Sonic Falls Heavily But CEO Thinks The Company Is 'On A Good Path' And 'Will Continue To Grow Handsomely'

Sonic Corporation SONC declared better than expected third-quarter results post the market closing on Monday. The company reported EPS of $0.38 on revenue of $164.17 million, while analysts had estimated it to report EPS of $0.37 on revenue of $163.36 million. Although the results were good, the same store sales growth at 6.1 percent were a disappointment when compared to over 11 percent increase last quarter. Moreover the company's full year guidance also fell short of analysts' expectations.

J.Clifford Hudson, Sonic Corp. chairman & CEO, was on CNBC Tuesday to weigh in on the results.

Momentary Noise

"We had talked about earnings per share being up 15 to 20 percent on an adjusted basis, [had] some onetime benefit from tax treatment and in fact we are up 20 percent," Hudson began. "Our comp store sales on the quarter were 6.1 percent. So, there's a little noise that related to where company's stores are strong while we get some weather in Texas, Oklahoma that pulled back on company's stores a little bit."

"But strong comps. 14 consecutive months of record average unit volume for our stores across our system - 44 states, $4 billion annual sales. So, good momentum in the business. But there is some kind of momentary noise about flow through, about same store sales, about store openings."

He continued, "But the fact is our business is continuing very nicely with store openings, same store sales, good profit at the average store. So little bit momentary, we are on a good path and we will continue to grow very handsomely, I think."