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Topic: Growth Stocks

RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC. $33

RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC. $33(New York symbol QSR; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 467.6 million; Market cap: $15.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.8; Dividend yield: 1.7%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.rbi.com) operates 4,413 Tim Hortons coffee and donut locations and 15,003 Burger King outlets in 100 countries.

If you set aside restructuring costs and other unusual items, Restaurant Brands earned $561.1 million, or $1.18 a share, in 2015. That’s up 20.0% from $467.6 million, or $0.98, in 2014.

Sales fell 3.5%, to $4.05 billion from $4.20 billion. If you exclude the impact of the U.S. dollar on Restaurant Brands’overseas operations, sales gained 9.2%.

Tim Hortons’same-store sales rose 5.6%, thanks to new lunch wraps and strong demand for its coffee and other beverages. Burger King’s same-store sales gained 5.4%, also due to new items such as chicken fries and a Halloween Whopper.

Burger King will soon start selling flame-grilled, 100%-beef hot dogs at its 7,100 U.S. outlets. Few of its competitors offer that alternative to burgers, so the move should help attract new customers.

Restaurant Brands is using its improving earnings to pay down the debt it took on to buy Tim Hortons. As of December 31, 2015, its long-term debt was $8.7 billion, down 4.5% from a year ago. At that time, the company held cash of $757.8 million. Even so, it’s debt is a high 56% of its market cap.

The company will probably earn $1.72 a share in 2016, and the stock trades at 19.2 times that forecast. The company recently raised its dividend by 7.7%; the new annual rate of $0.56 yields 1.7%.

Restaurant Brands International is still a hold.

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