What Happened:
Shares of american restaurant chain BJ’s Restaurants (NASDAQ:BJRI) jumped 15.4% in the morning session after the company reported first-quarter results that beat analysts' same-store sales, gross margin, and EPS expectations. The results could have been better as same-store sales fell 1.7% due to heavier-than-usual winter weather in January. This affected restaurant traffic, which fell approximately 9% in January before recovering to negative mid-single digits in February and March. As these headwinds are mostly concentrated in the first quarter, management expects second-quarter comp sales to be only slightly negative due to less pricing partly offset by improving traffic trends. The second quarter is expected to benefit from key events, including Mother's Day, Father's Day, and graduation celebrations. Zooming out, we think this was a great quarter that shareholders will appreciate.
Is now the time to buy BJ's? Access our full analysis report here, it's free.
What is the market telling us:
BJ's's shares are quite volatile and over the last year have had 14 moves greater than 5%. But moves this big are very rare even for BJ's and that is indicating to us that this news had a significant impact on the market's perception of the business.
BJ's is up 1.9% since the beginning of the year, and at $36.00 per share it is trading close to its 52-week high of $38.13 from March 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of BJ's's shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $680.58.
Here at StockStory, we certainly understand the potential of thematic investing. Diverse winners from Microsoft (MSFT) to Alphabet (GOOG), Coca-Cola (KO) to Monster Beverage (MNST) could all have been identified as promising growth stories with a megatrend driving the growth. So, in that spirit, we’ve identified a relatively under-the-radar profitable growth stock benefitting from the rise of AI, available to you FREE via this link.