Monday February 8, 2021, 14:57:00
By Ryan D. Lavender
With this note, we change our rating on Denny’s (DENN; $17.41) to Neutral (from Buy). This change reflects: (1) lowered EPS estimates for 2021E and 2022E, and (2) a reduced same-store sales forecast for Q1E 2021, despite what appears to be some meaningful help from a calendar-shift effect related to Denny’s 2020 being a 53-week fiscal year, and (3) being mindful of DENN shares’ run-up from their 52-week low of $4.50 (intraday March 19, 2020) to $17.41 as of this past Friday’s market close. (FYI, the stock is also up +18.6% year-to-date.)
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Monday January 4, 2021, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
Given greater-than-expected deceleration in same-store sales trends for the U.S. family dining sector during December, we reduce our Q4E Denny’s U.S. same-store sales projection by -400 basis points, to -32.0%. According to Consensus Metrix data, this places us as the low estimate on the sell-side in this regard. As of this writing, sell-side consensus is at -23.9%.
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Monday December 14, 2020, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
About six months ago, we published a report examining market-share opportunities within the family dining sector. In this report, we update our numbers. One of the important changes is that we now look for 10%-25% of the family dining restaurants in the U.S. that were in operation as of the start of 2020 to be closed permanently by the end of March 2021. (Previously, we were looking for 5%-10% of family dining restaurants to be closed permanently by the end of December 2020.) Keep in mind that we expect these closures to be heavily weighted toward independents/momand-pops and, to a somewhat lesser degree, smaller (privately-held in nearly all cases) restaurant chains.
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