WEN Updating Our Rating on Wendy’s
By Mark Kalinowski
Published on May 13, 2020 at 12:00 AM
With this report, we change our rating on the shares of Wendy’s (WEN) to Neutral (from Buy). Our ratings change largely reflects two factors: (1) a possible slowdown in U.S. same-store sales momentum given recent media attention about alleged beef shortages at Wendy’s, and (2) the stock’s rise from $7.47 as of the March 13th market close to $20.78 as of yesterday’s (May 13th’s) market close. Shares of WEN have also outperformed the S&P 500 by 5-6 percentage points year-to-date, despite being in what is arguably one of the more challenged industries in a COVID-19 world.