10 Biggest Restaurant Franchisees of '07

SALT LAKE CITY (Blue MauMau) - America's largest ten restaurant franchise owners by sales are ranked from a pool of hundreds of thousands of franchise owners.

America's Top 10 Largest Restaurant Franchisees of 2007

Source: Technomic/Restaurant Finance, compiled by Blue MauMau

There's a couple of things that catch the eye. Two of the top three franchisees are assoicated with Yum Brands. Private equity firms also are fairly dominant factors with these large franchisees. For example, NPC International, franchise owner to some 800 Pizza Huts, is owned by Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity. Or Pepper Dining has an affiliate firm, K-MAC Enterprises that in 2007 invested in 89 Chili's restaurants.

Some top restaurant franchisees are now or have been publicly traded companies. For example, with some 322 Burger King units and other brands, Carrols (TAST) is traded on NASDAQ.

The rare public glimpse of financial statements of a franchisee is interesting. For example, in 2007 Carrols showed $54 million in operating income and $15 million in net income with a number of key ratios outperforming the restaurant industry. Five-year average Earnings Before Income Tax and Depreciation (EBITD) was 11.05% compared to the industry's lower 7.42%.  Carrols' return on assets, a ratio of the dollars of profits the company has achieved for each dollar of assets it controls, was a hefty 2.81 compared to the restaurant industry's lower 1.63.

In the upcoming weeks, Blue MauMau will publish a series of interviews with many of the captains of these largest restaurant franchisees to have them share their considerable insights into the current challenges and opportunities of the market.

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