(Reuters) – Domino’s Pizza Inc missed Wall Street estimates for quarterly U.S. same-store sales on Thursday, as the fast-food chain struggled to bring in revenue due to a broader reopening of dine-in restaurants and labor shortages.
The company’s shares were down 8% in premarket trading.
U.S. restaurants have in recent months struggled to keep their workers from leaving for higher-paying jobs, with Domino’s even offering consumers a $3 coupon code for picking up their own online orders due to a labor shortage during the quarter.
“We faced a number of headwinds during the first quarter … we expect some of these headwinds are likely to persist further into 2022,” Domino’s Chief Executive Officer Ritch Allison said in a statement.
Net income fell to around $91 million, or $2.50 per share, in the first quarter, from $117.8 million, or $3 per share, a year earlier.
The world’s largest pizza chain said U.S. same-store sales decreased 3.6%, while analysts polled by Refinitiv on average had expected a 0.6% decline.
(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
