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Cheesecake Factory (CAKE)
MarK Kalinowski

CAKE: How Does Cheesecake Factory Trade Heading Into, and After, Earnings?

The Cheesecake Factory likely will release its Q1 2021 earnings in late April or early May. How do CAKE shares tend to trade heading into earnings, and the day after an earnings release? To answer those questions, we compiled data for the 24 prior earnings releases from The Cheesecake Factory, examining the stock’s absolute performance, and performance relative to the S&P 500, for two time periods: (1) the week ahead of the scheduled earnings release,

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March 17, 2021 No Comments
McDonald's Corp (MCD)
MarK Kalinowski

MCD: The Bull and Bear Cases on McDonald’s

In this report we examine the bull and bear cases regarding McDonald’s (MCD; Buy, $220.46). While we maintain our Buy rating on MCD — it continues to be our top large-cap restaurant-stock pick — it is good for investors interested in MCD to be aware of the bull and bear cases surrounding the stock, no matter what our rating on the shares is. Key parts of the bullish point of view are: (1) benefits from

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March 16, 2021 No Comments
Restaurant Industry
MarK Kalinowski

Restaurants: Key Info for Accurately Calculating Two-Year Same-Store Sales

Normally, when looking at two-year same-store sales trends, the magnitude of the numbers involved is so low that the two-year rate is calculated by just adding the two years together. The “errors” this simple method produces are negligible. For example, a concept that generates +5.0% same-store sales in the year-ago period, and -5.0% same-store sales in the current period, would have a simple-method two-year number of 0.0%. But the actual math works out to a

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March 15, 2021 No Comments
Restaurant Industry
MarK Kalinowski

Restaurants: BlackBox Index for Feb. 2021 Could be Last Negative for a While

Earlier today (Thursday, March 11th), we learned that the BlackBox Index of samestore sales for February 2021 was down by -12.6%, with same-store traffic off by -19.1%. The -12.6% figure is 770 basis points sequentially worse than the January 2021 index number of -4.9%. We expect March 2021 will fare much better. The index was up a modest +0.3% in February 2020, only to be followed by steep declines of -28.3% in March 2020 and

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March 11, 2021 No Comments
YUM! Brands Inc. (YUM)
MarK Kalinowski

YUM: What Concept Could Yum Acquire Next?

On January 6, 2020, Yum Brands announced its plan to acquire The Habit Burger Grill, which as of full-year 2019 was the 17th-largest burger concept in the U.S. (in terms of domestic systemwide sales, at $450+ million), and in the top 100 overall. The Habit Burger Grill is meaningfully smaller than Yum’s core brands of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut. As such, the acquisition of Habit (which closed on March 18, 2020) suggests that:

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March 9, 2021 No Comments
Restaurant Industry
MarK Kalinowski

Which Restaurant Stocks are Most Below their 52-Week Highs?

Sometimes, relative bargains can be unearthed when looking at a group of stocks, and comparing their current prices with these stocks’ 52-week highs. For example, many full-service restaurant stocks were -50% or more below their 52-week highs as of late March 2020, and in hindsight, this proved to be a great time to load up on many full-service restaurant stocks. But what about today? Bottom line: there (generally) may be more of an opportunity over

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March 8, 2021 No Comments