Roark Capital, The Company That Made A Bid For Buffalo Wild Wings, Has Quite The Restaurant Portfolio

Shares of Buffalo Wild Wings BWLD surged higher by more than 25 percent after the restaurant chain received a take-out offer.

What You Need To Know

Roark Capital offered to buy the chicken wing casual fast food chain for $2.3 billion, or more than $150 per share, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Roark Capital, a private equity group, holds multiple assets in the restaurant industry. Most notably, the firm backed Wingstop Inc WING, a rival chicken wing chain that has shown strong growth numbers and earned the backing of many Wall Street analysts.

Some of Roark Capital's other assets in its food portfolio include:

• Arby's
• Atkins Nutritionals
• Auntie Anne's
• CKE Restaurants, parent company of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's
• Jimmy John's
• Moe's Southwest Grill

Why It's Important

Roark Capital appears to have extensive knowledge of the food industry, including running multiple national chains. However, the firm's offer of around $150 per share would leave many investors with a loss as the stock trading as high as $175.10 over the past year and briefly traded above $200 per share level in 2015. On the other hand, investors who took advantage of Buffalo Wild Wings' stock south of $100 per share would likely be happy with the return.

Meanwhile, the restaurant chain's recent third-quarter earnings report showed it has some momentum working in its favor with various initiatives to drive growth.

What's Next?

It's unclear how investors would react to the deal, including activist investor and major shareholder Marcato Capital who initially argued the stock could be valued at $400 per share by 2021.

B-Dub's stock traded around $147.85 at time of publication, up more than 26 percent.

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Image credit: Mike Mozart, Flickr