Bloomin’ Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLMN) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 6, 2024 8:15 AM ET
Company Participants
Tara Kurian - Vice President, Corporate Finance and IR
David Deno - Chief Executive Officer
Michael Healy - Executive Vice President and CFO
Conference Call Participants
Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays
Alex Slagle - Jefferies
Jeff Farmer - Gordon Haskett
Brian Mullan - Piper Sandler
Andrew Strelzik - BMO
Operator
Greetings. And welcome to the Bloomin’ Brands Fiscal Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow management’s prepared remarks. Please note this event is being recorded.
It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tara Kurian, Vice President, Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. You may begin.
Tara Kurian
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me on today’s call are David Deno, our Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Healy, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President. By now, you should have access to our fiscal second quarter 2024 earnings release. It can also be found on our website at www.bloominbrands.com in the Investor section.
Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting results on an adjusted basis. An explanation of our use of non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to most directly comparable GAAP measures appear in our earnings release on our website as previously described.
Before we begin formal remarks, I’d like to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, including a discussion of recent trends. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ in a material way from our forward-looking statements. Some of these risks are mentioned in our Earnings Release. Others are discussed in our SEC filings, which are available at www.sec.gov.
During today’s call, we’ll provide a brief recap of our financial performance for the fiscal second quarter 2024, an overview of company highlights, and current thoughts on fiscal 2024 guidance. Once we’ve completed these remarks, we’ll open the call up for questions.
With that, I would like to now turn the call over to David Deno.
David Deno
Well, thank you, Tara, and welcome to everyone listening today. As noted in this morning’s earnings release, adjusted Q2 2024 diluted earnings per share was $0.051. U.S. comparable sales were down 10 basis points, which was 20 basis points better than industry sales during the quarter, as measured by Black Box. The casual dining industry was softer than anticipated in the second quarter. While our comparable sales growth outpaced the industry, we did not meet our expectations. We are focused on navigating the difficult near-term industry headwinds, as well as setting up Outback for long-term success. These near-term challenges, coupled with our Q2 results, are leading us to update our full-year guidance. Michael will go into more detail in a few minutes.