WEN: How Does Wendy’s Stock Trade Heading Into, and During, Earnings?

By Ryan D. Lavender Published on February 17, 2021 at 4:47 PM

Wendy’s plans to release its Q4 2020 earnings before the market open on Wednesday, March 3rd. How do WEN shares tend to trade heading into earnings, and on the day of an earnings release?

Read More

DENN (Post-Call): U.S. Same-Store Sales -25% for First Two Weeks of February

By Ryan D. Lavender Published on February 16, 2021 at 5:03 PM

After today’s (Tuesday’s) market close, Denny’s reported adjusted Q4 EPS of -$0.05, lower than our +$0.01 projection and sell-side consensus (according to Consensus Metrix) of -$0.04. Relative to our model, we attribute the Q4 EPS shortfall primarily to Payroll and Benefits/Company Restaurant Sales (44.4% actual vs. 41.5% projected).

Read More

Look to Popeyes to Learn about Domino’s and Papa John’s (Updated)

By Ryan D. Lavender Published on February 16, 2021 at 4:59 PM

In December, we published a report — “Look to Popeyes to Learn about Domino’s and Papa John’s” — in which we noted that Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen would lap highly challenging same-store sales comparisons before Domino’s and Papa John’s would, and how Popeyes performed might have some lessons for these pizza players. Since then, Popeyes’ parent company Restaurant Brands International (QSR; Not Rated) reported that Popeyes’ Q4 2020 U.S. same-store sales declined by -6.4%. This, of course, lapped Popeyes’ Q4 2019 U.S. same-store sales advance of +37.9% — the best quarter for any publicly-traded restaurant concept of meaningful size of which we are aware.

Read More