wabuffo Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 http://idea.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/93859/000009385909000045/form10q3q09.htm very strong results. Congrats to all. There's also this section in the 10-Q which is new from others and hints at the next phase for SNS. Steak n Shake is transforming into a holding company. Its basic premise is to reinvest cash generated from its operating subsidiaries into any investments with the objective of achieving high risk-adjusted returns. Pursuant to a resolution of the Company’s Board of Directors on June 17, 2009 , all investment and other capital allocation decisions are made for the Company by Sardar Biglari, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. wabuffo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 Some highlights: - Cash at the holding company is the highest yet at nearly $38M - Continues to slowly whittle down assets for sale - Total assets remain at about $513M - Credit line is down about $3.5M to $13.7M from last quarter - All long-term debt has been eliminated...roughly $12M from last quarter - Shareholder Equity is up about $4.5M - Most operating expenses have been cut significantly since last year, so headway there will by slower. Areas where we see continued improvement since last quarter (cost of sales, restaurant operating costs, G&A). Marginally higher marketing costs. - One aspect of operating expenses that will save probably $6-10M a year going foward is interest costs. With a lower credit line and no long-term debt, this will be a significant savings - Net income of $3.8M and I would expect next year's full operating earnings to come in around $20-25M - $41.1M of net operating cash for the 40 weeks ending July 1, 2009, with nearly $16M of that coming in this quarter! - SNS is converting to a holding company structure like WEST did, with Sardar allocating excess cash...which there is nearly $40M of already and it comes in every quarter now at a pace of $4-5M plus! Exactly one year now since Sardar took over. The business was running on pace for a $25M yearly loss when he took control, and next year it should show a $20-$25M operating profit. Great stuff! Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alertmeipp Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 I don't have it. But it looks buyable even at this price? Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdWatchesBoxing Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 This news is great. If these results become the norm for SNS, I say Sardar deserves every penny of his raise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 SNS is easily buyable at the price it's currently trading at ($10.55) depending on what types of returns you're looking for. If you're willing to settle for a long-term, low risk annualized return of at least 10%, I'd say go for it. SNS currently trades not too far above what I estimate liquidation value to be, and has an owner earnings yield of close to 10% based on what I think is a conservative estimate of static owner earnings (between $30 M and $35 M). Biglari can reinvest these owner earnings at rates that I hope amount to a 15% pre-tax annualized return. SNS has virtually no long term debt. As Biglari continues to liquidate low return (or negative return) stores, he frees up additional capital to invest at high rates of return. Finally, once he and his team have optimized the earnings potential of the current network of SNS restaurants, he will probably begin to expand operations, opening new franchised stores and strengthening the brand and know how of the company. Returns on invested capital on the operations side will go up as the revenue mix shifts from company-owned restaurant sales to franchise fees. Still quite a deal at this price level. By the way, this is my first post on the board. I've been reading it for about a year now, and I'm highly impressed by the discussion and idea generation that you guys come up with here. I would never have found out about FFH or SNS without this board, so thanks a lot! It's a great forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 Welcome aboard Txlaw! Enjoy. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Investmentacct Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 Off Topic: (ongoing promo at SNS) http://www.umi-inc.com/steaknshake/valuevault/coupon.pdf Few reviews of SNS customers which seems to confirm the observations of improved performance by SNS mgmt and staff.: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1497961 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
link01 Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 SNS currently trades not too far above what I estimate liquidation value to be, and has an owner earnings yield of close to 10% based on what I think is a conservative estimate of static owner earnings (between $30 M and $35 M). by 'static' owner earnings do you mean normalized owner earnings that assumes no sales growth, & annualizes sns's most recent qtr? ofcourse, sales growth is the wild card here, so static or normalized owner earnings that freeze-frames things as they look now is probably not a compelling reason to buy sns at these levels, other than it helps define your downside. right now sales are accelerating qtr over qtr, but i for one cant see what stops it or slows it or where it levels off & consolidates for a while. until we see a slowing in the so called 2nd derivative rate of change in that sales & traffic growth i think we need to suspend disbelief & just wait & see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
link01 Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 Few reviews of SNS customers which seems to confirm the observations of improved performance by SNS mgmt and staff.: if you blog-google steak n shake you'll see a TON of new website references to bargain coupon clippers kids eat free recently. is that what they mean by viral marketing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nnejad Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 - One aspect of operating expenses that will save probably $6-10M a year going foward is interest costs. With a lower credit line and no long-term debt, this will be a significant savings I remember reading awhile back that due to the structure of some sale-leaseback transactions, some leases are actually expensed as interest. (That is why run rate interest ran last year at about 14 million when total debt was only 31 million) So paying off that full amount and using 8.4% cost of interest would only be about 2 million a year in saved costs... unless I'm not seeing something here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PLynchJr Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 Anyone care to explain why SNS is now down for the day after this earnings release? ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 I remember reading awhile back that due to the structure of some sale-leaseback transactions, some leases are actually expensed as interest. (That is why run rate interest ran last year at about 14 million when total debt was only 31 million) So paying off that full amount and using 8.4% cost of interest would only be about 2 million a year in saved costs... unless I'm not seeing something here. Sorry Nick, yes you are correct here, so that amount would drop. Still should save $2-3M a year though. Anyone care to explain why SNS is now down for the day after this earnings release? Who knows? Less than a month ago, Fairfax was below $250 US, and then over two weeks it popped to over $300 US. Today it's at $318. SNS is just below book value, and for a quality low-priced burger chain making decent profits, growing cash flows, with little to no debt and lots of cash on hand, they should trade between 1.3-1.8 times book. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 SNS currently trades not too far above what I estimate liquidation value to be, and has an owner earnings yield of close to 10% based on what I think is a conservative estimate of static owner earnings (between $30 M and $35 M). by 'static' owner earnings do you mean normalized owner earnings that assumes no sales growth, & annualizes sns's most recent qtr? ofcourse, sales growth is the wild card here, so static or normalized owner earnings that freeze-frames things as they look now is probably not a compelling reason to buy sns at these levels, other than it helps define your downside. right now sales are accelerating qtr over qtr, but i for one cant see what stops it or slows it or where it levels off & consolidates for a while. until we see a slowing in the so called 2nd derivative rate of change in that sales & traffic growth i think we need to suspend disbelief & just wait & see. By "static" owner earnings I mean owner earnings based on neither growth nor shrinkage in the business. Given that we're at a time period where same-store sales are likely at their bottom, I believe mine is a conservative estimate of the free cash that SNS can expect to generate from continuing operations if you "freeze-frame" things. Of course, in reality the number of stores is shrinking while same store traffic is going up. But I'm not worried about this short term shrinking of the business because the cash freed up will be deployed into high return investments that will ultimately generate more cash return than the company-owned stores that are closed or refranchised. SNS is in the same situation as Sears only better. We have a great capital allocator at the helm who can deploy cash into high return investments, so even if SNS continues to shrink its restaurant base, the capital freed up will be deployed to generate higher returns. However, unlike Sears, where the outlook is much more cloudy, SNS has the potential to grow its store base and earn high returns from this growth through franchising versus owning stores. That's why I disagree that SNS is not a compelling investment at this time. Still, it all depends on what type of returns you're looking for. If you're not satisfied with a low risk return of at least 10% over time, then you probably wouldn't find buying SNS as compelling as I do. I view SNS as an equity-bond yielding 10% that will increase its coupon over time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
link01 Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 That's why I disagree that SNS is not a compelling investment at this time. Still, it all depends on what type of returns you're looking for. If you're not satisfied with a low risk return of at least 10% over time, then you probably wouldn't find buying SNS as compelling as I do. I view SNS as an equity-bond yielding 10% that will increase its coupon over time. thnx, txlaw. too bad i expressed myself so clumsily. i'm actually in agreement with you. i meant to say that it wasnt particularly compelling under a static scenario that contemplated zero growth. ofcourse sales growth will be the difference between a static 10% coupon, as you put it, & a compelling, dynamic 10% growing coupon. wlecome abord, btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
txlaw Posted August 12, 2009 Share Posted August 12, 2009 thnx, txlaw. too bad i expressed myself so clumsily. i'm actually in agreement with you. i meant to say that it wasnt particularly compelling under a static scenario that contemplated zero growth. ofcourse sales growth will be the difference between a static 10% coupon, as you put it, & a compelling, dynamic 10% growing coupon. wlecome abord, btw. Thanks for the welcome! I think the misunderstanding stems from the way that I characterized the dynamic coupon because what I really mean is that at these prices, we can expect an incremental increase in book value that is equivalent to having a 10% growing coupon. If SNS just converts to an asset-lite business through refranchising, stops growing its restaurant base, and redeploys capital to totally unrelated investments, cash earnings will decrease but incremental growth in book value should be the same as getting a growing 10% earnings coupon. You're right, however, that we're really going to get a growing earnings coupon once we have sales growth from the opening of new franchises. In any case, we seem to be in agreement that SNS is going to both convert to an asset-lite business and increase sales growth in the coming years, which should lead to a nice return from buying the stock at today's levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limbacmf Posted August 12, 2009 Share Posted August 12, 2009 Anyone care to explain why SNS is now down for the day after this earnings release? ??? Mr. Market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted August 12, 2009 Share Posted August 12, 2009 Limabcmf, is that Emilio Estevez as your thumbnail picture? ;D Just noticed it. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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