Greetings from San Francisco, where this afternoon I'll interview Goldman Sachs' Internet banking chief, Kim Posnett, at the Virtuous Circle Summit. Then it's a red-eye back to Boston, so please preemptively forgive any typos and/or general incoherence in tomorrow's edition. Here we go...
The BFD
Roark Capital Group has made an unsolicited offer to buy Minneapolis-based restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings (Nasdaq: BWLD) for around $2.3 billion, or over $150 per share. This comes after the company lost a proxy battle with activist investor Mercato Capital Management over the summer, which resulted longtime CEO Sally Smith announcing her retirement.
- Why it's the BFD: Because Roark is widely credited with reviving Arby's, a restaurant brand that had been left for dead. Now it's trying to preempt Buffalo Wild Wings from heading down a similar path of irrelevance.
- Price context: Buffalo Wild Wings shares closed trading yesterday at $117.25, but jumped over 27% in aftermarket trading. Its all-time high was $201.14 in Sept. 2015, and one year ago was trading at over $160 per share. One big problem over the past year was an increase in chicken wing prices, which the company has tried to mitigate by emphasizing boneless wings.
- Are boneless wings actually chicken wings? No.
