Wingstop gets drummed the hardest since 2020 as earnings fall flat

Chicken-wing behemoth Wingstop is plummeting as much as 20% in early trading, the largest intraday drop since March 2020. 

Third-quarter earnings per share were $0.88, below Wall Street’s call for $0.96. This is more a matter of a company failing to live up to very high expectations than it is a chicken-wing-seller laying a goose egg: domestic same-store sales growth was still a piping hot 20.9% year on year.

The plunge is no doubt triggering some Wingstop losses (sorry). The stock had been crushing the S&P 500 year-to-date, but now finds itself with a return below with the benchmark US stock index.

Baird analyst David Tarantino, who has an outperform rating on the stock, writes that the drop “will prove to be a good buying opportunity for longer-term investors.” Jon Tower, a Citi analyst who rates Wingstop as neutral, agrees that this class of buyers will likely be “swooping in.”