Buffalo Earnings: Hottest Sauce Ever For Short Sellers (BWLD)

Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BWLD) is serving short sellers news that is the equivalent of ring-stinging hot sauce along with its earnings report.  This is accelerating growth.  The sports themed restaurant chain reported that its fourth quarter earnings came in at $0.73 EPS.  The gain was 33% from a year earlier and it was also well above Wall Street consensus estimates by Thomson Reuters of $0.67 EPS.  Sales were also up over 34% at $220.5 million versus the Thomson Reuters consensus of $210.48 million.

The key metric of same-store sales growth was up by 8.9% at company-owned stores.  Even the franchise same-store sales were up by almost 6%.  In the first six weeks of this quarter those same store sales are up 12.9% at company-owned stores and still up 10.8% at the franchise stores.  This one is amazingly hot, no pun intended, in the after-hours trading.  Shares closed up 1.9% at $70.19 today versus a 52-week trading range of $47.16 to $71.22.  Now shares are up about 15% at $81.30 and that will mark an all-time high if the after-hours gains hold up after today.

And to think, it was just yesterday that many investors were concerned that the Super Bowl was now over and that the next event was not for more than a month out for March Madness.  The market capitalization rate was already $1.3 billion before the gains tonight.