PE news and earnings provided a boost to a few stocks yesterday on a poor day, overall, for restaurant stocks.
CPKI was up 9.6% on surging volume at yesterday’s close. As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, private equity firm American Securities Capital Partners is in advanced talks to by the publicly-traded chain of 260 restaurants and is lining up debt financing, the Post reported. Unless the number is low, which I doubt, the stock is fairly valued to overvalued. At 7.1X EV/EBITDA, the stock is trading at a premium to the peer group at 6.6x.
Anything can happen but, I think the bankers will struggle to get the deal done north of $18.50. In addition, the laundry-list of issues any potential buyer of CPKI needs to deal with is long.
MSSR seems like another potential, more reasonable, candidate. At 4.9x EV/EBITDA, there is 21% upside to where its peers are trading.
Howard Penney
Managing Director
