Noodles & Company (NASDAQ:NDLS) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 7, 2024 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Drew Madsen - Chief Executive Officer
Mike Hynes - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jake Bartlett - Truist Securities
Todd Brooks - The Benchmark Company

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to today's Noodles and Company's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are now in a listen-only mode. After the presenters' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

I would now like to introduce Noodles & Company's Chief Financial Officer, Mike Hynes.

Mike Hynes

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Here with me this afternoon is Drew Madsen, our Chief Executive Officer. I'd like to start by going over a few regulatory matters. During the call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company.

Any such items should be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are only projections and actual events or results could differ from those projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those referred to in this afternoon's news release and the cautionary statement in the company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and the subsequent filings with the SEC.

During the call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our second quarter 2024 earnings release.

To the extent that the company provides guidance, it does so only on a non-GAAP basis and does not provide reconciliations of forward-looking non-GAAP measures. Quantitative reconciling information for these measures is unavailable without unreasonable efforts.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Drew Madsen, our Chief Executive Officer.

Drew Madsen

Thanks, Mike and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased that we were able to deliver positive system-wide same-store sales growth of 2% during the quarter and matched the fast casual industry benchmark on both same-store sales and traffic despite the challenging consumer environment.

We also improved our restaurant contribution margin by 70 basis points, compared to 2023 aided by strong cost management. More importantly, we continue to make meaningful progress on our five key priorities to achieve sustained profitable growth and drive long-term shareholder value. Although the current operating environment may cause some variability in our near-term results, we are focused on what we can most directly impact and continuing to position Noodles to capture the significant growth opportunity we believe it has long term.