CHEESECAKE FACTORY (CAKE, 884888) - interessante Restaurantkette - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[spaceistheplace]

Ich will mal zu dieser US-Restaurantkette einen Thread eröffnen, um vielleicht ein paar meinungen hier zusammenzutragen.
Mir ist diese Kette sehr sympathisch, weil es nicht die 100ste Burgerkette aus den USA ist, sondern über 200 Gerichte anbietet, unter anderem eben übe 50 verschiedene Käsekuchen zum Dessert. Zudem sind die Gerichte auch abgestimmt auf die Bedürfnisse LOw fat, kalorienarm, viele Salate etc. pp. Liegt im Trend.

Eine Zusammenfassung der Tätigkeiten ist unter dem Chart dargestellt.

Das KGV liegt 2008 bei 18, das ist absolut an der unteren Bandbreite seit dem Börsengang 1992 (siehe Chart). Die aktuelle Schwäche ist auf eine Gewinnverlangsamung auf 10% dieses Jahr zurückzuführen.

Die Finanzzahlen sind bestens, hoher cashflow, kaum Schulden, gute Kennzahlen, Dividende leider Null, das Geld wird in die Expansion gesteckt:
http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/ExtendFund.asp?mode=&kind=&timefra…

CEO ist der Unternehmensgründer und der sind schon seit 1992 (Börsengang bei insges. 6 Restaurants) im Unternehmen vorständig.
Insidermäßig geht nicht viel ab zur Zeit.

Interessant die im letzten Jahr stark gestiegenen Short-Positionen, die sich bei einer Besserung der Lage bzw. Einschwenken auf den alten Gewinntrend, wie ein Bumerang verhalten wird.

Jetzt noch zu den Analüsten (Bitte verzeiht, aber ich kann keine Gewinnprognose abgeben):
Das Kursziel in 1 Jahr liegt zwischen 26 und 36 Dollar, aktuell liegen wir bei 24.
Die Analohorde ist aktuell eher neutral gestimmt:
http://www.nasdaq.com/earnings/analyst_summary.asp?mode=&kin…

PEG-Ratio liegt bei 1,06. Für die nächsten 5 Jahre werden im Schnitt 18% Gewinnwachstum prognostiziert. Sollte das eintreten, haben wir in 2011 ein KGV von 10.

Dieses Jahr sollen 22 Restaurants eröffnet werden, wobei im ersten halbjahr erst 7 und im 2.Halbjahr die restlichen kommen werden, fast alle im Nordosten der USA, der erfolgreichsten Gegend von Cheesecake bisher. Die Karte zeigt, wieviel weiße Flecken allein in den USA vorhanden sind. Im Ausland läuft noch gar nichts bei CAKE, könnte mir aber gut vorstellen, dass dort auch das Konzept aufgeht.
http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/locations.htm

Zu den aktuellen Problemen (Wachstum in 2007 \"nur\" 10%):
Die SSS liegen mit 0,4% rel. eben und sind schwächer als die Jahre zuvor. Höhere Energie und Nahrungs-Mittelkosten drücken aktuell auf die Margen. Im Frühjahr haben einige Analysten deshalb den Daumen gesenkt.

Ich bin überzeugt, dass es sich nur um eine temporäre Sache handelt.

Ich bin drauf und dran mir ein paar Stücke ins DEpot zu legen, Eure Meinung würde mich sehr interessieren.

Gruss space

http://www.nasdaq.com/earnings/analyst_summary.asp?mode=&kin…

Überblick der Tätigkeiten:

The Cheesecake Factory full-service restaurants offer approximately 200 menu items including appetizers, pizza, seafood, steaks, chicken, burgers, pasta, specialty items, salads, sandwiches, omelets and desserts including approximately 40 varieties of cheesecake and other baked desserts. In contrast to many chain restaurant operations, substantially all menu items (except desserts manufactured at our bakery production facilities) are prepared on the restaurant premises using high-quality, fresh ingredients based on innovative and proprietary recipes. We use only all-natural, antibiotic free chicken, premium beef that is Certified Angus, USDA Kobe or Choice, and fresh fish that is long-line or hook and line caught. In addition, we only use cooking oils that contain zero trans fats per serving and most of our produce is sourced direct from premium growers. We also now offer coffee that is organic, fair trade and shade-grown. We believe our restaurants are recognized by consumers for offering exceptional value with generous food portions at moderate prices. Our restaurants possess a distinctive, contemporary design and decor that creates a high-energy ambiance in a casual setting. Our full-service Cheesecake Factory restaurants currently range in size from 5,400 to 21,000 interior square feet, provide full liquor service and are generally open seven days a week for lunch and dinner, including Sunday brunch. For fiscal 2006, our average guest check was approximately $17.50.

[immer_runter]

Wenn du auf kulinarische Aktien stehst, leg dir ein paar SR6 ins Depot. größter FastFood Suppenbetreiber in Asien.

Fliege bald in die USA. Werde mir die Cheescake Restaurants da mal genauer ansehen. Finde die auch sehr interessant.

[lowkatmai]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.738.157 von spaceistheplace am 25.09.07 16:11:32

Hi,

kann zu den Zahlen nichts sagen.

War im vergangenen Jahr in einem Restaurant von CHEESECAKE FACTORY (San Fran)

Fand ich gut und es war gerappelt voll > ist ja immer ein gutes Zeichen.

Aus dieser Sicht also in Investment wert.

l

[Larry.Livingston]

Sehr gut Space! Werde auch bald einsteigen. Mal schauen.

Hier zur Vervollständigung noch die Zahlen von yahoo finance:

VALUATION MEASURES

Market Cap (intraday)6: 1.66B
Enterprise Value (25-Sep-07)3: 1.83B
Trailing P/E (ttm, intraday): 21.98
Forward P/E (fye 02-Jan-09) 1: 17.27
PEG Ratio (5 yr expected): 1.13
Price/Sales (ttm): 1.20
Price/Book (mrq): 2.97
Enterprise Value/Revenue (ttm)3: 1.29
Enterprise Value/EBITDA (ttm)3: 10.909


FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Fiscal Year
Fiscal Year Ends: 2-Jan
Most Recent Quarter (mrq): 03-Jul-07


Profitability
Profit Margin (ttm): 5.70%
Operating Margin (ttm): 7.71%


Management Effectiveness
Return on Assets (ttm): 6.81%
Return on Equity (ttm): 13.12%


Income Statement
Revenue (ttm): 1.42B
Revenue Per Share (ttm): 18.605
Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): 15.70%
Gross Profit (ttm): 560.84M
EBITDA (ttm): 167.85M
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 80.68M
Diluted EPS (ttm): 1.05
Qtrly Earnings Growth (yoy): 1.10%


Balance Sheet
Total Cash (mrq): 62.31M
Total Cash Per Share (mrq): 0.864
Total Debt (mrq): 197.17M
Total Debt/Equity (mrq): 0.346
Current Ratio (mrq): 0.939
Book Value Per Share (mrq): 7.909


Cash Flow Statement
Operating Cash Flow (ttm): 173.76M
Levered Free Cash Flow (ttm): -79.81M


Die Eigenkapitalrendite könnte besser sein, aber immerhin 3% besser als die von Platzhirsch McDonalds.

[frankenhofi]

schau dir mal den 6-jahreschard an,grauslich!!!!

[spaceistheplace]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.739.954 von Larry.Livingston am 25.09.07 18:09:33

Sehr gut Space! Werde auch bald einsteigen. Mal schauen.

Bei 22 habe ich ein Kauflimit an der Nasdaq laufen....

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.740.812 von frankenhofi am 25.09.07 19:17:10

klar sieht der Chart nicht gut aus die letzten Jahre. Musst aber auch bedenken, dass CAKE in 2000 ein KGV von 45 hatte, jetzt 20. Also hat die Aktie eben die Bewertung abgebaut. Eins darf man auch nicht vergessen, zwischen 2000 und 2003 im Crash hat sich der Kurs fast verdreifacht, seitdem seitwärts.
Wenn ich einsteige habe ich Geduld, die Zahlen und Perspektiven sind jedenfalls sehr gut, in den nächsten 5 Jahren wird ein Wachstum von 18% per anno prognostiziert. Kommt es so, hjaben wir in 2011 bei gleicbleibendem Kurs ein KGV von 10.

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.738.822 von lowkatmai am 25.09.07 16:51:39

Hallo lowkatmai,

danke für DEin posting. Ich hätte da mal ne Frage noch: Wie sieht es denn so in den Restaurants mit der Atmosphäre aus? Gediegen, leger, schmuddelig oder so? Könntest Du da noch mal was dazu sagen? Wäre nett, denn keiner von uns hier war sonst schon mal in so nem Laden.
Danke space

[lowkatmai]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.749.013 von spaceistheplace am 26.09.07 14:31:48

Hi,

eher gediegen, dunkles Holz usw. (jedenfalls der Laden in San Fran)


http://www.cheesecakefactory.com/aboutus.htm


l

[spaceistheplace]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.749.596 von lowkatmai am 26.09.07 15:12:04

Danke! Ich glaube, die statten die Läden meist gleich aus...
Gruss space

[Riccio]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.738.157 von spaceistheplace am 25.09.07 16:11:32

Hatte von diesem Unternehmen bisher noch nie was gehört. Die prognostizierten Wachstumsraten in Verbindung mit der niedrigen Marktkapitalisierung macht aber nen vielversprechenden Eindruck.

[spaceistheplace]

Ich bin heute zur Börseneröffnung in NYC bei Cheesecake zu 23,48 $ eingestiegen. 22er limit habe ich gestrichen, schnurz piep egal...Hauptsache, das Papier ist im Depot.

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

in den letzten 4 Wochen allein 4 Neueröffnungen, 21 für dieses jahr:

03.10.2007 14:25
The Cheesecake Factory Opens in Freehold, New Jersey

The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated (Nachrichten) (Nasdaq:CAKE) today announced the opening of its 131st Cheesecake Factory restaurant at the Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold, New Jersey, located in Monmouth County. The opening marks the Company's seventh new restaurant opening during the third quarter of fiscal 2007, in-line with the Company's stated guidance. The restaurant contains approximately 10,200 square feet and 300 seats.

About The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated

The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated created the upscale casual dining segment in 1972 with the introduction of its namesake concept and continues to define it today with the two highest productivity concepts in the industry. The Company operates 131 restaurants throughout the U.S. under The Cheesecake Factory® name with an extensive menu of more than 200 items and average annual unit sales of approximately $10.6 million. Grand Lux Cafe®, the Company's second concept, has ten units in operation across the U.S. offering a broad menu of more than 150 items and average annual unit sales of approximately $12.6 million. The Company also operates two bakery production facilities in Calabasas Hills, CA, and Rocky Mount, NC, that produce over 50 varieties of quality cheesecakes and other baked products. Additionally, the Company operates one self-service, limited menu express foodservice operation and licenses two bakery cafe outlets to another foodservice operator. For more information, please visit thecheesecakefactory.com.

[Simonswald]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 31.738.157 von spaceistheplace am 25.09.07 16:11:32

Börsengang bei insges. 6 Restaurants

Ziemlich unvorstellbar in Deutschland. Das zeigt doch die ganz andere und fortgeschrittene Kapitalmarktkultur in den USA.

[Simonswald]

Die singapurische Soup Restaurant ist wirklich gar nicht mal uninteressant.
Treffen den asiatischen Geschmack. Und einem Singapur-Management ist eine Expansionsstrategie am Ehesten zuzutrauen.

Aber derzeit mit 20 Restaurants noch zu klein. Beobachten.

http://www.souprestaurant.com.sg/

[seblas]

Cheesecake Factory Inc.(CAKE) 23.65 sehr stark bei ausgeprägter Bodenbildung

[spaceistheplace]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 32.122.383 von seblas am 23.10.07 16:53:33

sehr stark

wie meinst Du das?

Heute kommen übrigens die Quartalszahlen nachbörslich...

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

hier die aktuellen Quartalszahlen bzw. auch der Ausblick für 2008:

The Cheesecake Factory Reports Results for Third Quarter of Fiscal 2007

Company Announces Fiscal 2008 Growth Plan

CALABASAS HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 2007--The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated (Nasdaq:CAKE) today reported financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2007, which ended on October 2, 2007.

Total revenues increased 15.4% to $375.5 million from $325.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Net income and diluted net income per share were $18.5 million and $0.26, respectively.

Operating Results

Comparable restaurant sales increased 1.2% in the third quarter of fiscal 2007. By concept, comparable restaurant sales increased approximately 1.0% at The Cheesecake Factory and increased 4.8% at Grand Lux Cafe in the third quarter of fiscal 2007.

"Our comparable sales performance in the third quarter remained relatively consistent with the trends we experienced during the first half of this year. We attained positive comparable sales again this quarter with only a modest level of menu price increases and our operators did a particularly good job in managing labor costs. We continue to believe that we are performing at a competitively strong level and have effectively managed to maintain an excellent value proposition for our guests while protecting our margins against the cost pressures facing all restaurant operators," said David Overton, Chairman and CEO. "In addition, Grand Lux Cafe once again delivered solid performance, especially in light of lapping a very strong 6.7% comparable sales growth in the third quarter of last year."

New Restaurant Openings

The Company opened six Cheesecake Factory restaurants and one Grand Lux Cafe during the third quarter, and remains on track to open eight Cheesecake Factory restaurants and three

Grand Lux Cafes during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. In total, the Company expects to open 21 new restaurants in fiscal 2007, in-line with its stated guidance.

"Our fourth quarter openings are well underway with new Cheesecake Factory restaurants in both Peabody and Natick, Massachusetts already opened. Over the next two weeks, we plan to open Cheesecake Factory restaurants in Tukwila, Washington, a suburb of Seattle; Salt Lake City, Utah, our first location in Utah; and West Hartford, Connecticut, another new state for us.

"As we noted at the start of the year, a large number of our targeted openings in 2007 are located in the Northeast. As expected, the locations opened to date in this region have delivered strong performance. As a group, our new restaurants in the Northeast have experienced average weekly sales in excess of $250,000 since opening," continued Overton.

Fiscal 2008 Growth Plan

The Company also announced its preliminary growth plan for fiscal 2008, which is aimed at continued expansion of its concepts in high-quality locations, returning cash to stockholders through share repurchases and managing its business to drive improvement in the Company's operating income margin.

The Company plans to open as many as 17 new restaurants in fiscal 2008 consisting of as many as 12 to 13 Cheesecake Factory restaurants, three to four Grand Lux Cafes and one Rock Sugar Pan Asian Kitchen, the Company's newest concept.

As a result of this plan, the Company's goal is to achieve the following key objectives:

* Capitalizing on a full pipeline of premier locations to achieve its development target in fiscal 2008 while simultaneously positioning the Company to smooth out its new restaurant opening schedule in fiscal 2009 and beyond. This is intended to reduce the heavy concentration of openings in the second half of the year;
* Reducing total cash capital expenditures in fiscal 2008 by approximately 20% to an estimated range of $160 million to $170 million. The reduction will come from building fewer new restaurants and also from building more efficient, less capital intensive Grand Lux Cafes. The Company believes this will enable it to generate free cash flow of approximately $60 million to $70 million, which it expects to employ in support of share repurchases under its existing 4.7 million-share repurchase authorization; and
* Improvement in the Company's operating income margin of approximately 30 to 50 basis points in fiscal 2008 as a result of lower preopening costs and increased leverage of general and administrative (G&A) expenses.

"Our plan for fiscal 2008 contains both operational and financial advantages that are intended to benefit the Company and our stockholders for the next several years," continued Overton. "We will continue our growth next year through the addition of 17 new restaurants and also establish the foundation to open new restaurants at a more even pace throughout the year, beginning in fiscal 2009. This effort further reinforces the strong growth plan we have in place for The Cheesecake Factory, anchored by the previously identified 60 to 70 high-quality locations of the size and scope we are building today.

"We are meeting a number of objectives that we established for ourselves with this plan, including lowering our capital investment costs for Grand Lux Cafe, continuing to actively repurchase shares and improving our operating margins," concluded Overton.

Conference Call and Webcast

A conference call to review the Company's results for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 and discuss its growth plan for fiscal 2008 will be held on Tuesday, October 23, 2007, at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The conference call will be broadcast live over the Internet and an archived replay will be available shortly after the call and continue through November 22, 2007. To listen to the conference call, please go to the Company's website at thecheesecakefactory.com at least 15 minutes prior to the call to register and download any necessary audio software. Click on the "Investors" link on the home page, and select the link for the "Q3 2007 The Cheesecake Factory Earnings Conference Call" at the top of the page.

About The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated

The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated created the upscale casual dining segment in 1978 with the introduction of its namesake concept and continues to define it today with the two highest productivity concepts in the industry. The Company operates 133 restaurants throughout the U.S. under The Cheesecake Factory(R) name with an extensive menu of more than 200 items and average annual unit sales of approximately $10.6 million. Grand Lux Cafe(R), the Company's second concept, has ten units in operation across the U.S. offering a broad menu of more than 150 items and average annual unit sales of approximately $12.6 million. The Company also operates two bakery production facilities in Calabasas Hills, CA, and Rocky Mount, NC, that produce over 50 varieties of quality cheesecakes and other baked products. Additionally, the Company operates one self-service, limited menu express foodservice operation and licenses two bakery cafe outlets to another foodservice operator. For more information, please visit thecheesecakefactory.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements in this release are generally identified by words such as "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and "would," and similar expressions that are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. In particular, forward-looking statements regarding the Company's restaurant sales trends are subject to risks and uncertainties due to national and regional economic and public safety conditions that impact consumer confidence and spending, as well as weather and other factors outside of the Company's control. Forward-looking statements regarding the number and timing of the Company's planned new restaurant openings are subject to risks and uncertainties due to factors outside of the Company's control, including factors that are under the control of government agencies, landlords and others. Forward-looking statements regarding the Company's plans to reduce cash capital expenditures are also subject to risks and uncertainties due to factors outside the Company's control, including its ability to achieve its plans to build less capital intensive Grand Lux Cafes. Approximately 4.7 million shares of the Company's common stock may be purchased under the Company's previously announced share repurchase authorization. This authorization does not require the Company to purchase a specific number of shares and it may be modified, suspended or terminated at any time. The timing and number of shares repurchased pursuant to the share repurchase authorization will be subject to a number of factors, including current market conditions, legal constraints and available cash or other sources of funding. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the dates on which they were made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required to do so by the securities laws. Investors are referred to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements and the discussion of risk factors contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available on a website maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov.

[spaceistheplace]

hier das Transscript des Analystenmeetings:


The Cheesecake Factory F3Q07 (Qtr End 10/02/07) Earnings Call Transcript
posted on: October 23, 2007 | about stocks: CAKE

The Cheesecake Factory (CAKE)

F3Q07 Earnings Call

October 23, 2007 5:00 pm ET

Executives

Michael Dixon - CFO

David Overton – Chairman and CEO

Analysts

John Glass – CIBC

Jeffrey Bernstein - Lehman Brothers

Ashley Woodruff – FBR

Larry Miller – RBC Capital Markets

Sharon Zackfia – William Blair

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

Nicole Miller - Piper Jaffray

Joe Buckley - Bear Stearns

Bryan Elliott - Raymond James

Steven Kron - Goldman Sachs

Paul Westra - Cowen & Company

John Ivankoe - J.P. Morgan

Dustin Tompkins - Morgan Keegan

Presentation

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to The Cheesecake Factory's third quarter 2007 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Michael Dixon. Please proceed, sir.

Michael Dixon

Hello, everyone. I'm Michael Dixon, CFO of The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated, and welcome to our quarterly investor conference call which is also being broadcast live over the Internet.

Also with us today is David Overton, our Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer who is actually joining us from Tukwila, Washington -- just outside of Seattle -- where we will open our 134th Cheesecake Factory restaurant later this week. Joe Peters, our Vice President of Investor Relations, is also with us.

Before we get into the details, let me briefly cover our cautionary statement regarding risk factors and forward-looking statements in general. Throughout our call today items may be discussed that are not based on historical fact and are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements as a result of the factors detailed in today's press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All forward-looking statements made on this call speak only as of today's date and the company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements.

We have a lot to cover today. In addition to reporting results for the third quarter of fiscal 2007, we also announced our growth plan for fiscal 2008 today. Our agenda for this call will be as follows:

First, we'll discuss our financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 which ended on October 2nd, 2007. We will refer to that quarter as the third quarter in our comments today. We'll also give some color on our expectations for the remainder of the year. After that, we'll discuss our growth plan and performance targets for fiscal 2008. Finally, we'll open the call to questions and we'll be happy to answer as many questions as time allows. We'd like to finish up this call in about 45 minutes.

Before I get into the details of the quarter, let me take just a minute to formally welcome Russ Bendel to The Cheesecake Factory family. As we announced in early September, Russ joins us as President and Chief Operating Officer of The Cheesecake Factory restaurants. Russ brings with him a wealth of restaurant industry experience and we look forward to him taking our operations to an even higher level. As we speak, Russ is well into his orientation program. Again, we're very happy to have Russ on board.

So with that, let's get on to the quarter's results. Total revenues at The Cheesecake Factory for the third quarter increased 15.4% to $375.5 million. Our revenue growth this quarter was comprised of an approximate 16% increase in restaurant revenues and a 4% decrease in bakery revenues. I'll talk more about the bakery business in a moment.

The 16% increase in restaurant revenues represents an approximate 18% increase in total restaurant operating weeks resulting primarily from the openings of 27 new restaurants during the trailing 15 month period, coupled with an approximate 1.4% decrease in average sales per restaurant operating week. Overall comparable sales at The Cheesecake Factory and Grand Lux Cafe restaurants increased 1.2% for the quarter. By concept, comparable sales increased approximately 1% at The Cheesecake Factory restaurants and increased 4.8% at the Grand Lux Cafes.

While we're pleased to report positive comparable sales again this quarter, the environment for most casual dining operators continues to be challenging. That being said, although we generally expect comparable sales to be in line with our menu price increase, we are still a little bit behind that as traffic has not yet returned to normal levels. We remained about a percent or so off in traffic with approximately 2.2% of price in our menu during the third quarter. This trend has been fairly consistent throughout the first nine months of the year.

In our summer menu change which we finished rolling out in mid-August we took an additional 1.5% effective menu price increase to help offset known cost pressures, primarily related to minimum wage, janitorial and dairy costs. As a reminder, we are not lapping any menu price increase from last summer.

Returning to the third quarter, average weekly sales at The Cheesecake Factory restaurants decreased about 1.1%, which is still slightly behind the change in comparable restaurant sales. As we've said many times in the past, there are a couple of factors that generally can impact this comparison. First, the timing of new restaurant openings and the associated honeymoon sales period will always have an impact on the gap between comparable sales and average weekly sales. When we open in existing markets we generally do not experience, nor do we expect to experience, the honeymoon sales trends of roughly 130% of sustainable volumes that we often see in new markets.

16 of the 21 Cheesecake Factory restaurants opened since the third quarter of last year are in existing markets. The strategy of capturing additional profitable market share in areas that we know very well and where our brand recognition is high has worked well for us and we will continue to maximize this opportunity in the future.

Second, the restaurants we've opened in the last 18 months are considerably smaller on average than those opened prior to that time period. The average number of productive seats is about 5% less at those restaurants not in the comp base compared to those restaurants in the comp base. This is a function of opening restaurants in great markets as preferred sites become available and appropriately fitting the restaurant size to those markets. Most importantly, the average returns at these locations are in excess of our cost of capital and deliver a fully capitalized return in excess of our 25% threshold.

Lastly on a more specific note, four of the 20 Cheesecake Factory restaurants that opened last year were built smaller, as they are in slightly smaller markets, and consequently delivered average weekly sales below our company average. While these locations will still deliver initial annual sales of $7 million or so, and will continue to grow as these markets mature and the retail developments are built out, they do account for a large part of the gap between our comp sales and average weekly sales. Excluding these locations, average weekly sales at The Cheesecake Factory would have increased approximately 0.1%.

We continue to be very pleased with sales at our Grand Lux Cafes. Comparable sales at Grand Lux increased 4.8% in the third quarter. On a two-year basis, Grand Lux Cafe has delivered comparable sales of 11.5%. We continue to view this as an incredibly strong performance, particularly in light of the soft operating environment the industry has experienced for nearly two years and for a young concept with no advertising or promotions. The sales volumes continue to increase at Grand Lux. We will continue to leverage operating costs and improve this concept’s restaurant level margins. Grand Lux Cafe is a strong, viable second concept for The Cheesecake Factory.

Longer term, we feel very confident that there is plenty of profitable growth ahead for both The Cheesecake Factory and Grand Lux Cafe. With only 143 restaurants opened to date, the majority of our expected revenue growth for the next few years will continue to come from openings of new restaurants. Our longer term expectations for annual comparable restaurant sales growth remains in the range of menu price increases, or about 1% to 2%.

For 2007, our overall revenue growth target, including both restaurant and bakery sales, is 15% to 16%, which translates into approximately 15% growth in the fourth quarter. This is a little bit lower than our previous guidance and reflects the slightly softer sales we experienced in the second half of September and through the first couple of weeks of October. Overall comparable sales through the first three weeks of the fourth quarter are tracking between flat and a positive 1%.

We are on target to achieve our goal of opening as many as 21 new restaurants, including five Grand Lux Cafes. As we discussed on our last quarterly conference call, 20% to 25% of these openings will be in new markets with the remainder representing opportunities to return to those markets we have been very successful.

In addition, a large number of our targeted 2007 openings are in the Northeast, which has proven to be a very strong geographic area for us, with a number of high volume restaurants already operating in this region, with certainly enough population density to support several more.

As we noted in our press release, the new restaurants that we have opened to-date in the Northeast have delivered average weekly sales in excess of $250,000 since opening, consistent with our expectations for high volumes in this region. In particular, our location in Braintree, Massachusetts, which opened in late June, continued its strong performance with average weekly sales of over $280,000 during its 15 weeks in operation.

We opened six Cheesecake Factory restaurants and one Grand Lux Cafe in the third quarter, in line with our stated guidance. To-date in the fourth quarter, we've already opened two The Cheesecake Factory restaurants in Peabody and Natick, Massachusetts, and a third opening will follow later this week in Tukwila, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, as I mentioned earlier. We expect to open five more Cheesecake Factory restaurants and three Grand Lux Cafes in the fourth quarter, for a total of 11 new restaurants this quarter as originally planned.

As a reminder, there are risks to achieving our opening schedule as we currently lease all of our restaurant locations, many of which are in newly constructed or to-be-constructed retail developments such as shopping malls, entertainment centers, cityscape strip centers and so forth. As a result, we rely heavily on our landlords to deliver our leased spaces to us according to their original commitment so that we can build them out in a timely manner.

Our locations are upscale and highly customized, which helps to create the non-chain image that we enjoy with consumers and which we believe represents a significant competitive advantage for us. But that also creates some unique design and permitting challenges. Once we get the space from the landlords and obtain our building permits, our construction and pre-opening processes are typically consistent, usually taking four to six months to complete on average.

So as a result of these factors, it's not uncommon to have planned openings move a few weeks or even a month due to various factors outside of our control. Having said that, we have consistently achieved our stated opening targets. We have an incredible development team that consistently manages through these challenges to deliver restaurants on time and an equally talented operations team to get these restaurants open and running like a Cheesecake Factory from day one.

I will remind our investors that it takes 90 to 120 days on average for our new restaurants to work through their normal grand opening inefficiencies and for food and labor costs to reach their targeted operating profit margins.

Now moving to our bakery operations. Bakery sales, net of inter-company bakery sales, decreased 4% in the third quarter from the year-ago period to $13.1 million versus $13.7 million in the prior year. The decrease is due primarily to lower sales to the warehouse clubs, which is our largest sales channel for outside bakery sales. Clearly, the macro pressures impacting dining out occasions are affecting dessert purchases as well.

Our plan for third party bakery sales continues to focus on generating consistent and predictable sales and contribution margins. Based on our current outlook for warehouse club sales and other outside sales channels, we expect bakery sales to be approximately flat to down 1% in fiscal 2007 compared to the prior year. While slightly lower than our earlier expectations, I remind investors that this is a small part of our business.

While we remain optimistic with respect to opportunities to steadily build our bakery sales volumes over time, bakery sales are not as predictable as our restaurant sales. Our ability to predict the timing of bakery product shipments and contribution margins is very difficult due to the nature of that business and the purchasing plans of our larger customers, which may fluctuate from quarter to quarter.

In our view, the bakery's most impactful role to our business will continue to be its service as a dependable, high quality producer of desserts for sale in our own restaurants which will sell approximately $200 million of desserts made in our bakery production facilities during fiscal 2007. Approximately 15% of our restaurant sales consist of dessert sales, which is a much larger percentage than achieved by most other casual dining restaurant concepts.

That covers our top line performance for the third quarter and the update on our restaurant opening plan for the fourth quarter. Now I'll briefly review the individual components of our operating margins for the third quarter. Cost of sales decreased to 24.7% of revenues for the third quarter compared to 25% in the same quarter last year and 24.7% in the June quarter. The 30 basis point improvement over the prior year is attributable to favorable year-over-year pricing for produce, seafood and general grocery items, partially offset by the continued pressure from higher dairy costs.

As a reminder, fluid dairy commodities are one of the only areas in which we are unable to contract price, and as most of you know, dairy costs have risen significantly this year. This has a meaningful impact on us due to the amount of manufacturer cream we use in making our fresh whip cream at the restaurants.

The principal commodity categories for our restaurants include fresh produce, poultry, meat, fish and seafood, cheese, other fresh dairy products, bread, and general grocery items. We have contracted with suppliers for those expected commodity requirements for fiscal 2007 that can be contracted, and where possible, we have extended certain of our contracts through 2008. As of today, we have contracted for a number of our 2008 commodity requirements, including all of our poultry and beef requirements through 2008 at flat or slight increases to current prices.

We have not yet contracted our cream cheese requirements for 2008, but I will note that the contractible price has come down quite a bit over the past few weeks and we will continue to monitor this and lock in a price at an appropriate level.

Based on the contracts we have in place and our current expectations for those items that we cannot contract, we expect cost of sales as a percent of revenues to be approximately 20 to 25 basis points lower for fiscal 2007 compared to fiscal 2006.

Total labor expenses were 32.2% of revenues for the third quarter, down from the 32.3% in both the prior year and sequential quarters. This is a little better than we anticipated and especially impressive in light of the slightly softer sales. Our operators did a great job managing labor during the quarter, which resulted in a 10 basis point improvement year over year. For fiscal 2007, we still expect labor expenses to be approximately 40 basis points higher than the prior year.

Other operating costs and expenses were 22.9% of revenues for the third quarter, a slight increase from the 23.7% reported in the same quarter last year and the 22.9% in the sequential quarter. The increase from the prior year period was a result of higher insurance costs, primarily worker's compensation and the deleveraging of fixed costs to operate our restaurants as a result of the slightly lower sales this quarter. We expect other operating costs as a percent of revenues to be 30 to 40 basis points higher for the full fiscal year relative to fiscal 2006, due to the higher janitorial and insurance costs. Now this translates into a 120 to 140 basis point increase in Q4 versus the prior year, as we benefited last year from some very favorable adjustment to our self-insurance reserves.

G&A expenses for the third quarter were 5.3% of revenues, down from the 5.7% in the prior year and better than the 5.4% in the sequential quarter. The decrease relative the year ago quarter was primarily due to about $1 million of professional fees incurred in the prior year related to the stock option review. In addition, we continue to effectively manage our overhead costs in line with our revenues and look aggressively for cost saving opportunities.

Our G&A expenses consist of two major components: the cost for our corporate, bakery and field supervision support team, which should grow at a lesser rate than revenues; and the cost for our restaurant management, recruiting and training program, which should grow at a rate closer to our unit growth rate. During the remainder of fiscal 2007 we will continue to add resources to the corporate support, training and field supervision activities of our business to properly support our restaurant and bakery operations for the planned 21 new restaurant openings.

Our expectation for total G&A expenses as a percent of revenues for the fourth quarter is a 50 to 60 basis point improvement compared to the prior year as we lapse some of the option investigation costs incurred in 2006. For fiscal 2007, we expect G&A to be flat to a 10 basis point improvement compared with the prior year.

Depreciation expense was 4.2% of total revenues for the third quarter, compared to 4.1% for the third quarter of the prior year and 4.2% for the sequential quarter. For fiscal 2007, our expectation for depreciation expense as a percent of revenues continues to be in the 4.2% to 4.3% range based on our expected growth and investment plans. Actual pre-opening costs incurred during the third quarter were approximately $8.7 million compared to $5.4 million for the same quarter last year. This was a bit higher than we expected due to higher costs in general, which I'll discuss in a moment, and a couple of locations moving forward in the fourth quarter new restaurant opening schedule which resulted in higher pre-opening costs in the third quarter.

We opened six Cheesecake Factory restaurants and one Grand Lux Cafe in the third quarter of this year compared to three Cheesecake Factory restaurants and one Grand Lux Cafe in the year-ago quarter. We usually incur most of our pre-opening costs in the two months before an opening and the month of a restaurant’s opening. As a result, the timing of restaurant openings and their associated pre-opening costs will always have an impact on our quarterly earnings comparison.

Our expectation for fiscal 2007 total pre-opening costs is $24.5 million to $25 million in support of as many as 21 new restaurant openings during fiscal 2007, including five Grand Lux Cafes. This is in the same range as we previously guided to, even though much of the pre-opening costs will move into fiscal 2008. Our back ended opening schedule, which requires us to hire managers a little earlier than desired in order to have the appropriate number of trained managers in place to support our openings, combined with the increased costs for staff relocation have pushed pre-opening expenses a little higher than originally planned. Again, based on the information we have as of today, we plan to open eight Cheesecake Factory restaurants and three Grand Lux Cafes in the fourth quarter.

To wrap up our operating margin expectations, we expect operating margins to be 35 to 45 basis points better in the fourth quarter but 30 to 40 basis point lower for the full fiscal 2007 versus the prior year, as the slightly lower sales volumes combined with the ongoing dairy cost increases, minimum wage and other margin pressures we've already discussed offset much of the benefits of our effective menu price increase.

That covers our review of the major line item components of our operating margins for the third quarter. Again, please refer to the full discussion of risks and uncertainties associated with our forward-looking statements, including in our filings with the SEC.

Included in interest expense net is $2.3 million of interest expense and $150 million in outstanding debt we have under the revolving credit facility during the quarter. We have an interest rate collar agreement on the outstanding revolver balance that mitigates the risks from interest rate variations, and keeps our LIBOR rate within a range of 4.6% to 5.4%. We also pay a bank margin on top of LIBOR which will vary based on our debt to EBITDA ratio. Our current interest rate on $150 million balance is approximately 5.9%, which translates into approximately $2.2 million of interest expense for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007.

Our effective tax rate for the third quarter was 29.5%. We continue to plan an effective tax rate of 30% to 31% for the full fiscal year 2007.

Let me provide a brief recap of our stock-based compensation expense for those investors who are tracking it as a separate line item. Our total stock-based compensation expense reflected in the income statement for the third quarter was approximately $4.7 million, of which $1.8 million was charged to labor expenses and $2.8 million was charged to G&A expenses.

For fiscal 2007 we continue to expect stock based compensation expense to be approximately $18 million to $19 million, of which about $8 million will be charged to labor expenses and approximately $11 million will be charged to G&A expenses. As a percent of revenues, this amount is fairly consistent with fiscal 2006.

Lastly, before I move off the income statement, let me provide some comments on the $200 million accelerated share repurchase, or ASR, that we entered into in the first quarter of this year. We completed the ASR in September and retired an additional 1 million shares for a total of 7.7 million shares repurchased under this program. We anticipate a weighted average outstanding share count for the fourth quarter of between 72 million and 72.5 million shares.

As we've discussed, we expect the impact from the ASR to be neutral to fiscal 2007 earnings per share with the benefit from the new share count offset by the interest expense. The transaction will be accretive to fiscal 2008 and beyond.

Our share repurchase authorization from our board of directors is currently 16 million shares, of which there are approximately 4.7 million shares remaining, net of the shares retired this year. The authorization does not require us to purchase any shares and may be terminated at any time.

Our liquidity position and financial flexibility continue to remain very strong. As of October 2nd, our cash and marketable securities on hand were approximately $60 million. Our cash flow from operations through the third quarter was approximately $86 million and our cash and accrued CapEx for the third quarter approximately $144 million, which includes construction in progress for upcoming 2008 openings.

Our estimated cash CapEx for fiscal 2007 is in the range of $195 million to $205 million. This includes the cost for the five Grand Lux Cafes included in our targeted 21 openings, a large percentage of planned openings in the Northeast which generally have higher than average constructions costs, and a portion of the cost of our Asian test concept. Based on our current expansion plans and current expectations of the operating environment, we expect to be able to finance our CapEx requirements for fiscal 2007 through expected operating cash flow, agreed upon landlord construction contributions and our cash on hand.

We have $150 million in funded debt in our capital structure, as I mentioned earlier, and currently do not anticipate a need for additional funded debt or any other external financing during fiscal 2007 other than landlord construction contributions to meet our fiscal 2007 growth objectives.

We do have $50 million available under our credit facility for backup liquidity purposes and to support standby letters of credit for our insurance arrangements.

To wrap up our business and financial review for the third quarter, both total revenues were somewhat lower than we expected, we did an effective job at controlling costs, and delivered a 50 basis point year-over-year improvement in operating margin before pre-opening costs. Relative to the data points provided by a number of other casual dining operators during the past month, we believe we're delivering competitively strong results.

As always, our primary focus remains the long-term healthy growth of The Cheesecake Factory and the continued enhancements to our productivity and profitability. Delivering a great guest experience is our number one priority and we continue to be pleased with the progress of our productivity initiative such as the Kitchen Management System, which we believe will allow us to more effectively and efficiently deliver a better experience to our guests. We anticipate having KMS in approximately one-half of our restaurants by year end and in all of our restaurants by the end of fiscal 2008.

In addition, we have completed the roll out of our labor scheduling tool, which enables our managers to spend less time on scheduling and more time on the floor with guests and developing and training staff members.

On the growth side, we will achieve our stated goal to open 21 new restaurants this year. We continue to believe there is room for approximately 200 Cheesecake Factory locations of our current size and scope and as many as 150 Grand Lux Cafe locations. We also believe there are an additional 130 to 140 Cheesecake Factory locations that can deliver annual revenues between $8 million and $10 million. Our development group has designed a restaurant at an investment cost that is appropriate for this expected volume, so that we can grow our business at steady or increasing rates of return.

With only 143 restaurants open as of today, we believe that our business has a sustainable period of profitable growth ahead of it for several years to come. Our strong financial position provides us with capital resources and flexibility to continue executing our growth plan with great confidence.

Along those lines, I'd now like to focus on our growth plan for fiscal 2008 which we also announced this afternoon. We are targeting revenue growth of approximately 14% to 15%, not much different than our revenue growth for the past few years. Net income growth of 17% to 19%, and estimated diluted earnings per share growth of 22% to 24%.

Let me tell you how we intend to achieve those goals. Our plan consists of three key objectives:

(1)Expand our restaurant base with high quality locations at a rate that is healthy and manageable for our business.

(2)Use our free cash flow to return cash to stockholders through share repurchases; and,

(3) Improve our operating margin by 30 to 50 basis points.

Our expansion plan for 2008 is to open as many as 17 new restaurants, including as many as three to four Grand Lux Cafes and one Rock Sugar Pan Asian Kitchen, our newest concept. The 2008 plan targets approximately four fewer restaurants than we will open in 2007. This decision is not driven by a lack of great locations or inability to successfully open a high volume restaurant. As you know, we are the landlord’s tenant of choice and are offered thousands of sites every year. We are also confident that our development department is capable of opening at least 25 restaurants per year.

However, we have a long-term view of our business and as such we're going to slightly recalibrate our opening schedule. Investors who have followed us for awhile know that the types of locations that we choose -- that is, selecting only great locations -- historically resulted in a back end loaded development schedule. We locate many of our restaurants in newer retail centers where developers target completion before the holiday season, so having an opening schedule in the second half of the year has been a fact of life for us.

We have a full pipeline of quality sites in 2008. By targeting 17 openings, we will position ourselves for a more balanced opening schedule in 2009 and beyond. This will allow us to reaccelerate our growth in 2009 and to continue to target revenue growth in the mid-teens for the next several years.

We have identified 60 to 70 potential Cheesecake Factory locations with expected average annual revenues over $10 million, and between 130 and 140 locations with estimated annual revenues of approximately $8 to $9 million. Clearly, we have an ample number of locations to choose from, which makes our near and longer-term growth objectives very achievable.

Also, with only 13 Grand Lux Cafes in operation by the end of this year we have significant site selection opportunities for this concept as well. At least one of our 2008 locations will be specifically targeted at the 130 to 140 potential locations we've talked about with projected revenues of $8 million to $9 million. We will test our ability to build a slightly smaller-sized restaurant at an appropriate investment cost and still deliver new restaurant ROIs that are among the best in the industry.

The additional objective of our growth plan for fiscal 2008 are increased share repurchases, funded by a lower level of CapEx spending, and improved operating margins in an otherwise difficult margin environment. Let me spend a minute on each of these areas.

We anticipate total cash capital expenditures in fiscal 2008 to be between $160 million and $170 million, an approximate20% decrease from fiscal 2007. The savings comes from building fewer new restaurants and also from building more efficient, less capital intensive Grand Lux Cafes. Many of you will recall from our analyst meeting earlier this year we established an objective to reduce Grand Lux investment cost per square foot by $75 to $100. We've identified the changes necessary to achieve this target without sacrificing the guest experience and those changes are factored into the Grand Lux design plans for next year.

We expect that the reduction in cash capital spending will enable us to generate free cash flow of between $60 million and $70 million, which we intend to use in support of an active share repurchase program. We have approximately 4.7 million shares available under our current repurchase authorization and our board may consider the opportunity to increase share repurchases in the future.

On the margin front, we expect that the lower pre-opening costs and increase in G&A leverage will allow us to improve our operating margin by approximately 30 to 50 basis points. In light of the expected industry-wide pressure from commodity and labor costs, we believe this is a competitively solid margin improvement.

In summary, we're very expected about our ability to achieve our growth plan for 2008 and beyond. Our expansion goals position us to open successful, high quality restaurants more evenly throughout the years to come. It is both an achievable plan and one that will enable us to deliver significant diluted EPS growth while returning value to stockholders through meaningful share repurchases.

That wraps up our prepared remarks and at this time we'll be happy to answer your questions. In order to accommodate as many questions as possible in the time we have left in this call, please be courteous and limit yourself to one question and then re-queue with any additional questions. If we aren't able to get to your question on this call, please feel free to give us a call at our offices after the call.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Your first question comes from John Glass – CIBC.

John Glass – CIBC

Mike, I get the reduction in The Cheesecake Factory growth given the pressures you have, et cetera, but why slow the Grand Lux as well? I thought you were in an expansion mode, maybe you were going to continue to swap out more Cheesecakes for Grand Luxs, you could still do that within the confines of a lower absolute growth this year. Could you maybe talk about the thought process behind slowing down Grand Lux Cafe as well?

Michael Dixon

I think – and David can chime in on this – really, we are not looking to slow down Grand Lux, it is really just getting the right spots and having them available at the right time. The locations that we have looked at for 2008 for Grand Lux locations, just getting the right spots, the number that are available in the areas we want to go to is just a little bit lower. We are not intentionally trying to slow down Grand Lux Cafe. It is a function of the space available, at the right time.

John Glass – CIBC

Do you think that over time those will always be a little bit harder to get? What gives you confidence you can grow that at a faster clip if you are having difficulties now just trying to open three to four?

David Overton

I don't think it's a matter of difficulty. Again, it's just finding the exact right site where we want to go following the growth pattern that we have with The Cheesecake Factory. There's lots of sites all over the country, but we are very particular about how we're growing it and building our reputation with cities, going in and the sites we are looking for are incredible sites in incredible cities. We have a lot of them planned. We have sites that are planned for '09 and '10 that are the absolute best in Boston, the best here and there. But they are all over the board in terms of when we going to get those very special sites we are looking for, for Grand Lux.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jeffrey Bernstein - Lehman Brothers.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Lehman Brothers

Just a question on traffic trends. It looks like pricing would now be running in the 3% range for both brands, slightly above your historical averages. I was wondering if you could talk about any noticeable impact to sales, traffic or mix? You said you saw a slowdown back in September, early October. I was wondering if that was attributable to macro or if there is any issue from a near term pull back on pricing? If not, I am wondering if you may consider maintaining those levels closer to the 3% range in future years, given the fact that the consumer is giving you a lot of credit for your value scores?

Michael Dixon

Jeff, I think the answer to the first part of your question is, I believe it is still due to the macro trends. You hit on it. We did see traffic slow down in the second half of September and continuing in the first couple weeks of October which is again reflected in the guidance we gave on revenues for the full year.

Our average check is really still tracking right along the lines of our menu price increases. So I don’t feel that we are being impacted there. Having said that, I don’t think that we will change our pricing strategy. I think we will continue to price what we need to do to effectively offset some of the margin pressures. It is still obviously a very competitive environment, and we want to be very careful with the guest out there.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Lehman Brothers

I think you had mentioned that Grand Lux was running 2% to 3% pricing, and you took the 1% increase in the spring. Is now the point in time that you would take the full menu roll out, I am wondering where pricing is going to end up for Grand Lux.

Michael Dixon

You are right on the current pricing on Grand Lux. Grand Lux is just undergoing a menu change with I think slight menu price increase, if I am not mistaken, David?

David Overton

Right. We are right at about 1 point.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Lehman Brothers

So 1 point now, in addition to?

David Overton

In addition to what is in there.

Jeffrey Bernstein - Lehman Brothers

So what would it be running in total, going forward?

Michael Dixon

I think it is still going to be between 2% and 3%.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ashley Woodruff – FBR.

Ashley Woodruff – FBR

Just a question on your comments on 2008. The 22% to 24% EPS growth goal seems especially ambitious, given what you've seen recently in terms of your same-store sales trends and traffic weakening.

When you are looking into 2008 what are you expecting to reach that? What do you need to see in terms of your same-store sales trends?

On that 30 to 50 basis point improvement in margins, are you expecting that other line items like cost of sales, bakery and restaurant, are you expecting those are flat?

Michael Dixon

From a big picture perspective, Ashley, I think relatively flat on all of those line items. As I mentioned, we should get a little bit of G&A leverage. Obviously we will get some fairly good pre-opening expense leverage with just the fewer openings, which will drive that operating margin growth that I talked about.

I think the real leverage you get from that net income down to the earnings per share is just the benefit of the share repurchase program that we have just completed, as well as additional share repurchases that we contemplate going forward.

Ashley Woodruff – FBR

Is that premise of same-store sales similar to what you have seen recently, or improving in 2008?

Michael Dixon

I think it is relatively similar to what we have experienced lately. We are not being overly aggressive in assuming that the traffic is going to resume.

Operator

Your next question comes from Larry Miller – RBC Capital Markets.

Larry Miller – RBC Capital Markets

Thanks. If I could follow up on John’s question, does that mean that going forward it would be something like 10 to 12 Cakes and then you would think to reaccelerate Grand Lux, given the opportunities, and that is how we should think about planning the model, not necessarily the 17 stores per year?

Michael Dixon

I think that is a reasonable assumption, Larry. I think as David indicated, we want to accelerate the growth at Grand Lux, but we also want to be right about picking the best spots. So our goal would be to continue to ramp up Grand Lux Café growth. We are targeting the 17 total openings for 2008 and then we will ramp up again from that in 2009, and I would expect the Grand Lux Cafes will play a bigger part in that growth.

Larry Miller – RBC Capital Markets

I get how you can get to 14%, 15% revenue growth by balancing out fiscal 2008 relative to 2007, which only had a few openings in the first half of the year. Wouldn’t that necessarily normalize in fiscal ’09 and beyond, and therefore you wouldn’t get the big productivity adjustment? Muted opening or capacity growth at that point?

Michael Dixon

I think you will see certainly in the first half of ’09, once you get that far out, you will see some of the lower growth in ’08 will have an impact on the first half of ’09. I still think that there are opportunities for us to continue to drive that revenue growth into the mid to high teens number with comparable EPS growth.

Certainly we get a benefit on that EPS growth in fiscal 2008 just from the slowdown or the lowering of the pre-opening costs.

Larry Miller – RBC Capital Markets

Does that mean then that you are expecting traffic growth? Normally you have said that you wouldn’t be able to grow sales ahead of pricing. I guess I am confused on how we get to 14% in the out years.

Michael Dixon

Well again, we can target the revenue growth from the new store openings. We feel we have plenty of opportunities to grow more restaurants than 17 beyond 2008.

Larry Miller – RBC Capital Markets

I see. I misunderstood. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Your next question comes from Sharon Zackfia – William Blair.

Sharon Zackfia – William Blair

Mike, you commented on the last couple of weeks of September and October slowing. I don’t think anyone asked, but has that been a national slowing, or have you seen any geographic concentration there?

Michael Dixon

I would say that we have seen California slow quite a bit, more so. A little bit of slowing everywhere, but I would say California has slowed more so. I think interestingly enough, the Southwest area has slowed down as well. So both California and Southwest have led the charge in the slowdown from mid-September forward.

Sharon Zackfia – William Blair

Separately, I am assuming, based on your language in the press release, that the weightings for the restaurants next year will still be back end weighted, and it is really ’09?

Michael Dixon

That is correct. The idea is to really slow the pipeline in ’08 so that we have anywhere from 20 to 24 places to choose from; only open the 16 or 17 that we talked about, and then move the rest into early ’09.

Sharon Zackfia – William Blair

Just circling back once again on what you have seen in October, I think you gave the comps for the first three weeks. Was October pretty similar to your full quarter comps last year, or was it markedly different?

Michael Dixon

I don’t know the answer to that off the top of my head, sorry

Operator

Your next question comes from Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel

Thanks. This is a follow-up on Larry’s question earlier. I think there was a presumption being made by all of us that you will be more balanced in ’08. Can you give us a little bit of how the quarter might look -- how the quarters might look as you break out and open up those total 17 stores?

And then, can you update us on what your estimates are for the CapEx contribution from the Rock brand?

Michael Dixon

2008, as I think Sharon just kind of alluded to, will still be back-end loaded. It just won’t be as -- there just won’t be as many restaurants to open in the third or fourth quarter because we are going to open fewer in total, so it is still -- 2008 is still going to be a back-end loaded schedule, but the idea will be to move some of those that we would have tried to open late in ’08 into the first half of ’09 to make ’09 more of the balanced opening schedule.

As for the capital costs for Rock Sugar, I don’t have a final number on that so I’m not ready to give that out.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

How about the pre-opening? I mean, typically I think we were looking for almost double the amount of what a Cheesecake is running at now. Is that about the same but more in 1Q than some of it falling in 4Q?

Michael Dixon

Yes, that’s true. What we had put in for 2007, I said $1 million to $2 million on the Rock Sugar pre-opening. I don’t think it will be at the $2 million number but it will be somewhere, closer to $1.5 million with most of that falling in the first quarter.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

And then, what are we looking at right now as far as going on in the G&A line as far as leverage being gained in relation to falling a little short of original plans and compensation. I’m just curious -- how much are we getting a benefit from lack of bonus contributions in ’07 that will come back in ’08 when you do start hitting your plan and getting to 22% profit growth? Are we going to see a ramp up in relative G&A, potentially?

Michael Dixon

I think as a percent of revenues, as I indicated, we are still looking to get some leverage on that G&A line for 2008. We’ve never really specifically broken out the bonus costs in that line item.

Any assumptions that are based on what I gave for the 2008 plan would include our potentially hitting those bonus targets. But I’m still expecting to see some year-over-year leverage.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

Last question; what do you think will enable you going forward to have it more balanced, the schedule, in ’09, aside from just deferring some openings? The presumption was always the best time to open the store though is also around the fourth quarter and the holiday, or developers weren’t ready to open up. I’m just curious -- why do you feel more comfortable now deferring the Christmas opening time schedule or Thanksgiving time schedule to now maybe January or February, when that’s not been a strong period for you in the past to open?

David Overton

I think we’ve opened very well in the first quarter. We just -- in other words, they just move and they don’t get serious about doing their work, so everything backs up. But as far as being -- it’s a fine time for us to open as long as the landlord gets their work done and we can get open. Does that answer your question?

We don’t feel the first quarter is any worse to open than the fourth. It’s just that we haven’t been able to because of all of the work that the landlord has to do and they don’t get started usually until March.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

Right, but I would think that there was a presumption when you got into the site by the developer that you would be opening around Thanksgiving or Christmas and that would be the time.

David Overton

You know, so often, we try to get it open much earlier but it just gets put off for various reasons -- permitting, landlord getting it done, not wanting to do work during the Christmas season, so they don’t really start until later -- there’s a number of problems that come up, but it’s not that -- we would open as many stores as we could in the -- we don’t like opening in the beginning of January. It is too hard to get our staff together but certainly starting the last week in January, February and March is a fine time for us to open, if we can get it all put together.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

Okay. I just wanted to see if there wasn’t something as far as site selection that’s enabling you to go differently away from strip malls and lifestyle centers and more independent standalones, or --

David Overton

Those are still not the sites we prefer.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

Okay. Thank you.

Michael Dixon

I think just to follow that up real quick, generally speaking, we tended to one of the first locations that opens as part of a new development, or a refurbished development. We don’t necessarily have to be part of that grand opening. We can open, as David mentioned, a few months later in the first quarter. By doing that, we’ll be able to balance our schedule a little better.

Matt DiFrisco - Thomas Weisel Partners

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Nicole Miller of Piper Jaffray. Please proceed.

Nicole Miller - Piper Jaffray

Good afternoon. I’m sorry if I missed this in the first part, I’m traveling, but what is the comp assumption for 2008 and then what is the pricing within the assumption?

Michael Dixon

We didn’t give either of those. We just kind of gave that revenue target, so you’ve got the 17 restaurant openings with that revenue growth of 14% to 16%.

Nicole Miller - Piper Jaffray

And I think I caught the tail end of one of the earlier questions about the Grand Lux pricing would be 2% to 3% going forward. Could you make the same commentary on the Cheesecake Factory units?

Michael Dixon

Well, the Cheesecake Factory right now have 3% in the menu. They have about a weighted 2.2% for the third quarter. As of today, they are 3%. We haven’t made any decisions on our first quarter 2008 price increase, but we continue to evaluate the cost pressures and within the next month or so, we’ll make a finalization on that.

Nicole Miller - Piper Jaffray

Okay, and then just one quick question, first just to make sure that all of your employees and families are safe, given the fire and evacuation issues in Southern California, and if you could, I don’t want to be overreacting to a situation and it may be too early to tell, but is there any color you can give on the impact to your stores at this point?

Michael Dixon

First, thank you for your concern. At this point, none of our restaurants have been damaged or are being threatened to be physically damaged by the fires. As far as I’ve heard, all of our staff members are safe as well, so okay on both counts.

Nicole Miller - Piper Jaffray

Okay, so just one store potentially at this time and nothing’s been closed or -- I’ve heard of some power outage issues today in certain areas and what not, but not for your stores?

Michael Dixon

None of our stores have been impacted.

Nicole Miller - Piper Jaffray

Thank you so much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Buckley of Bear Stearns. Please proceed.

Joe Buckley - Bear Stearns

Thank you. Just a question on the difference between the four restaurants that are averaging about $7 million in sales and the one you are targeting to open next year that you were targeting in the $8 million to $10 million area. Is there a difference between those prototypes or --

David Overton

I think what we are saying is that we have developed a 7,500 foot store with the appropriate size kitchen, scaled down investment, so if we go into those -- when we go into those markets that will have $7 million, $8 million, $9 million choices, we will have the appropriate size store.

The ones that are doing that currently, some of those are 8,900 square feet, some are 9,000. In other words, we didn’t have a model that small to build into those kinds of volumes. So now we do, so if we make that selection going forward, we believe that it’s the right size store for those volumes.

Joe Buckley - Bear Stearns

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Elliott of Raymond James. Please proceed.

Bryan Elliott - Raymond James

Good afternoon. A couple of questions on the growth plans. Would you expect the spreading out into ’09 of the openings to possibly reduce pre-opening costs per concept, as we get smoother and don’t have as much of a rush at the end of the year?

Michael Dixon

Yes, I would. I think that the, as I mentioned the impact no pre-opening expenses this year, there is a bit of a cost because we can’t hire as many managers as we need all at once, so we hire them throughout the year and we can carry extra managers as a result. By spreading it out, we should be able to smooth out our hiring needs and reduce some of those costs.

Bryan Elliott - Raymond James

Secondly, would you expect any material changes in the level of landlord financings that you’ve been getting in recent years as a result of this change? In other words, would it be marginally less attractive to a landlord to have you open in February instead of mid-November or early December?

David Overton

We don’t think it will make any difference to landlords.

Bryan Elliott - Raymond James

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Kron of Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Steven Kron - Goldman Sachs

Thanks, a couple of follow-ups, first, Mike, on the 22%, 24% EPS growth goals for 2008, you had some one-timers in the first quarter of ’07. I think they equated to around $0.02 to $0.03. I just want to make sure that this is inclusive of those things in the first quarter of this past year, so you are going to get a little bit of a benefit on a year-over-year basis from those items?

Michael Dixon

That’s correct.

Steven Kron - Goldman Sachs

Okay, so we shouldn’t carry that forward into 2009 per se, right because you are going to get a little bit of benefit from that?

Michael Dixon

That’s correct.

Steven Kron - Goldman Sachs

And as far as the CapEx guidance of 160 to 170, can you break out -- I assume most of it is growth CapEx but what would the maintenance piece be?

Michael Dixon

I don’t have that. I think it’s fair to assume the same ratio as to what it is in 2007, in terms of new restaurants versus the remaining pieces.

Steven Kron - Goldman Sachs

Okay, and then on the 17 units that you targeted, can you just provide the mix of how many are new geographies versus existing?

Michael Dixon

I can’t do that today, Steven. I think the idea here is that we are -- we’ve got a lot of them to choose from and we are going to pick the ones that are right for us and that fit best within our opening schedule, so those markets could change from the roster that we’re going to pick from.

Steven Kron - Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Paul Westra of Cowen & Company.

Paul Westra - Cowen & Company

Good afternoon. Most of my questions have been answered, but could you talk a little bit about bakery sales? I know you had a flattish outlook for this year, lapping last year’s big year. Should we assume a resumption to that 10% level next year as you look out in your forecast?

Michael Dixon

That’s a good question. I think somewhere between 5% and 10% is a reasonable outlook for 2008. Again, I think some of the softness we’ve experienced this year in the warehouse clubs, we’ve got several different irons in the fire, if you will, both within the clubs as well as some other channels, so I think somewhere in the 5% to 10% range next year is a reasonable estimate.

Paul Westra - Cowen & Company

But if we look at this year, obviously last year’s fourth quarter was your highest on record, up significantly. It seems you are forecasting for the current fourth quarter a flattish number. I assume things haven’t materially slowed than what was feared or expected.

Michael Dixon

Again, we came into the year expecting to do a little bit better than we are, even last quarter I was still expecting to do a positive 1% or 2%, so now I’m flat to negative one. So there’s certainly been some pressure, again really in that warehouse channel, warehouse club channel. But I think the outlook for next year is okay.

Paul Westra - Cowen & Company

One other question, on tax rate, should we assume 30% for the fourth quarter and for next year?

Michael Dixon

I think I said 30 to 31 for the full fiscal year, which would be the fourth quarter rate, obviously, and it think somewhere in that range for next year is reasonable.

Paul Westra - Cowen & Company

Okay. I must have missed that. Thank you.

Michael Dixon

We’ve got time for two more questions, Operator.

Operator

Yes, sir. Your next question comes from the line of John Ivankoe of J.P. Morgan. Please proceed.

John Ivankoe - J.P. Morgan

Thanks. The first question that, and I’m sorry if you answered it maybe in different pieces, has to do with again lowering the development slightly for ’08. I know one of the reasons is not wanting to open units back-ended anymore, but in the last couple of years, you’ve actually done a pretty remarkable job with that. I think from a profit and operations point of view, you’ve been at least in line with what anyone would have thought you could have done.

Is there something that you saw in maybe the second half of ’06 or second half of ’07 that made you say that you didn’t want to open so many units in a given time period again?

Michael Dixon

First, thank you for the compliment. I think that our operations team, development team have done a phenomenal job of opening that many restaurants. I think the challenge for us is not so much getting them built because our development group can do that, or picking the sites, because there’s plenty to choose from.

It’s really focusing on what’s the right growth rate long-term for us, and there’s a lot of ancillary costs, sort of the pre-opening costs that we’ve alluded to, some other softer costs that I think would warrant us to try to take a stab and balancing the schedule a little bit, which will really again help us longer term, 2009, 2010, et cetera. That’s really the driving force behind it.

John Ivankoe - J.P. Morgan

Okay, I’ll accept that. And then secondly, Mike, I just want to make sure I understand how you are calculating the free cash; they are kind of rough numbers, but I think they are easy just to do off the back of envelope; in ’08, maybe $100 million of net income, round numbers, $20 million of options add back, 75 of D&A maybe gets you a cash of like 195 and 165 or so of CapEx, the number’s like 30. Is there a pretty big chunk of working capital benefit that you are expecting in that number or is there something I’m not thinking about?

Michael Dixon

No, I don’t think you’re too far off. I think your numbers are about right. We’ll get a little bit of --

John Ivankoe - J.P. Morgan

The number I came up with is like $30 million of free cash, so -- that’s not huge, but it matters to your equity bayou.

Michael Dixon

No, we can go through it. I can try and walk through it with you later. I don’t have all the details right in front of me right now.

John Ivankoe - J.P. Morgan

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Dustin Tompkins of Morgan Keegan. Please proceed.

Dustin Tompkins - Morgan Keegan

Thanks. Just quickly, you’ve obviously made some assumptions about 2008 with your earnings growth ahead of revenue growth. Should we assume that you are not expecting much benefit in the way of cost of sales or labor? You know, when you said the 30 to 50 basis points is primarily an account of lower pre-opening and G&A, could you just update your commodity and labor picture in ’08?

Michael Dixon

I think you are pretty much right on. As of right now, we are assuming relatively flat commodity, cost of sales and relatively flat labor, with the real benefits coming as you just indicated on G&A and pre-opening.

Dustin Tompkins - Morgan Keegan

Thank you.

Michael Dixon

Okay.

David Overton

Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

[spaceistheplace]

hier ne interessante Stellungnahme zu den aktuellen CAKE-Zahlen:

The Cheesecake Factory: Still the Best of Breed
posted on: October 24, 2007 | about stocks: CAKE
No matter how expensive gas becomes or if the mortgage meltdown lasts another year, Americans will never stop eating. Its foolish to think that the casual dining sector has run its course and fallen of a cliff.

My recent visit to Phoenix, one of the top casual dining markets, I drove passed at least 12 different casual dining chains within a 2-mile radius and wondered which ones would still be open 5 years from now. Analysts have been systematically beating down these chains for the past 6 months. These so called analysts are misinformed about this industry and have not realized that discretionary spending has really not come to a halt, its that the industry has expanded to quickly. There will be a slowdown in growth for a number of poorly managed chains, marked by recent dismal reports from Ruby Tuesday (RT) and Brinker International Inc. (EAT).

When the casual dining sector growth slows over the next year or so, there will be a few hardy players out there that will be part of any intelligent investor's portfolio.

I will give you a few names to chew on with my top pick being The Cheesecake Factory (CAKE). The company reported 3rd quarter earnings this evening that was a whole penny short of analyst's expectations (26 cents per share earnings), not too shabby (see conference call transcript).

CAKE's management is by far the best in the industry. In fact they will slow growth in 08 so they can buy back shares to the benefit of the company's investors. Some analysts may see this as a sign that the chain's namesake store growth is coming to a grinding halt…which is just a failure to recognize this company still has room to expand and wants to take a breather to increase cash flow.

I see this stock returning to the high 20's early next year. My other picks in this sector are PF Chang's (PFCB), more than 40% below its 52 week high, and Texas Roadhouse (TXRH) long lines continue, down over 30% this year.

As a long term holder of CAKE and TXRH, I highly recommend you visit either one of these well run establishments and see for yourself.

[spaceistheplace]

ich bin heute echt mal gespannt, was die Nasdaq aus den Quartalszahlen von gestern macht...

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

na, es geht wohl heute etwas rückwärts:

head of the Bell: Cheesecake Factory
Wednesday October 24, 9:06 am ET
Analysts Not Sweet on Cheesecake Factory's Operating Environment, As Consumer Spending Sours

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Cheesecake Factory Inc. declined in Wednesday's premarket trading, after analysts warned of softness in the casual dining industry because of worsening consumer spending.

Cheesecake Factory, which operates its namesake restaurants and its Grand Lux Cafe chain, said on Tuesday that third-quarter earnings rose 2 percent on 15 percent higher sales.

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Still, Morgan Keegan analyst Destin M. Tompkins said weak operating fundamentals have pressured shares of Cheesecake over the last several quarters. Tompkins, who maintained his "Market Perform" rating on the stock, trimmed his fiscal 2008 earnings per share estimate, given the continued challenging operating environment.

Tompkins said investors remain focused on Cheesecake's long-term location growth and plans to slow development in 2008 by opening no more than 17 new locations.

Friedman Billings Ramsey analyst Ashley R. Woodruff cut her price target on the stock to $30 from $33 but remained upbeat on Cheesecake's 2008 expansion plan, which she said allows the company to be more selective with sites and the timing of store openings.

However, Woodruff said Cheesecake's same-store sales slowed late in September and early in October, following industrywide trends. Same-store sales is a key indicator of restaurant performance since it measures growth at existing locations, rather than newly opened ones.

"The casual dining industry remains very challenging, and although we think selected companies, like Cheesecake, will hold up OK in this environment, we expect same-store sales to remain lackluster," Woodruff wrote in a client note. She also reiterated her "Outperform" rating on the shares.

The stock fell 65 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $22.65 in premarket trading, after ending at $23.30 in Tuesday's regular session.

[Pontiuspilatus]

Cheesecake Factory Still Cooking
By Billy Fisher October 25, 2007

1 Recommendation

Higher food costs and slower consumer spending have created a bland environment for restaurants these days, but Cheesecake Factory's (Nasdaq: CAKE) latest quarter delivered mouthwatering top- and bottom-line results. However, management suggested that continued economic weakness could slow future growth.

Third-quarter revenue grew 15.4%, aided by the opening of six new Cheesecake Factory locations and one new Grand Lux Cafe. Efficient labor-cost management helped offset higher input costs, leading to earnings-per-share growth of 13%. Menu price increases helped same-store sales inch up 1.2%.

The company's challenged comps growth is relatively consistent when compared to its competitors. On Tuesday, Brinker (NYSE: EAT) reported flat same-store sales for its 2008 Q1, and earlier this month, Ruby Tuesday (NYSE: RT) reported a 4.8% decline in same-store sales for its latest quarter. Darden Restaurants (NYSE: DRI), however, has experienced better results more recently, reporting a 7% improvement in same-store sales growth at its Red Lobster restaurants, and a 4.8% rise at its Olive Garden locations.

Cheesecake Factory's expansion is still on track for the rest of this year, aiming to add 21 new restaurant locations. While growth will slow in fiscal 2008, management has plans to improve operating margins by increasing leverage and lowering pre-opening costs. The reduction of new openings should generate additional free cash flow, which management plans to use to buy back shares.

For a company whose dessert menu now accounts for approximately 15% of its total restaurant sales, there's little doubt that these new openings will be well-received. However, it might take an uptick in the casual dining environment and stronger comps growth to give Cheesecake Factory shares the boost they need.

[spaceistheplace]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 32.172.807 von Pontiuspilatus am 27.10.07 15:09:06

mein Einstieg bei 23,20 Dollar war vielleicht ein bißchen früh....aber egal...tippe eher auf ne Seitwärtsphase in den nächsten Monaten.

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

hier mal ne Heraufstufung incl. ein paar Infos / Einschätzungen.
Ich bin überzeugt, dass der Boden nicht mehr weit weg ist...

Gruss space

Cheesecake Factory Shares Rise
Monday November 5, 9:20 pm ET
Cheesecake Factory Shares Rise Following Upgrade to 'Buy,' Margins Seen Improving

NEW YORK (AP) -- Cheesecake Factory Inc. shares rose Monday after a SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst upgraded the casual dining operator's stock, saying investors should expect earnings to rise despite consumer spending and cost concerns.

Analyst Christopher O'Cull raised his rating on the shares to "Buy" from "Neutral."

The analysts said in a note to investors that the company's plans to lower the number of new restaurants it opens may be a positive step for the brand long-term.

Last month, Cheesecake Factory said it would open 17 restaurants in 2008. The company opened 21 in 2007.

"While fewer unit openings negatively impacts top-line growth, it benefits the margin by reducing the amount of pre-opening expense during the year, thus the company is targeting net income growth to outpace revenue during 2008," he said.

O'Cull added that Cheesecake Factory has withstood a difficult operating environment well while some of its peers in the casual dining sector have faltered. The sector has been plagued by lower consumer spending and higher raw material and labor costs. The spending and cost concerns have taken a toll on profit at companies like P.F. Chang's China Bistro and Ruby Tuesday Inc.

Cheesecake Factory, meanwhile, last month reported a 2 percent profit rise in its third quarter.

"Though inauspicious macroeconomic factors have weakened overall casual dining margin and overall profitability during the past year, on a relative basis The Cheesecake Factory has clearly outperformed the casual dining segment," he said.

Cheesecake Factory shares rose 71 cents, or 3.3 percent, to close at $22.37 Monday.

[spaceistheplace]

Last Call: Cheesecake Factory Inc.
Monday November 12, 3:19 pm ET
Cheesecake Factory Shares Rose After Analyst Says Chain Is Well-Positioned in Troubled Sector

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Cheesecake Factory Inc. rose Monday after a Goldman Sachs analyst said the casual dining operator is better positioned in the sector than its competitors due to its concepts and affluent clientele.

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Analyst Steven T. Kron acknowledged that the casual dining industry has been plagued by consumer spending concerns as gasoline prices continue to rise and the housing market remains weak.

But, he said in a note to investors, the Cheesecake Factory should be able to weather the difficult consumer environment better than most.

"Despite our consistently negative view of casual dining, we see opportunity in Cheesecake Factory as it stands out as a name that faces cyclical, not structural, issues like many of its peers," he said.

Kron said Cheesecake's concepts, which include its flagship Cheesecake Factory chain and its pricier Grand Lux Cafe restaurants, are unique and cater to more affluent clients "at a good value."

Plus, the company will likely be able to keep its costs down since its has most of its commodity contracts in place and has slowed down its plans for opening new restaurants.

Cheesecake Factory shares rose 82 cents, or 3.7 percent, to $22.74 in afternoon trading.

[spaceistheplace]

Cheesecake Factory increases buyback program
Los Angeles Business from bizjournals

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The board of directors of Cheesecake Factory Inc. on Friday increased the company's stock buyback program by 5 million shares, bring the total repurchase authorization to 21 million shares.

Of the 21 million, about 13.5 million have already been repurchased, including 2.2 million in the current quarter. The repurchases were funded through a combination of cash on hand and the company's revolving credit facility.

The repurchases are being made both in private and open-market transactions.

Calabasas Hills' Cheesecake Factory (NASDAQ: CAKE) operates 139 Cheesecake Factory and 12 Grand Lux Cafe restaurants across the United States.

[spaceistheplace]

Nach Starbucks jetzt auch die Milchpreis-Geschichte bei Cheesecake....


Last Call: Cheesecake Factory Slips
Wednesday December 12, 3:35 pm ET
Cheesecake Factory Declines As Analyst Downgrades, Says Expectations for Fiscal 2008 Too High

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Cheesecake Factory Inc. declined on Wednesday, after an analyst downgraded shares of the restaurant operator and said fiscal 2008 earnings per share expectations are too high.

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Shares declined 96 cents, or 4 percent, to $22.80 in afternoon trading.

Friedman, Billings, Ramsey analyst Howard Penney downgraded the stock to "Underperform," or "Sell," from "Outperform" and cut his price target to $21 from $30, expecting weakness in the near future because of soft consumer spending and possible increases in the price of cream cheese.

Penney said Cheesecake's fiscal 2008 earnings per share growth forecast of 22 percent to 24 percent, or $1.32 per share to $1.34 per share, is too aggressive and leaves no room for surprises.

"In this challenging sales and cost environment, surprises are almost a given," Penney wrote in a client note.

Penney said Wall Street's average expectation for $1.31 per share is more reasonable, but still optimistic. He lowered his forecast for the year to $1.25, from $1.30.

[spaceistheplace]

heute mal ein Kurssprung von 12%:

19.12.2007 20:37
Cheesecake Factory says looks forward to talking further with Peltz's Trian

SAN FRANCISCO (Thomson Financial) - Cheesecake Factory (News) said Wednesday it has had a 'preliminary conversation' with billionaire investor Nelson Peltz's Trian fund.

In a brief statement included in a regulatory filing, the Calabasas Hills, Calif.-based restaurant chain said it 'strives to have an open dialogue with its shareholders and looks forward to talking with Trian in that regard. The company has had a preliminary conversation with Trian already, and looks forward to continuing that dialogue.'

In addition, according to media reports, the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday approved an unspecified transaction by Peltz's Trian Star Trust, a fund affiliated with his Trian Fund Management LP, related to Cheesecake Factory.

Shares of Cheesecake Factory rose more than 10.4% to $24.48.

Gabriel Madway

gm/jw

[spaceistheplace]

20.12.2007 00:46
Investor Nelson Peltz acquires 14% stake in Cheesecake Factory: WSJ

SAN FRANCISCO (Thomson Financial) - A fund affiliated with billionaire investor Nelson Peltz has acquired a 14% stake in Cheesecake Factory Inc., according to a media report late Wednesday.

In addition, Peltz is considering increasing his investment in the Calabasas Hills, Calif.-based restaurant chain, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site, citing a person familiar with the situation.

The investment was made through stock and derivative securities, the Journal reported.

Earlier today, the Cheesecake Factory (News) said it has had a 'preliminary conversation' with Peltz's Trian fund.

In a regulatory filing, the company said it 'strives to have an open dialogue with its shareholders and looks forward to talking with Trian in that regard. The company has had a preliminary conversation with Trian already, and looks forward to continuing that dialogue.'

Shares of Cheesecake Factory closed the regular session up $2.37, or about 10.7%, at $24.54.

Katherine Hunt

kh/gm

[Pontiuspilatus]

Cheesecake Factory Shares Fall
Wednesday January 2, 5:21 pm ET
Cheesecake Factory Shares Fall, Wedbush Morgan Analyst Says Price Boost Won't Save Margins

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of casual dining operator Cheesecake Factory Inc. floundered yet again Wednesday after a Wedbush Morgan analyst lambasted the company's expected price increase, saying it won't be enough to protect profits.

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Shares fell $1.67, or 7 percent, to $22.04 Wednesday.

The drop comes after analyst Brian Moore cut his rating on the shares to "Hold" from "Buy" and said in a note to investors a menu test in Los Angeles indicated the company plans to raise its prices by 1.5 percent in the first half of the year.

Moore said that boost will not be enough to protect the company's margins and profit in the face of higher food and labor costs and lower consumer spending.

The analyst said he now expects the company to lower its annual earnings and sales expectations in the next few weeks.

Moore also said that although some investors and analysts were hoping the involvement of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz would boost the stock, that scenario may not materialize.

Peltz's investment fund Trian Star Trust received approval from the Federal Trade Commission last month to buy a stake in the company. The news sent shares rising about 12 percent.

But Moore said Peltz "may not be the catalyst we initially thought" since it appears he is not looking to acquire the company, which "already runs a pretty tight ship" with sales per square foot running much higher than the industry average.

[spaceistheplace]

ich bin seit 31. Dez. bei 24 Dollar draußen, geld für Buxe locker gemacht, die aber zum Glück noch nicht gekauft habe...momentan ist Pulver trocken halten angesagt...


Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

Guten Morgen miteinander,

will mich mal melden, denn ich habe Euch was mitzuteilen:

Ich werde mich ab sofort aus WO und aus dem ganzen Börsengeschehen mehr oder minder zurückziehen. Ich habe mir das schon länger überlegt und bin jetzt über Ostern zu diesem Schluss gekommen.

Ich habe gestern fast komplett meinen Aktienbestand verkloppt. Ich habe mit meiner Bank, bei der ich einen Kredit über unser Haus laufen habe, ein große Sondertilgung vereinbart und werde diese in diesen Tagen durchführen. Da fließt das Geld hinein. Lieber meinen Kredit tilgen bzw. abbezahlen als auf im Endeffekt höhere Renditen am Markt spekulieren. Das kann böse in die Hose gehen bzw. ich denke, das eben die Renditen an den Märkten in den nächsten jahren nicht zum Himmel wachsen. Nummer Sicher, fertig...

Ein sehr kleiner Rest ist noch nicht über die Spekufrist (sind aber eh keine großen Gewinne drauf), warte diese aber ab. Bis Ende des Jahres wird dann der Rest des Kredites abbezahlt.

Zudem bin ich auch zum Schluss gekommen, hier bei WO meine Aktivitäten einzustellen. Ich hatte ja schon öfters geschrieben, dass ich zu viel Zeit aufwende und dann doch immer wieder in die gleiche Schiene verfallen bin, einfach zu viel Zeit dafür aufzuwenden, oft auch einfach zu verbissen war, was ich als nicht gut empfinde. Daher werde ich jetzt komplett aufhören und mich auch abmelden, sonst wird das wieder nix.

Also macht es gut, haltet den Thread auch ohne mich als Threadgrünmder warm…
Liebe Grüße an alle
space

[spaceistheplace2]

Hallo zusammen,

I'm back on board bei WO zwar unter einem anderen Usernamen, aber immer noch der Gleiche mit den gleichen Favoriten. Ich wüsste auch nicht, was sich grundsätzlich an diesen Unternehmen groß geändert haben sollte, Krise hin oder her....

Ich poste hier, damit der Thread nicht einschläft und werde mich gegebenfalls einbringen, wenn ich es für notwendig erachte. Die "Versorgung" mit news hier werde ich aber so nicht mehr wie gewohnt durchführen, allein schon wegen Zeitmangels.
Vornehmlich werde ich aber im Gewinnerthread " Gewinnerbranchen der Jahre 2006 bis 2040" posten.

Gruss space

[spaceistheplace]

Hallo,

so, ich habe mir jetzt wieder den alten Namen freischalten lassen von WO, bin also wieder wie gewohnt unter dem namen "spaceistheplace" on board.

Gruß
space