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

By Ryan D. Lavender Published on March 15, 2021 at 4:31 PM

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 two-year figure of -0.3%, because the base in the current period is +5.0% larger than what it was in the year-ago period.

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DIN: How Does Dine Brands’ Stock Trade Heading Into, and During, Earnings?

By Ryan D. Lavender Published on February 23, 2021 at 6:12 PM

Dine Brands plans to release its Q4 2020 earnings before the market open on Tuesday, March 2nd. How do DIN shares tend to trade heading into earnings, and on the day of an earnings release?

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DIN: Updating Our Forecasts Ahead of March 2nd Earnings Release

By Ryan D. Lavender Published on February 22, 2021 at 4:41 PM

Dine Brands plans to release its Q4 2020 earnings before the market open on Tuesday, March 2nd. As regards Q4E, we retain our IHOP U.S. same-store sales forecast of -30.0%, but we reduce our Applebee’s U.S. same-store sales projection by -200 basis points, to -7.5%. Dine Brands has previously announced that for the first four weeks of Q4E, IHOP’s same-store sales declined by -24.0%, while Applebee’s same-store sales decreased by -1.9%. Our updated Q4E projections incorporate implicit same-store sales assumptions for the remaining weeks of that quarter of -10% (or so) for Applebee’s and -33% (or so) for IHOP. As a result of all this, our Q4E EPS projection goes down by -2 cents, to $0.68. Our full-year 2020E EPS estimate also goes down by -2 cents (to $2.06).

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