CBRL
#Good morning.
Yes.
We have said that we anticipate going forward that our regular quarterly dividend, which currently has a payout ratio in the low 60% range, would be growing roughly in line with the long-term growth of our earnings per share.
Concern about raising our regular dividend much further is that there tends to come a point where your dividend payout ratio gets that it's difficult to convince the market that it's sustainable, and we are mindful of not getting it to that point.
As far as the opportunity to repurchase shares, as long as we have a 19.9% shareholder and we have a shareholder rights plan with a 20% threshold, and I'll remind everyone that our shareholders overwhelmingly approved a shareholder rights plan with a 20% threshold, the view that we have is that we need to find alternatives to share repurchases to return capital to shareholders, which is the reason for our first special dividend that we announced this morning.
Yes.
Stephen, it's difficult to comment at this stage about what our actuarial experience may be as we move forward.
We had until the end of the 2014 calendar year, and it is important to emphasize here that it's a calendar year which is relevant for our benefits plans not our fiscal year, through the 2014 year we had an employee healthcare plan that was insured by a major insurance company, but that had a retroactive adjustment feature.
We have gotten the benefit of the positive claims experience in the 2014 calendar year in the form of those retroactive adjustments, some of which occurred in FY14, most of which are occurring in FY15.
As we go forward, we have now in compliance with the Affordable Care Act, have a self-insured plan that tends to have higher deductibles than the 2014 plan did.
So it is still relatively early to assess what the likely claims experience is going to be and the implication that that might have on next year's plan.
Thank you.
The dining room management is not contributing at all to that yet.
So we are in the process of rolling it out.
I think there is about half the chain maybe in the process of installing it.
We should be largely done by the end of the fiscal year, and then there'll be ---+ they'll have to understand how to use it.
I do anticipate a future labor savings tied to that initiative.
Bob, a couple of things there.
We have historically used our five menu promotions a year for the purpose of providing something new for our core customers and something different for our occasional customers.
From a financial standpoint, we have always targeted our promotions to be gross margin neutral on a dollar basis, not a percentage basis.
Now since the promotional items tend to have a higher menu price, at a constant dollar margin it means that they tend to have a lower percentage margin, which is the reason why we have reported for at least each of the quarters of 2015 a relatively high mix benefit in our comp store sales.
But you've not necessarily seen that in our restaurant food margin.
As a percentage.
Yes.
And the ribs at a $11.99 ---+ I'm sorry, at a $10.99 price point are a compelling value as compared to what some full-service restaurant companies are offering ribs for.
Again, we expect it to be gross margin dollar neutral, which means it may from a percentage standpoint ---+ from a margin standpoint be slightly negative.
Go ahead, <UNK>.
It's <UNK> <UNK>, yes.
It is half of slab.
St.
Louis style.
Yes.
Thank you, Bob.
The store is nearing completion of construction.
It is in Morganton, North Carolina and we expect to open on June 22.
I'm pleased with the way the construction progress is going.
And we're really excited about the learnings that are going to come from the new design.
That will give us an opportunity to improve new stores going forward, but it will also allow us to begin to understand better potential retrofit opportunities.
Well, thank you all for joining us today.
As we head into the final quarter of the year, I'm pleased with the sustained progress we're making on our strategic priorities and with the momentum we are carrying.
We remain well-positioned with a strong brand, talented management team and more than 70,000 engaged employees committed to providing a great guest experience.
We appreciate your interest and support.
Thank you.
