnings in those future years, our three-year cumulative pre-tax loss weighs heavily in our analysis of the realization of deferred tax assets and has resulted in the establishment of the valuation allowance, which was $54.6 million at the end of fiscal 2014. Given the nature of our deferred tax assets and the long carry-forward period associated with our employment tax credits, we expect to eventually recover our deferred tax assets when we generate sufficient levels of income in the future.
The Company believes excluding special items from its financial results provides investors with a clearer understanding of the Company’s ongoing operating performance and comparison to prior-period results.
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Ruby Tuesday, Inc. has 747 Company-owned and/or franchise Ruby Tuesday brand restaurants in 45 states, the District of Columbia, 12 foreign countries, and Guam, in addition to 26 Company-owned and/or franchise Lime Fresh brand restaurants in five states and the District of Columbia. As of June 3, 2014, we owned and operated 668 Ruby Tuesday restaurants and franchised 79 Ruby Tuesday restaurants, comprised of 31 domestic and 48 international restaurants. We also owned and operated 20 Lime Fresh restaurants and franchised six Lime Fresh domestic restaurants. Our Company-owned and operated restaurants are concentrated primarily in the Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest of the United States, which we consider to be our core markets.
Ruby Tuesday, Inc. is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: RT).
For more information, contact:
Jill Golder, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Phone: 865-379-5700
The Company will host a conference call, which will be a live web-cast, this afternoon at 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time. The call will be available live at the following website:http://www.rubytuesday.com
Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information
This press release contains various forward-looking statements, which represent our expectations or beliefs concerning future events, including one or more of the following: future financial performance, future capital expenditures, the effect of strategic initiatives (including cost-cutting initiatives), the opening or closing of restaurants by us or our franchisees, sales of our real estate or purchases of new real estate, future borrowings and repayments of debt, availability of financing on terms attractive to the Company, compliance with financial covenants in our debt instruments, payment of dividends, stock and bond repurchases, restaurant acquisitions, and changes in senior management and in the Board of Directors. We caution the reader that a number of important factors and uncertainties could, individually or in the aggregate, cause our actual results to differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements (such statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to cost savings that we estimate may result from any programs we implement, our estimates of future capital spending, our targets for annual growth in same-restaurant sales and average annual sales per restaurant, and the benefits of our television marketing), including, without limitation, the following: general economic conditions; changes in promotional, couponing and advertising strategies; changes in our customers’ disposable income; consumer spending trends and habits; increased competition in the restaurant market; laws and regulations affecting labor and employee benefit costs, including further potential increases in state and federally mandated minimum wages, and healthcare reform; the impact of pending litigation; customers’ acceptance of changes in menu items; changes in the availability and cost of capital; potential limitations imposed by debt covenants under our debt instruments; weather conditions in the regions in which Company-owned and franchised restaurants are operated; costs and availability of food and beverage inventory; significant fluctuations in energy prices; security breaches of our customers’ or employees’ confidential information or personal data or the failure of our information technology and computer systems; our ability to attract and retain qualified managers, franchisees and team members; impact of adoption of new accounting standards; impact of food-borne illnesses resulting from an outbreak at either one of our restaurant concepts or other competing restaurant concepts; and effects of actual or threatened future terrorist attacks in the United States.
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SOURCE Ruby Tuesday, Inc.
Jill Golde
Ruby Tuesday, Inc.
865-379-5700
EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Our Company-owned and operated restaurants are concentrated primarily in the Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest of the United States, which we consider to be our core markets.