DIN Holy Cannoli (Pancakes) What We See Ahead of the Q1 Earnings Release

By Mark Kalinowski Published on April 23, 2019 at 12:00 AM

Ahead of Dine Brands’ (DIN; Buy) first-quarter earnings release — scheduled for before the market open on Wednesday, May 1st — we lower our Q1E same-store sales forecast for IHOP by 50 basis points, to +2.5%. While a number at or near +2.5% would clearly still be good enough to outpace the family-dining sector average (including both publicly-traded and privately-held concepts), we are concerned about sector trends, and the possibility that this hints at a lack of near-term upside for IHOP in Q1. (FYI, our full-year 2019E and 2020E EPS projections of $7.05 and $8.65, respectively, remain unchanged with this report; please keep in mind that 2020 will benefit from an extra, 53rd week.)

Updating our Q1E19 Kalinowski Family Dining Index

By Mark Kalinowski Published on April 4, 2019 at 12:00 AM

With this report, we update our data-driven Kalinowski Family Dining Index for Q1E to +2.2% (down from +2.8% previously). Our updated figure is based on our latest proprietary checks/data as regards same-store sales performance for this segment during the second half of February 2019 and all of March 2019.

DENN INITIATING COVERAGE ON DENNY’S WITH A RATHING OF …

By Mark Kalinowski Published on April 3, 2019 at 12:00 AM

We initiate coverage of Denny’s (DENN) with a Neutral rating. At present, we do not view the multiple opportunities and positives of the company (and its stock) as enough to overcome the concerns and risks that we have. Amongst those risks are: (1) the possibility that sell-side consensus EPS for 2019 is too high as of this writing, (2) a likely lack of possible upside to current Street expectations as regards U.S. same-store sales, and (3) some fast-expanding family-dining chain competition. As with each of our Neutral-rated stocks, our target price for DENN is NA (not applicable). We note the following:
NEW YORK CITY NON-DEAL ROADSHOW PLANNED FOR THURSDAY, JUNE 20TH