Last Updated on 06/29/2021 by GS Staff
Five Guys Burgers and Fries is a private company. Since it is private, you cannot purchase shares of the company for investment. In other words, Five Guys stock is not available for purchase through a broker.
Will Five Guy Ever Be Public?
If we had to bet, we would say that Five Guys will remain private for the foreseeable future. The company is largely owned by the Murrell family with Jerry Murrell being the founder of the company. Jerry likes to keep things simple. One look at Five Guys limited menu options confirms this. Going public would only complicate the business with burdensome requirements such as quarterly reports, annual meetings, auditing requirements, and other SEC rules. It’s a road that Mr. Murrell likely does not want to take during his lifetime.
Furthermore, Five Guys has no need to go public at this time. Its franchise model allows it to be asset-light with the ability to scale without the need to raise capital (i.e. through an IPO) to build new restaurants and maintain existing ones. The franchisees take on costs that may have otherwise been the responsibility of the corporation without a franchise model.
However, as Fool.com states in its article titled Why You’ll Probably Never Own Five Guys Stock, Jerry Murrell is in his 70s and a transition will eventually come where likely one of his sons (one of the Five Guys) will become CEO. There is a possibility that the company will become public when a change at the top happens. However, you shouldn’t wait around for this to potentially happen. You may want to research current publicly traded competitors of Five Guys for possible investment.
Five Guys Publicly Traded Competitors
Here are several publicly traded companies that compete with Five Guys that you may wish to investigate further for potential investment:
- Shake Shack – Shake Shack trades on the NYSE under the symbol SHAK. The company is one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the country as of 2020. The fiscal year 2020 revenue was approximately $523 million. Shake Shack had 311 restaurants at the end of 2020 and plans to open 35 to 40 new units in 2021 and 45 to 50 units in 2022, according to its 2020 annual report.
- McDonald’s – The king of quick-service restaurants trades under the symbol MCD on the NYSE. It had well over 39,000 restaurants in 2020 across the globe. The fiscal year 2020 revenue was about $19.2 billion. The 2020 annual report for the company indicates that they plan to open 1,300 restaurants globally in 2021, 500 of which are projected to be in the U.S.
- Wendy’s – Wendy’s trades under the symbol WEN. The fiscal year 2020 revenue was around $1.7 billion. It is considered the 2nd largest quick-service restaurant for burgers/fries in the U.S. based on traffic share. At the end of 2020, the company had 6,828 restaurants globally.
- Restaurant Brands International – Restaurant Brands International trades under the symbol QSR on the NYSE. They are the company behind Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons. At the close of 2020, it had 18,625 Burger Kings, 3,451 Popeyes, and 4,949 Tim Hortons. Its revenue was approximately $4.97 billion in 2020.
- Red Robin Gourmet Burgers – Red Robin trades under the stock symbol RRGB on the Nasdaq. There were about 540 Red Robin Restaurants in the U.S. and Canada in the first quarter of 2021. The company reported 2020 revenue of about $868.72 million.
- Jack in the Box – Jack in the Box trades under an appropriate stock symbol for its name, JACK. In September of 2020, it had 2,241 restaurants that were mostly in the west and south of the U.S. Its fiscal year 2020 revenue was about $1 billion.
