Chuy’s Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CHUY) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 3, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Steve Hislop – President and Chief Executive Officer

Jon Howie – Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Drew North – Robert W. Baird

Chris O’Cull – Stifel

Joshua Long – Stephens

Brian Vaccaro – Raymond James

Nick Setyan – Wedbush

Todd Brooks – Benchmark

Andrew Strelzik – BMO Capital Markets

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Chuy’s Holdings’ Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the lines will be open for your questions following the prepared remarks. [Operator Instructions] On today’s call, we have Steve Hislop, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jon Howie, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Chuy’s Holdings, Incorporated.

At this time, I’ll turn the conference over to Mr. Howie. Please go ahead, sir

Jon Howie

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our third quarter 2022 earnings release. If not, it can be found at our website at www.chuys.com in the Investors section.

Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance, and therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We refer all of you to our recent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition.

With that out of the way, I’d like to turn the call over to Steve.

Steve Hislop

Thank you, Jon. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our third quarter earnings call today. We are pleased with our third quarter results, which started somewhat slow in July due to a record heat in Texas, but finished with strong top line momentum in August and September. This positive trend has continued thus far into the fourth quarter, and we believe that our philosophy of offering fresh, made from scratch food and drinks at an incredible value continues to resonate with our guests and is driving is the driving force behind our growth.

During the third quarter, we implemented a 3.5% price increase that we believe maintains the balance between protecting our store level margins while maintaining the superior value proposition our guests have come to expect from Chuy’s. Even with this price increase, we believe the value gap relative to our peers remains strong. In terms of profitability, our team continues focus – continued focus on cost management and operating efficiencies resulted in a 17.5% restaurant-level operating margin, representing a 300 basis point improvement over 2019.