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National Restaurant Count

NPD found U.S. restaurant unit counts declined by 2% between April 1, 2010, and March 31, 2011.  Independent restaurants comprised most of the decline; with 8,650 closures as “chains” restaurant unit counts remained relatively stable.  According to NPD “The decline in independent units is the steepest we’ve seen since NPD began conducting the ‘Spring ReCount’ census in 2001,”

THE HBM: MCD, YUM, DPZ, RRGB, EAT - national restaurant count

Subsectors

Restaurant stocks surges yesterday after underperforming the couple of days prior. Quick service restaurants outperformed the other food, beverage and restaurant categories.

THE HBM: MCD, YUM, DPZ, RRGB, EAT - subsector fbr

 

QUICK SERVICE

  • MCD, YUM, four other companies accepted invitations to take part in discussions with unions on wages for their employees in southern China’s Guangzhou, the city’s Federation of Trade Unions said - Bloomberg
  • MCD Japan plans to accelerate the opening of new stores in response to societal changes, Chairman and President Eikoh Harada said.  Japan’s March 11 earthquake had a significant impact on people’s lifestyles, Harada told reporters today.
  • DPZ Australia, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises LTD, saw its shares gain more than seven per cent after the fast food chain said it expected a 15% profit increase this year.
  • Subway Restaurants was one of the first companies to participate in Google Inc.'s mobile payment platform, Google Wallet. The open-source payment platform, which uses near field communication (NFC) technologies embedded in smartphones, was launched in May.  Subway's mobile marketing campaign is in the process of rolling out to the more than 24,000 stores in the U.S., with the global adoption planned through 2012.

FULL SERVICE

  • EAT and RRGB are releasing earnings tomorrow after the close and we believe both companies will report strong quarters.

THE HBM: MCD, YUM, DPZ, RRGB, EAT - stocks 810

Howard Penney

Managing Director

Rory Green

Analyst