How Much Is Sysco Worth?

Sysco (NYSE: SYY) is practically the epitome of boring. The company distributes foodstuffs to hundreds of thousands of customers around the country so that those customers can chop, fry, cook, and put delicious meals in front of us when we go out to eat.
The company is a big dog in an even bigger industry, but it's neither a sexy industry nor one that promises scorching growth. On the flip side, though, Sysco's competitive position, scale, and industry make it a particularly safe and stable pick in a world where security seems to be AWOL. At the same time, Sysco's stock pays a none-too-shabby 3.6% dividend and has an enviable record of growing its payout.

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McDonald's executives cash in on soaring stock

Crain's) — McDonald’s Corp.’s CEO and other top executives netted nearly $26 million in stock option profits last week when they sold shares following the company’s strong third-quarter earnings report.

James Skinner, CEO of the Oak Brook-based fast-food chain, sold 235,000 shares at an average price of $78.43 for a profit of nearly $11.7 million. The sales were part of a “routine exercise of a group of stock options,” a McDonald’s spokeswoman said.

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Restaurant Operator Bravo Brio Announces Plan For $172.5M IPO

Bravo Brio Restaurant Group Inc. announced plans to sell up to an estimated $172.5 million of stock in an initial public offering, raising funds for debt repayment.

While some renewed market volatility in the past several months has made it tougher for some companies to complete the process, IPO filings have remained solid as companies and owners continue to see an opportunity to raise capital or cash in some of their investment.

Ohio-based Bravo Brio, which operates Italian restaurants under brands Bravo and Brio has been expanding in the past five years, adding 34 restaurants to put its store count at 83 as of March 28. In that time, revenue has grown at a compounded annual rate of 12% despite the several years of weakness seen in the restaurant industry.

But the company has been unprofitable, though the red ink narrowed notably last year. It had a first-quarter profit of $2.5 million on revenue of $81.8 million, compared with a prior-year loss of $1.3 million on revenue of $73.6 million. The company didn't provide same-store-sales data in its filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bravo Brio intends to apply for a stock listing on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol BBRG.

Baird and STR launch new hotel stock index

Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co. and Smith Travel Research Inc. (STR) have launched the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index, the first widely available U.S. hotel stock index in the financial industry. The index combines Baird’s knowledge of the financial markets with STR’s data processing.


“We believe this index can help hotel industry professionals monitor investment values and gauge interest in hotel investment broadly,” said David Loeb, managing director of Baird’s hotel research platform.

The newly launched Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index ended May at 1619.749, an 11.3-percent decrease for the month and a 17.4-percent increase for year-to-date 2010.

“It is surprising how frequently we in the industry have one view of the outlook while investors have an entirely different view,” said Randy Smith, CEO at STR. “For example, industry stocks began rebounding long before improvements in RevPAR became the norm. This index will provide one more variable in developing an improved model to better understand where the industry is going and how we get there.”

It's Time to Check Out of Hotel Stocks

GROWING OPTIMISM ABOUT A REVIVAL OF business and leisure travel has made Wall Street crazy for hotel stocks that investors abandoned in late 2008 and early 2009. Really crazy, based on the shares' valuation.

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California Pizza continues rally

On Wednesday, the casual dining chain lifted its third-quarter profit outlook. The company now expects to report earnings of 22 cents to 24 cents per share for the quarter, up from prior guidance of 19 cents to 21 cents per share.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast a profit of 23 cents per share for the quarter.

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http://www.ihgplc.com/index.asp?PageID=57&newsid=2360&rssfeed=ihgplc

LaSalle Hotel Properties (NYSE: LHO - News) is leading the Hotel REIT sector higher today after its balance sheet earned it a positive mention in Barron's. The newspaper noted that, while the stock has staged a 360% run since March, it may still have room to run. The report also highlighted the company's overweight presence in Washington, D.C., which helped it maintain occupancy during the recession.

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Hotel Stocks Set to Catch Swine Flu

Just in time for back to school, new swine flu fears have suddenly returned. And like the lingering infection itself, the H1N1 virus is one that just won't seem to go away.
In fact, according to a 68-page report released last week, about half of all Americans can look forward to a brush with the swine flu this winter, while 1.8 million will likely end up with a trip to the hospital from exposure.
That's the good news.

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Send This Restaurant Stock Back

At first blush, Burger King's (NYSE: BKC) fourth-quarter results look downright tasty. The company's earnings of $0.43 per share came in well ahead of analyst estimates of $0.33. The market's reaction to the news was, well, fit for a king. Burger King shares jumped more than 6% on the news.
On second thought When looking deeper into the report, however, Burger King's results didn't quite hit the spot. Sales trends remain dismal. Fourth-quarter sales fell 15.8% versus the year-ago quarter, and global same-store sales decreased 2.4%. Comps in its U.S. and Canadian restaurants were even worse with a decline of 4.5%.

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http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/2009/08/27/send-this-restaurant-stock-back.aspx

Buy or sell a hotel recovery?

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- With its focus on luxury hotels brands like the St. Regis and Westin, Starwood Hotels has been especially hurt by the downturn. The third largest U.S. hotel operator recently cut its 2009 earnings estimate, and CEO Frits van Paasschen expects a slow recovery.
Revenue per available room, the metric that reflects occupancy and the room rates hotels can charge, fell 34% in the last quarter at Starwood's North American hotels. Meanwhile, the company is cutting costs to make up for reduced bookings and selling some properties to raise cash. Yet its stock is up 190% since its March low of $9.52.

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http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/21/pf/starwood_stock_analysts.fortune/index.htm?section=money_latest

Restuarnt Stock Performance - Update

Updated stock performance as of Friday August 21, 2009

http://workspace.office.live.com/?id=pACQ1ZDcxYzM1MS01ZTc1LTRjMmMtYTEwOC1kNmE1NDYyMWM5YmMAe-ErNRhlSFNIk3-1-lgw21x9ACdlcmljLmhlcnRoYUBob3NwaXRhbGl0eWJ1c2luZXNzbmV3cy5jb20AABQ6jNJEgtTOoo12_fkSnyhkfWMtOAAA&cid=40

Chipotle Mexican Grill: Healthy Balance Sheet, Smoking Stock

CMG has become highly successful by offering fast service and high-quality Mexican food in a casual atmosphere. All dishes are prepared using fresh ingredients. The company emphasizes the use of raw ingredients that are raised without the use of animal byproducts, antibiotics or hormones, as well as produce that is grown using sustainable farming methods.

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/157866-chipotle-mexican-grill-healthy-balance-sheet-smoking-stock?source=yahoo

Morgans Hotel: A Zombie Company Bleeding Cash and Defaulting on Loans

Morgan Hotel Group (MHGC) “owns” several heavily mortgaged hotels, operates a few more, and is involved in several others as joint ventures. These properties are generally high end independent hotels, which is the single worst performing segment of the very weak lodging industry. In the most recent quarter, MHGC’s Revenue per Available Room plummeted 39.5%, by contrast for the overall hotel industry this metric was around -20%. MHGC’s hotels are suffering from severe double whammy: less overall travel and substitution from high-end to mid-priced and business class hotels

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/156544-morgans-hotel-a-zombie-company-bleeding-cash-and-defaulting-on-loans?source=yahoo

Weekly Restaurant Stock Update

Here is the link to the stock update:

Restaurant Stock Performance for the week ending August 7, 2009

Restaurant Stock Performance for the week ending August 7, 2009

By Eric Hertha
(August 8, 2009 – Hospitality Business News) For the week ending August 7 our list of restaurant stocks increased by 0.9%, bringing the year to date change to 67.3%. The top 10 stocks for the week increased in value by an average of 11.6% led buy a 33% increase in Morton’s.

During the week Morton’s announced quarterly earnings of $0.04 per share vs. the Analysts estimate of $0.03. Prior to this increase Morton’s had been up 36.2% for the year. This compares to an increase of 161.6%, year to date, at Ruth’s Chris. For the week Ruth’s was down by 7.9% on signs that July sales are still weak and comments by Analysts.

Caribou Coffee Company, which has 522 stores, posted earnings per share of $0.06 vs. the Analysts estimate of $0.00. The stock increased by 19.1% for the week and is up 408.8% for the year. Continuing with coffee, the number 4 stock for the week, Tim Horton’s, increased by 9.1% due to a good performance in the second quarter. Sales increased by 5% (constant dollars) while EPS rose by 5.6%. and Starbucks added 7.5% based on good earnings and recent news.

Number 3 for the week with a 14.8% increase was Wendys/Arbys Group. Up until this week the stock had been down on a year to date basis but the earnings for the second quarter sparked some interest. Wendy’s same store sales were flat but margins improved. While at Arbys the decline seems to have slowed somewhat from the first quarter.

On the other end of the list the bottom 10 stocks decreased by 8.7% for the week led by Good Times Restaurants with a decline of 12.5%.Other than the March 31 results, which were not encouraging, I have not seen any other news stories.

Number nine was O’Charley’s with a decrease of 11.9% for the week The company reported their second quarter results and same-store sales for the second quarter of 2009 declined 6.9 percent at O'Charley's company-operated restaurants, 10.0 percent at Ninety Nine Restaurants, and 20.4 percent at Stoney River Legendary Steaks. Add to this that operating margins increased from 15% to 16.4%.

Number 8 was Brinkers with a decline of 11.2% for the week. There earnings were released during the week. An excerpt states
Brinker reported revenues for the 13-week period of $829.4 million, a decrease of 22.7 percent compared with $1,073.6 million reported for the same period of fiscal 2008. The company experienced a 9.0 percent decrease in comparable restaurant sales (see Table 1) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 due to decreases across all brands. Revenues were also negatively impacted by a net decline in capacity of 18.2 percent due to 55 restaurant closures (five of which were Macaroni Grills) and the sale of 198 restaurants since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 (189 of which were Macaroni Grills).

In summary it’s the old story: Companies that are beating estimates are doing well while the ones that fall behind are being rewarded with lower stock prices.
To see the entire list click here

Burger King Gets Cooked

On Monday, as the market rallied, the stock of Burger King got burned. In afternoon trading, the stock fell 2.5 percent before closing the day down 1.5 percent. Investors appeared spooked after JPMorgan analyst John Ivankoe downgraded the company from “Overweight” to “Neutral” and slashed his fiscal 2010 earnings-per-share forecast from $1.36 to $1.25.

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http://www.minyanville.com/articles/YUM-BKC-MCD/index/a/23863/from/yahoo

Restaurant Stock Performance - 7/31/2009

For the year, our list of 55 Restaurant stocks have increased in value by an average of 67%. The top 10 have increased in value by 219%.

From their 12 month lows these stocks have increased by 462% and even so they are still 20% under their 12 month highs.

You can see the whole list at this link
http://app4.websitetonight.com/projects/1/0/5/0/1050254/uploads/Restaurant_Performance_7-31-2009.xls

Buffalo Wild Wings Spices Up the Joint

Once again, Buffalo Wild Wings (Nasdaq: BWLD) has defied the recession to report an impressive quarter.
Second-quarter net income increased 24.2%, to $7 million, or $0.39 per share. Revenue surged an impressive 32.4%, to $129.6 million. Same-store sales increased 2.8% and 3.7% at company-owned and franchise locations, respectively. Furthermore, Buffalo Wild Wings' franchise royalties and fees jumped 14%, to $11.9 million. In short, the company made a good showing all around
Read more:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/07/28/buffalo-wild-wings-spices-up-the-joint.aspx

Starwood Hotels & Resorts - HOT

We maintain our Sell rating on shares of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide (NYSE: HOT - News). The shares have climbed significantly since bottoming out in early March.
Industry fundamentals have continued to deteriorate, with year-to-date weekly revenue per available room, or RevPAR, down nearly 20% versus the year-ago period

Read more:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Starwood-Hotels-Resorts-zacks-1312077355.html?x=0

Ruby Tuesday, Inc. Announces Common Stock Offering

MARYVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ruby Tuesday, Inc. (NYSE: RT) today announced it plans to publicly offer 10,000,000 shares of its common stock. In addition, it intends to grant the underwriters a 30 day option to purchase up to 1,500,000 additional shares to cover over-allotments, if any. The offering is being conducted as a public offering pursuant to an effective registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933. Proceeds will be used to pay down debt. Wells Fargo Securities and BofA Merrill Lynch are joint book-running managers and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc. are co-managers of the offering.

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http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090720005446&newsLang=en