Papa John's closed out a tough year on a weak note but said it expects improvement in 2019.
The Louisville, Kentucky-based pizza chain said sales at established locations in North America dropped 8 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period a year ago. International same-store sales were down 3 percent.
But Papa John's said Tuesday it's confident it can stem those losses this year with new products and new leadership. It expects same-store sales will be down 1 to 5 percent in North America this year and flat to positive 3 percent internationally.
Papa John's is trying to turn things around after a difficult year that saw its founder, John Schnatter, resign as chairman after using a racial slur during a company conference call. Schnatter had resigned as CEO in 2017 after he blamed weak pizza sales on the NFL player protests.
In the fourth quarter, Papa John's lost $14 million, or 44 cents per share. That was down from an 81-cent profit in the October-December period a year ago.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned 15 cents per share. That fell short of Wall Street's forecast of 17 cents, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
Trucking firm adds 610 Tennessee jobs
JNJ Express announced Tuesday it will invest $83.6 million to expand its operations in Memphis and add 610 jobs over the next five years as it establishes a new corporate headquarters and operations campus in Southeast Memphis.
JNJ, a family-owned and operated company that specializes in transportation and logistics services. currently has 290 employees in the Memphis area. The company's new campus will consolidate its headquarters and include human relations, accounting, information technology, marketing and other corporate functions. JNJ will also construct a second building for its operations division, which will include distribution, maintenance and transportation functions.
"We pride ourselves in being the best carrier in the Mid-South, and this new facility continues our commitment not only to excellence but to this region," said John Ennis Jr., the CEO of JNJ.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said the development "will revitalize a retail site that has been vacant for a long time, and it will jump start the surrounding area, leading to what we hope will be even more investments in the months ahead."
Tennessee studied for rural broadband
Tennessee is among eight states that will be included in a new study of broadband access announced Tuesday by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration project to expand and update the speed of internet connections to millions of American homes and businesses.
According to the FCC's 2018 broadband deployment report, 23 percent of rural Tennesseans lack access to high speed internet.
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and former chair of the House subcommittee on Communications and Technology, said including the Volunteer State in the study "will give us a clear and complete picture of broadband availability in our state.
"Closing Tennessee's digital divide is absolutely imperative," Blackburn said. "With this new data, we can continue to work to ensure that underserved rural communities in Tennessee can access the broadband service they need."
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 directed NTIA to update the national broadband availability map and NTIA Administrator David Redl said the study "will help policymakers around the country make better decisions as they devise broadband expansion plans."
TVA wants change in 2017 NRC order
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has scheduled a public meeting for next Wednesday at the request of the Tennessee Valley Authority, to discuss proposed changes to NRC orders issued in 2009 and 2017 in response to what regulators said was a "chilled" work environment at TVA's nuclear plants.
The NRC Order issued in 2017 contained a list of corrective actions agreed upon by TVA officials to address the work environment issues at Browns Ferry in Alabama, and Sequoyah and Watts Bar in Tennessee. The NRC ordered the TVA actions after inspections over the previous three years had found that TVA failed to properly implement a process to ensure that adverse employment actions at the Watts Bar plant complied with employee protection regulations and that the actions would not negatively impact the safety conscious work environment.
The meeting to discuss the status of NRC's orders is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., March 6 in Classroom 4A at the NRC Technical Training Center, located in the Osborne Office Center, 5746 Marlin Road, in Chattanooga.