SAN FRANCISCO, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Starbucks' same-store sales in China grew 6 percent in the third quarter (Q3) of 2019, the U.S. coffee chain said on Thursday.
The Seattle-based company said that its net revenues in China-Asia Pacific market rose 9 percent year-on-year in the Q3 to hit 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, which was mainly driven by 994 net new store openings over the past 12 months.
"Nearly one-third of net new store openings were in China and 48 percent were in other international markets," said the company.
In Q3 ending June 30, Starbucks opened 442 net new stores, up 7 percent over the previous year. Its same-store sales in the United States grew 7 percent, together with the result in China, pushing up its global same-store sales by 6 percent.
"Our two targeted long-term growth markets, the U.S. and China, performed extremely well across a number of measures as a result of our focus on enhancing the customer experience, driving new beverage innovation and accelerating the expansion of our digital customer relationships," said Starbucks CEO and President Kevin Johnson.
Starbucks said its net earnings jumped 61 percent to about 1.4 billion dollars while gross revenue is 6.8 billion dollars, up 8.1 percent year-on-year.
The strong quarterly performance made Starbucks raise its full-year forecast for earnings and revenue, while expecting global same-store sales to increase 4 percent, with 2,000 more new stores to be opened globally.
Starbucks now has 2,900 stores that offer delivery services in 80 Chinese cities. It aims to bring the number to over 3,000 stores by the end of the 2019 fiscal year.
