After yesterday’s market close, Wendy’s largest shareholder — Trian Fund Management LP, which owns about 19% of WEN — disclosed that it may seek to acquire Wendy’s. That news has sent up shares of WEN by about +11% in today’s regular trading session, as of this writing. Should investors buy more stock in WEN, in this context?
Recently, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King (owned by Restaurant Brands International [QSR; Not Rated]) all reported their Q1 2022 U.S. same-store sales. In this report, we discuss how these same-store sales results — and potential results for full-year 2022 — relate to these three concepts’ average unit volumes (AUVs). We further discuss what this means for the companies, and their stocks.
Yesterday, we published a report examining 12 full-service restaurant stocks, in the context of their five-year highs and five-year lows. That report is available at:
We looked at 12 full-service restaurant stocks, and examined: (1) how far below they have fallen their five-year highs, and (2) how far they’d have to fall to equal their five-year lows. Our thinking is that the stocks that are most below the five-year highs, and simultaneously would have less to fall to get back to their five-year lows, might be best-positioned for meaningful outperformance should the general stock market recover.
Kalinowski Equity Research invites institutional investors to participate in our latest “Ask the Experts” video call, to take place on Thursday, June 16th starting at 2:00 PM Eastern time. The featured speaker will be Wendy’s CFO Gunther Plosch. If you are interested in joining the call, please e-mail caroline@analysthub.com or your sales contact.
Data out today from the U.S. Census shows that restaurants’ market share (with grocery stores making up the other component) was 54.9% in April 2022. This is a year-over-year improvement of +260 basis points from the April 2021 number of 52.3%. Even more impressively, as best as we can tell, this 54.9% market share figure for April 2022 is an all-time monthly high for the U.S. restaurant industry.