Horrible Chicken Wing Chain Caught a Private Equity Bid; Shares Explode

Anyone else remember when Jared Cook found a fucking chicken head in his basket of chicken, whilst eating at the piece of shit chicken joint dubbed Buffalo Wild Wings?

Apparently, Roark Capital likes what they see. Aside from BWLD, their portfolio includes Anytime Fitness, Arby’s, Aunt Anne’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, Carl’s Jr., Corner Bakery, Moe’s, Orange Theory — just to name a few.

Via WSJ:

Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. BWLD -1.35% has received a takeover bid valued at more than $2.3 billion from private-equity firm Roark Capital Group, according to people familiar with the matter.

Roark made an offer of more than $150 a share in recent weeks, one of the people said. Buffalo Wild Wings shares closed Monday at $117.25, giving it a market value of $1.84 billion. The stock jumped 28% to $150 after hours following The Wall Street Journal’s report of the bid.

Investment bankers at Barclays BCS -0.85% PLC are working with Roark, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is advising Buffalo Wild Wings, the people said.

Minneapolis-based Buffalo Wild Wings is a purveyor of chicken wings, beer and other bar snacks at more than 1,200 locations world-wide. The company was founded in 1982 and went public in 2003.

Buffalo Wild Wings has been hurt by rising chicken prices and slumping traffic in its restaurants and had been under attack from Marcato Capital Management LP. The activist investor had pushed the company to franchise more stores, boost profit margins, increase sales and replace its chief executive.

In June, Buffalo Wild Wings shareholders voted in Marcato’s founder and two of its nominees to the company’s board. Chief Executive Sally Smith announced she would retire by the end of the year.

Here are the managing directors of Roark, quite literally cookie cutter carveouts of how corporate America should look — minus the fucking bald guy. He looks cool.

According to Exodus, these are the only other companies above $500 million in market cap with positive revenue growth. Pretty grim.

While most of you played yourselves into a drunken stupor, steeped heavily in losses, “The Fly” was in the market place a victor. I am quite literally demonstrating my superiority as a member of the male species to you on a daily basis, sometimes on a minute by minute scale.

This is what I did today, how about you, pal?

Short BAC -0.45%
Short NVDA -1.67%
Long DRIP +4.8%
Long UVXY +0.9%
Long UCTT +3.9%
Long FIZZ -0.34%
Long HMNY +19.2%

See that’s who I am and you’re nothing. Oh, you’re a good Dad — fuck you and go home to play with your kids.

Here’s the CEO of Moviepass, Mutch Lowe, discussing the prospects of his business.

We’ve been all over the stock in the Pelican Room inside Exodus.

My basis for HMNY is $17.5 and I am in no rush to close out this position. I believe it’s either a 10 bagger or a zero — the ultimate lotto ticket. While this rally is fun and it’s nice to see new people learning about the stock, it’s still very early and we won’t know the true penetration levels until next quarter’s earnings. I’m guessing that if subscription levels surpass 1 million by year end, the stock will be double the present value.

The stock hasn’t taken much of a downturn on this news, probably because the food poisoning in question didn’t happen to an A list star. One of the supporting actors on the CW show Supergirl, Jeremy Jordan, says he ‘almost died’ after eating at Chipotle. He was violently ill and needed to be hospitalized. Here’s Jeremy reporting in from the hospital, looking rather grim.

In a cryptic note to his fans on Twitter, Jeremy wrote, “I just died.”

I just died. https://t.co/nyV8V3cD4U

— Jeremy Jordan (@JeremyMJordan) November 13, 2017

In the full video, which has all but been wiped clean from the internet, Jeremy said

“I know I’ve advocated for them in the past, but they’re terrible. I, as you can see, am in the hospital. I have fluids in my arm because the food did not agree with me and I almost died. I just want to thank my wife for being amazing and talking me off the ledge when I was on the phone about to die and for holding my hair back metaphorically.”

He concluded:

“I love all of you; thank you so much. It’s been a night.”

Chipotle responded to the non-A list actor with a short statement, denying any involvement in the hospitalization and projectile vomiting of a certain Jeremy M. Jordan.

“There have been no other reported claims of illness at the restaurant where (Jordan) dined. We take all claims seriously, but we can’t confirm any link to Chipotle, given the details he shared with us.”

Shares of CMG are down 26% for the year and nearly 60% since the spate of food poisonings began several years ago.

Thanks to Jeffrey Immelt, after the financial crisis he divested many of GE’s ‘toxic’ financial divisions at the bottom and legged into the hot oil sector instead. With oil on the rise, Immelt was sure to make a killing, that was up until the business topped — leaving him with a flaming bag of shit to stomp out. But instead of stomping it out, Jeff took is hundreds of millions and retired, leaving the flaming mess on John Flannery’s doorstep.

Today Flannery slashed the dividend by 50%, hoping to rescue some cash flow. I say ‘hope’ because cash flow has been disappearing on its own for the past two years — ever since WTI topped.

Cramer said owning GE was one of the worst mistakes of his career.

Sadly, because of the rapidly decreasing earnings and declining sales, GE isn’t cheap on a historical basis, based on p/b,/p/s,p/e ratios. As a matter of fact, at 28x earnings and 1.7x sales, the stock is still at the top end of valuation, dating back 12 years.

This is what the company noted during their analyst day today.

Expect a higher tax rate in the high teens in 2018 as compared to mid teens in 2017.
Baker Hughes on good trajectory (BHGE).
Transportation continues in a soft market; sees 2018 as a trough year.
Says smaller board with new skills; will make it easier to debate.
Says digital continues to be a key area for the business moving forward.
Simplicity in segments and earnings is key.
Businesses have to run themselves, can not run them from the center.

And during their October earnings conference call, this is what they said.

“We need to make major changes”
“Our results are unacceptable to say the least”
Focusing heavily on culture of the company
Started plan to lower costs by $2 bln in 2018 (Prior target was $1 bln).
Co to “Simplify and Focus its portfolio”:
Targeting +$20 bln of exits in the next 1-2 years
Will share more in November about capital allocation to improve cash generation.
Have to manage company for cash and profitability in addition to growth.
Working on changes to compensation plans.

The stock is down 40% for the year and +7% over the past 5 years, underperforming the S&P by 99.5% over the same timeframe.

Will GE get booted from the Dow 30?

I suppose it’s rather immature to wish death upon a non-living substance, but I’m going to do it anyway. Markets rebounded and the VIX melted away like snow caps in the sun. But, I have an ace in the hole — my evergreen position in DRIP — 3x inverse oil and gas.

Realizing having more than 3 bearish positions makes me a bearshitter, I felt that this was a very appropriate position to take, especially in light of the recent rally in oil.

For the record, in my discretionary account, I am long UVXY, DRIP, HMNY, UCTT, FIZZ and ESPR, while being short BAC and NVDA.

This market is truly a hard nut to crack. I’ve been waiting for some downside action, not because I hate stocks, but because I want a change in scenery. Enough of this incessant upticks already. Let’s have some broken elevator pin action to clean the market place out from all of the faggot novices who’ve been taking it easy the past year.

I worked on this chart all night and believe it holds the key to the future. Through these lines and the trends outlined on this chart, I do believe will predict the exact future price movements in the VIX and hence the overall market.

BEHOLD.

Disclosure: Egregiously long UVXY.

The Bitcoin crash halted and reversed and now is feverishly running higher. But it came at a cost. All of the cryptofags who were savvy and keen to swap over to Bitcoin Cash are being eliminated from the game of play. A see-saw event is underway, with BTC higher by 11% and BCH plunging by more than 20%. This is a well deserved wallop and we hope to see many more of these in the coming days and weeks to come. Nevertheless, due to the large capped nature of BTC, the overall crypto space is now worth more than $200 billion for the first time ever — clocking in at $202b.

Dow futures couldn’t care less — down 50.

Europe is trading decidedly lower, with the Dax -0.5%

Here is some notable news, pre-market open.

GE SLASHES DIVVY BY 50%
Rio Tinto downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JP Morgan
NVIDIA upgraded to Market Perform from Underperform at BMO Capital Markets
TD Ameritrade upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank
JD.com beats by CNY0.80, reports revs in-line; guides Q4 revs in-line

Also, with BREXIT talk in the air, the pound is lower by 0.8% v the dollar and the US yield curve is widening a bit at 71.7bps.

Ten years ago, iBankCoin was launched. It started as a hobby of mine, which was supposed to be a venue for my creative proclivities. Truth is, it was a cancer that metastasized, introducing me to a world of indecorous booze hounds, introverted backstabbing bastards, and a dizzying panorama of sycophants.

My brokerage business was booming and I was aggressive, born with the gift of gab, able and willing to compete with the losers to the right of me and the losers to the left of me, for clients and assets, propelling me to the very top at my firm.

When I left the firm I had been working at and started my own firm, it served to help feed into my new addiction of blogging on the internet. I met people like Howard Lindzon and Phil Pearlman and thought ‘gee this is great, there are others out there, like me, who wanted to discuss stocks on the internet.’ How stupid I was to believe this was a good thing. I was in the wilderness, more or less on my own, free to do as I liked — teamed up with a small group of writers and a single tech guy, who proved to be extremely dedicated and honorable.

But the blogging continued — and as I delved into this new world — it changed me. I started to ignore my business, which was my childhood passion. During the financial crisis, I was firing clients left and right, absconding with tens of millions in assets — because it bored me and because I no longer wanted to do it. I was to become an ‘e-celeb’ and I was going to tweet all day, respond to comments on my blog, and live out the rest of my days in perfect harmony, loved by some, hated by more.

As time went on, my desire to manage money dissipated like the sands in an hourglass — which led to my retirement from the industry in December of 2015. It wasn’t long after that when I began discussing Trump and all of the fine things happening in DC. My transformation was complete. I was no longer an entrepreneurial investment advisor, a man who started from the bottom and became the youngest partner at his investment bank. I had become the very thing I hated most, a fucktarded asshat blogging about meaningless drivel.

Let this be a lesson to all of those interested in becoming a finance blogger or launching a ‘career’ online — don’t do it. It will only lead to disaster and it won’t be long before you start to question the very essence of life and how it all went wrong.

For me, it all went wrong ten years ago today. I’m sure many of you have enjoyed the site and I have certainly enjoyed writing and sharing my experiences. But let’s be honest with each other for a brief moment, this shit here is fucking retarded.

Ten years ago today, iBankCoin was founded. Thank you for reading and ruining my fucking life. I could've done so much more with my life. God damned bastards. pic.twitter.com/MiF6lSpW2c

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) November 12, 2017

Ciao.

Over the past three days, Bitcoin is down by a modest 20%, knifing lower from all-time highs to just below 6,000 today. In the big scheme of things, this pullback is nothing, a mere way station en route of extreme excess. On the other hand of the spectrum is bitcoin cash, an entirely stupid crypto-currency that is trading higher after the much talked about BITCOIN FORK was fucking canceled.

The hype became perverted earlier today when it eclipsed Ethereum in market cap and circle jerked its way up to a $40 billion market cap. Fair value for bitcoin cash is somewhere between $0 and $1.

Due to the run up in BCH, the total market cap for the crypto-currency markets has remained steady at $195 billion. The great thing about the collective market cap continuing to balloon is that it’s becoming a systematic risk to financial markets. Just imagine it gets up to $500 billion and then drops by 90%; what a splendid and beautiful crash it will be — befit with all of the gilded trimmings we’ve come to expect from all fine market collapses over the past 20 years.

On this day, the 10th Anniversary of iBankcoin, I ask the Gods for just one thing: a small, yet delightful, crash in BTC.