Burger King Holdings Inc. announced on Monday a growth of 23 percent of its fiscal first-quarter helped by the promotions to “Transformers” and the “Simpsons” movies and its new chicken sandwiches.

Being the second largest hamburger chain in the world, after McDonald’s Corp, the company based in Miami reported for the quarter that ended on September 30 an income of $49 million, that’s 36 cents a share, in comparison with the $40 million from last year.

According to a poll by Thomson Financial analysts were expecting 33 cents per share at a profit of $597.1 million.

The profit from this quarter increased 10 percent to $602 million with a sales growth of 5.9 percent world wide and a 6.6 percent in the U.S. and Canada.

This is the 15^th consecutive quarter in which Burger King is recording positive sales world wide.

Because of the marketing campaigns with “The Simpsons Movie” and “Transformers” in the U.S. the sales of the Ultimate DoubleWhopper sandwich rose.

According to the chief executive John Chidsey the company did well in the TenderCrisp and Spicy Chick’N Crisp sandwiches also.

He said: “Our business momentum continues, as evidenced by strong worldwide quarter over quarter growth. Our evolving menu architecture and the worldwide strength of our marketing alliances drove significant revenue increases,” Associated Press quoted.

The average restaurant sales topped for the first time the $1.2 million threshold. It reported an increase of 7 percent to $1.22 million, from the $1.14 million it reported last year in the same period.

In the first quarter Burger King paid 6.25 cents per share as a cash dividend and bought through the repurchase program, 252,000 shares.

In the past year the company and its franchisees opened 440 restaurants and is expected a net restaurant growth in fiscal 2008.

Burger King has 11,290 restaurants worldwide and 90 percent of them are owned and operated by franchisees.