Panera Bread Co.’s third-quarter profit climbed more than 26.5 percent on strong same-store sales growth, the company said Tuesday.
The 1,504-unit St. Louis, Mo.-based bakery-café chain reported net income of $28.8 million, or 97 cents per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 27 up from $22.8 million, or 75 cents per share, during the same period last year.
Revenue in the quarter rose 21.8 percent to $453.1 million from $372 million in the year-ago quarter.
Same-store sales were up 6 percent at company-owned units and 3.1 percent at franchised stores for a systemwide same-store sales increase of 4.4 percent over the year-ago period.
“We have now been able to grow our earnings per share at a rate of 20-plus percent for 13 out of the last 14 quarters,” said Bill Moreton, Panera Bread’s chief executive, in a statement. “We continue to believe that our consistent performance has been driven by the investments that we have made in the quality of our food, people and customer experience to drive competitive differentiation.”
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Moreton offered guidance of earnings growth in the range of 15 percent to 20 percent in fiscal 2012.
Panera said it opened eight new bakery cafes in the third quarter. The company also completed the purchase of five Paradise Bakery & Café bakery-cafes from an Indiana franchisee and terminated, through mutual agreement, franchisee agreements for 13 franchise-operated Paradise bakery-cafes in the Denver and Portland markets.
Those acquisitions, the company said, “are part of a strategic effort to standardize the Paradise system.”
Panera also reported that average weekly sales for its new company-owned units year-to-date through the third quarter of fiscal 2011 was $41,470 compared with $40,950 in the same period of 2010. The average weekly sales for new franchisee-operated units year-to-date through the third quarter was $41,864 compared with $37,719 in the same period a year ago.
Panera Bread Co. owns and franchises the Panera Bread, Saint Louis Bread Co. and Paradise Bakery & Café brands.
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