What to look for when Starbucks (SBUX) reports its Q2 2025 earnings results

Shares of Starbucks Coffee Company (NASDAQ: SBUX) were up over 1% on Tuesday. The stock has dropped 16% over the past three months. The coffee chain is slated to report its earnings results for the second quarter of 2025 on Tuesday, April 25, after market close. Here’s a look at what to expect from the earnings report:

Revenue

Analysts are projecting revenue of $8.86 billion for Starbucks in Q2 2025, which implies a growth of over 3% from the same period a year ago. In the first quarter of 2025, revenues remained flat year-over-year at $9.4 billion.  

Earnings

The consensus target for earnings per share in Q2 2025 is $0.49, which compares to EPS of $0.68 reported in the year-ago period. In Q1 2025, EPS fell 23% YoY to $0.69.

Points to note

After facing a number of headwinds over the past few quarters, including traffic declines, Starbucks is focused on a turnaround of its business. For this, the company rolled out its Back to Starbucks strategy, which is seeing good progress.

As part of this strategy, Starbucks has been working on simplifying its menu, lowering the frequency of discount-driven offers, making changes to its pricing, and improving its digital capabilities. The company has also been investing in more benefits for its employees. Even though it has just been one quarter, these efforts are yielding positive responses.

In Q1 2025, SBUX saw an improvement in comp trends, driven by its Back to Starbucks initiatives. The coffee giant saw a pickup in Non-Starbucks Rewards customer traffic as well as Starbucks Rewards membership and spend. Some of these initiatives also helped bring back lapsed Starbucks Rewards members.

Although these investments will pressure margins in the near-term, they are anticipated to help drive long-term growth. Starbucks expects EPS to be the lowest in Q2 on an absolute basis due to seasonality, organizational restructuring, and elevated investments. EPS is expected to improve in the second half of fiscal year 2025 both sequentially and YoY.

Starbucks is also working on reshaping its store portfolio through renovations, new store builds and store closures. The company still sees potential to double its store count in the US alone. Overall, the benefits of these initiatives can be expected to continue in the second quarter albeit with some impact on margins.