Papa John's is set to report second-quarter earnings after the markets close Tuesday, but investors won't be paying much attention to its profits.

They're waiting to see how much damage the company has sustained following a very public and nasty feud with founder John Schnatter that started last month. Shares are down more than 17 percent since he was forced to give up his post as chairman July 11 after admitting to using a racially charged slur on a conference call in May.

The board of directors stripped Schnatter's image off the company's marketing materials and barred him from using his office at the company's Louisville, Kentucky, headquarters. Schnatter shot back with a lawsuit, accusing the board of acting negligently and staging a possible coup to get rid of him. The brouhaha, which exploded after the quarter closed June 30, won't affect second-quarter earnings. But franchise owners say pizza sales and foot traffic have fallen off a cliff since then, focusing investor attention squarely on what to expect in the future.

"Second-quarter results are largely an afterthought at this point, we expect the focus for all participants will be sales trends in the initial weeks of ... (July) as investors gauge how bad near-term sales declines could be," Peter Saleh, analyst at BTIG, wrote in a research note Monday.

However, the company's woes started long before Papa John's was locked in a bitter battle with its founder.

Since hitting an all-time high of $90.49 per share in December 2016, Papa John's stock has lost more than half its value on disappointing same-store sales growth that executives blamed on everything from increased competition with other pizza chains to the National Football League's handling of player protests during performances of the national anthem last fall.

Sales growth at stores open for at least a year was strong in 2016, peaking during the third quarter. But that growth started to slip by the fourth quarter of that year and has progressively gotten worse. By the fourth quarter of 2017, same-store sales turned negative and have continued to decline.