Earlier today (Thursday, April 15th), we learned that the BlackBox Index of samestore sales for March 2021 — importantly, these data points are on a two-year basis — was up by +1.8%, with two-year traffic off by -9.4%.
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).
In our April 8th report “Tidbits re: Burger-Sector Same-Store Sales Trends, and SBUX,” we noted that “With March 2019 now in the rear-view mirror, we are pleasantly surprised that this month appears to have turned out very well for burger-sector same-store sales. In fact, based on our proprietary, data-driven checks, the midsingle digit number put up by U.S. quick-service burger chains for March 2019 looks like the best month in this regard since February 2016, for which some concepts (depending on their accounting methodologies) were helped by that month’s extra Leap Day.”