Tuesday June 30, 2020, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
Wendy’s (WEN; Neutral, $21.66) is getting closer than ever to launching its loyalty program — apparently to be called “Wendy’s Rewards” — for U.S. guests. On Wendy’s May 6th conference call, CEO Todd Penegor stated that “As we have stressed before, frequency remains an opportunity for us. And it will be more important than ever, as normal routines resume in the months to come. We will be looking to our loyalty program to help us solve for this, and the team has been preparing diligently for a launch in the near future. We believe that we have built a loyalty program that people will love. And we could not be more excited to get this into the hands of our customers.”
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Monday June 8, 2020, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
After today’s market close, Wendy’s (WEN; Neutral, $22.65) published a business update, including a -1.9% U.S. same-store sales number for May 4-31, and noting that global same-store sales “for the last week of May turned positive in the low-single digit range.” This strongly suggests that U.S. same-store sales were positive the last week of May, as U.S. same-store sales have been running ahead of global same-store sales by roughly 130-140 basis points as of late.
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Wednesday May 13, 2020, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
With this report, we change our rating on the shares of Wendy’s (WEN) to Neutral (from Buy). Our ratings change largely reflects two factors: (1) a possible slowdown in U.S. same-store sales momentum given recent media attention about alleged beef shortages at Wendy’s, and (2) the stock’s rise from $7.47 as of the March 13th market close to $20.78 as of yesterday’s (May 13th’s) market close. Shares of WEN have also outperformed the S&P 500 by 5-6 percentage points year-to-date, despite being in what is arguably one of the more challenged industries in a COVID-19 world.
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