Brinker price target raised to $42 from $36 at Piper Sandler

Piper Sandler analyst Brian Mullan raised the firm’s price target on Brinker to $42 from $36 and keeps a Neutral rating on the shares. For Brinker’s upcoming Fiscal Q2 earnings release, the firm’s sense is that investors expect a company owned same-store sales result for Chili’s that is about in-line with, to perhaps slightly better than, the current consensus estimate of +6.5%. As it pertains to Brinker’s Fiscal 2024 adjusted EPS guidance range of $3.35 to $3.65, Piper gets the sense that there is some general expectation that this will be revised higher in some form or fashion. But the important “wrinkle” to consider here as on offset is that industry traffic appears to be off to a “rough start” here in the quarter-to-date time period, so there exists some investor questions around how management will decide to approach this from a conservatism perspective, it adds.