Starbucks Tops Q3 Forecasts

Seattle-based Starbucks separately said its board had authorized the buy back of an additional 50 million shares under its ongoing stock repurchase program. Johnson confirmed that the company is now in over 1,700 stores in over 90 cities in mainland China, with the entire APAC region in excess of 5,200 stores. Excluding some items, profit was 42 cents a share. The coffee company reported $0.42 EPS for the quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of $0.41 .41 by $0.01. Analysts polled by Consensus Metrix had expected a rise of 6.3 percent. In the same period a year ago, the company reported EPS of $0.34 .34 on revenues of $4.15 billion.

Starbucks shares are now gaining 4.40% in after hours trading after closing the day’s regular trading session at $56.56, down 13 cents. The 52-week low of the share price is $35.385.

Same-store sales jumped a bigger-than-expected 8 percent in the Americas unit for the fiscal third quarter ended June 28. However, EMEA revenues fell 9% to $294.7 million mainly due to unfavorable foreign currency translation and the shift in the portfolio towards more licensed stores.

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) witnessed a decline in the market cap on Tuesday as its shares dropped 0.02% or 0.01 points.

During the quarter, its comparable store customer transactions climbed around 18 million year-over-year in the U.S. and over 23 million globally.

‘Starbucks very strong year over year financial performance in Q3 demonstrates our commitment to delivering best in class financial and operating results while at the same time investing in our future growth – building new stores, renovating existing stores, deploying new technology – investing in our partners and delivering an elevated Starbucks Experience to our customers, ‘ Starbucks CFO Scott Maw said in a statement. The company has a market cap of $84,278 million and there are 1,499,600,000 shares in outstanding. Analysts at RBC Capital reiterated an outperform rating and set a $60.00 price target (up previously from $55.00) on shares of Starbucks in a research note on Thursday, July 16th. Starbucks also said that revenue would grow by 16% to 18% this year, and now expect earnings per share of $1.57 to $1.58, in line with forecasts for $1.57.