Unlock stock picks and a broker-level newsfeed that powers Wall Street.

Q2 2025 Kura Sushi USA Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Benjamin Porten; SVP, IR & Business Development; Kura Sushi USA Inc

Hajime Uba; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Kura Sushi USA Inc

Jeffrey Uttz; Chief Financial Officer; Kura Sushi USA Inc

Andrew Charles; Analyst; TD Cowen

Jeffrey Bernstein; Analyst; Barclays Inc

Jeremy Hamblin; Analyst; Craig-Hallum

Matthew Curtis; Analyst; William Blair

Mark Smith; Analyst; Lake Street Capital

John-Paul Wollam; Analyst; ROTH Capital Partners

Todd Brooks; Analyst; Benchmark Company

Jim Sanderson; Analyst; Northcoast Research

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kura Sushi Fiscal second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this call is being recorded. On the call today, we have Hajime Jimmy Uba, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jeffrey Uttz, Chief Financial Officer; and Benjamin Porten, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and System Development.
And now I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Porten. Thank you. You may begin.

Benjamin Porten

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining. By now, everyone should have access to our fiscal second quarter 2025 earnings release. It can be found at www.kurasushi.com in the Investor Relations section. A copy of the earnings release has also been included in the 8-K we submitted to the SEC.
Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees 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 --
We refer all of you to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. Also during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance.
The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared -- with GAAP and the reconciliations to comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings release. With that out of the way, I would like to turn the call over to Jimmy.

Hajime Uba

Thanks, Ben, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. We had a very productive second quarter, making headway on the new market opportunities represented by our success in takeoff bidding out our IP pipeline and beginning testing a rollout of several system projects that have long been in development. New restaurant openings are growing exceptionally similarly with 11 units opened to date and another six under construction. -- increment [weather] was unexpected to see pressure.
We are pleased overall this quarter due to the greater progress we made across our initiatives. Total sales for the fiscal second quarter was $64.9 million representing comparable sales growth of negative 5.3% with price and the mix of 3.3%, offset by negative traffic of 8.5%. We knew coming into the quarter that Q2 will be the most difficult comparison of the year due to the lapping of last year's successful Peanuts IP campaign without of IP collaboration at the current Q2. This was compounded by the unexpected weather impact we experienced in January and February with -- followed -- in Southern California and [cold waves] across many of our other markets.
Cumulatively, we estimate that Q2 weather represented a compelling of 400 to 500 basis points. Cost of goods sold as a percentage of sales included by 90 basis points over the prior year quarter due to pricing and supply chain initiatives. Labor as a percentage of sales increased by 180 basis points due to sales deleverage caused by weather and year-over-year labor inflation.
Restaurant level operating profit margin was 17.3%, an as compared to 19.6% in the prior year due to the previously mentioned sales deleverage. Restaurant openings are proceeding smoothly with three new unit openings during the second quarter -- subsequent to quarter end, we opened the units in Scottsdale, Arizona and lean with Washington state.
We are very pleased with the performance of this year's openings and believe fiscal has a potential to be one of our strongest [prices]. In our last call, we had the -- the success we've seen with our -- California Restaurant opening and put in the two levels up. Bakersfield is performing just as well as when we last spoke.
As a reminder, up until Bakersfield, we are only opened reference in the top 40 or 50 units. The Bakerfield is significant for us because it represents the -- largest DMA in the United States, causing us to devaluate our previous consolidation for why we constitute a viable market.
[Decent] visit to markets like [Farming Ham], Talpa, Boise and Oklahoma City, have all supported our early enthusiasm. Along with the greater -- potential, these markets are especially exciting to us as new markets have no impact on cancelizations which we estimate to be approximately 4% compared with the current and prior history. With the -- that development team is making, we believe that we will be able to return to a 50-50 split of new and existing markets by fiscal '20, which we believe is -- comp tailwind.
While the lack of IT collaboration in the prior quarter made for what we believe to be the most difficult year-over-year comparison in fiscal '25. This posed allowed us to focus our efforts on building a great pipeline, and I'm extremely pleased to say that in fiscal '26, we will not have any gaps between IP collaboration campaigns and expect to have seven or eight collaborations, which will be a record for us.
We will also have been developing our full focus on marketing muscles over the course of this fiscal year we are very much looking forward to seeing the combined impact of these campaigns and [IP] collaborations signing in May.
Lastly, I would like to touch on the progress we've made in system development. The -- of our new order panel software is proceeding smoothly, and we expect to roll out within the fiscal year. This new auto partner software is supplemented by ad designed push to --, which is much more intuitive than the current model.
This design is meaningful as our sales spend several mines explaining how the automatic model works when we're seeking first-time guests. The new -- software includes an optional introduction video for faster than guests, which in conjunction with the updated -- eliminates the need for our servers go through the interest explanation, which we expect will reduce from a house growth.
To coincide with our upcoming IT collaborations, we are loading out improvements to our [speakerphone] system as well. Guests will soon be able to on the second price capital after eating 25 [grades] instead of the current --. Considering our average party sizes and platform --, we believe that 25 -- is a more realistic -- than 30 plates --. This has the potential to rate growth while also improving guest satisfaction, especially families is turn. Finally, I would like to share our progress on what we are most excited about the reservation system.
We began testing in February and have since expanded into three restaurants including solid testing at one of our highest volume resets. The reservation feature has been very well received by guests and its system-wide rollout is now one of our top priorities due to its potential as a traffic driver.
With the old waters program, if you have fixed plants like going to see moving, Kura is off the table. Because you can't predict how long the line will be or when you [after fitting] will be. So by giving guest control through reservation --, our hope is to open up new occasions for guests to visit Kura.
Additionally, historical -- rates for Kura, Kura Guest in dine are between 20% to 25%. And so the ability to capture these guests represents a meaningful opportunity. While it's too early for us to provide any quantitative commentary, shoulder period of sales did increase with the implementation of the reservation system in curate panes. Lastly, reservations are access through the Reward program, and we are excited to see what the rollout that for members --. As you can see, we've been very hard at work.
Many of these efforts have been long in development, and it's been late to see so many projects to be approved one after another. I'm deeply grateful for the combined efforts of all of our team members for making this possible. Thank you, everyone. Jeff, I'll hand it over to you to discuss our financial results and liquidity.