ahead of starbucks corp’s thirdquarter results on tuesday wall street was worried about a slowdown in us sales trends during the coffee chain’s earnings call executives spent a lot of time insisting they still had plenty of levers to pull to ensure there wouldn’t be one among them cold coffee drinks which made up 75 of us beverage sales during the quarter more customizable beverages which made up more than 60 of drink orders during the quarter more frequent food orders with drinks with two out of every five customers tacking on food to their order new stores in smaller cities and new formats in larger ones with more digital menu boards to “sharpen personalization” in the years ahead its loyalty program which has kept customers returning more frequently new equipment like handheld coldfoam blenders and new drinks like coldpressed cold brew which is being tested and set for rollout across us companyowned stores by the end of the next fiscal year laxman narasimhan starbucks’ sbux new chief executive also said baristas were staying at their jobs for longer and productivity was improving helping profitability after the coffee chain poured a lot of money into employee wages and benefits efforts starbucks’ unionized employees have said wouldn’t have happened without their demands for better pay and protections narasimhan said items sold per hour had improved and he said barista takehome pay had increased by 20 year over year with more improvements on the way “through scheduling and staffing improvements we are beginning to increase the number of hours per partner instore critical to running great stores and improving partner engagement while also improving productivity” he said still thirdquarter samestore sales in north america disappointed investors they rose 7 while consensus metrix had forecast an 82 gain the company also narrowed its pershare profit range for the fiscal year but it held to its fullyear global samestore sales landing toward the high end of a forecast for a 7 to 9 gain shares were up 25 on wednesday after slipping after hours initially on tuesday following the results analysts still found things to like after the results higher productivity and higher prices helped boost margins during the quarter and samestore sales made a big rebound in china starbucks executives last year said they still had room to keep prices high and room to coast on cold customizable beverages and younger consumers but even then analysts wondered whether the company’s financial targets including for samestore sales were too ambitious and after tuesday’s results analysts weren’t exactly convinced by the company’s forecasts bofa analysts in a note on tuesday said the “key controversy” from starbucks’ results was the sustainability of north america’s samestore sales trends cfra analyst siye desta cited “the risk of subdued revenue and margin growth” btig analyst peter saleh in a research note on wednesday echoed those sentiments “pricing is moderating and traffic is more difficult to come by leading investors to increasingly doubt the 79 longterm comp guidance” he said “we expect management to provide more details around their longterm algorithm in november and believe unit development could accelerate modestly placing less pressure on comps to achieve the topline growth targets” he also suggested that a bit more pessimism from the company could help “as strange as it may sound we believe a lowering of the samestore sales bar could attract more investors to the stock as many believe the current hurdle is just too high” he said