LOCO - El Pollo Loco heats up on share buy back

2023-08-08 13:19:14 ET

El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc. ( NASDAQ: LOCO ) rose 2% on Tuesday after agreeing to buy back 2.5 million shares from Freeman Spogli at $10.63 per share for a total purchase price of $26,575,000.

The private equity firm had been the chicken dish seller’s largest stockholder.

Last week, LOCO reported non-GAAP EPS of $0.23, which beat the average analyst estimate by $0.02, while revenue of $121.49M missed by $3.07M.

For the full year, LOCO said it expects to open two new company-owned restaurants and three to four new franchised restaurants with a capital spend of $22M to $25M.

“While our top line performance in the second quarter was below our expectations as we lapped last year’s extremely successful Beef Birria promotion, we are encouraged by sales trends over the past four weeks, with third quarter-to-date comparable system sales growth of 1.8% including a 2.1% increase in company comparable sales through July 26,” Chief Executive Officer Larry Roberts said in a statement.

“As we look to the back half of the year, we remain confident that the initiatives we have in place will deliver sales growth, improved margins and attract high-quality franchisees to the El Pollo Loco system.”

LOCO is up 11% so far this year and up 30% in the past 12 months.

More on El Pollo Loco:

• El Pollo Loco Q2 2023 Earnings Preview: A Sentiment Arbitrage Heading Into Earnings
• El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc. ( LOCO ) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
• El Pollo Loco Non-GAAP EPS of $0.23 beats by $0.02, revenue of $121.49M misses by $3.07M

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