Chuy’s Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHUY) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 5, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Steve Hislop - President and Chief Executive Officer

Jon Howie - Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Mary Hodes - Baird

Daniel Gold - BMO Capital Markets

Paul Hao - Wedbush Securities

Todd Brooks - The Benchmark Company

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Chuy’s Holdings Inc.’s First 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 presentation.

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.

At this time, I’d like to 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 first quarter 2022 earnings release. If not, it can be found on our website at www.chuys.com in the Investors section.

Before we begin our review of 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 the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition.

With that, 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 first quarter earnings call today. Overall, we were pleased with our results for the first quarter of 2022. While we’re faced external challenges in the form of Omicron variant of COVID and severe weather -- winter weather, we’re pleased with the sales rebound we saw toward the end of the quarter, which is extended into the second quarter to date. This rebound includes positive comparable sales in March and April compared to both last year and 2019. Despite these challenges, as well as the ongoing inflationary environment, our continued focus on cost management and operating efficiencies resulted in store level margin improvement of 360 basis points compared to 2019. This is in line with our stated expectation of 300 basis points to 350 basis points margin improvements in 2022 compared to 2019. While we’re pleased with the improvement in our store level margins from pre-pandemic levels, inflation continues to be a pressure point, which Jon will talk about in more detail.