Dunkin’ Brands Group, Inc. operates under the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins brands worldwide and has over 13,000 Dunkin’ Donuts and over 8,100 Baskin-Robbins restaurants.

Using financial websites such as finance.yahoo.com and money.msn.com, you can access a wealth of financial information for companies such as Dunkin’ Brands. By entering the company’s ticker symbol, DNKN, you will be able to access a great deal of useful information, including a summary of what Dunkin’ Brands does (Profile), a chart of its recent stock price (Chart), EPS estimates (Analysis), recent news stories (Summary), and a list of key financial data and ratios (Statistics).

In researching a company’s operating performance, a good place to start is the recent stock price performance. From an interactive chart, you can obtain a chart of the company’s stock price performance and compare it to the overall market (as measured by the S&P 500 index) between 2011 and 2020. As you can see, Dunkin’ Brands has had its ups and downs. But the company’s overall performance has been strong during the past 5 years, following the market trend, but generally outperforming the market the past 2 years or so.

You can also find Dunkin’ Brands’ recent financial statements (Financials). Typically, you can find annual balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements for 4 years. Quarterly information is also available.

Questions

1. Looking at the most recent year available, what is the amount of total assets on Dunkin’ Brands’ balance sheet? What percentage is fixed assets, such as plant and equipment? What percentage is current assets?
How much has the company grown over the years that are shown?
2. Does Dunkin’ Brands have very much long-term debt? What are the chief ways in which Dunkin’ Brands has financed assets?
3. Looking at the statement of cash flows, what factors can explain the change in the company’s cash position over the last couple of years?
4. Looking at the income statement, what are the company’s most recent sales and net income? Over the past several years, what has been the sales growth rate? What has been the growth rate in net income?
5. Over the past few years, has there been a strong correlation between stock price performance and reported earnings? Explain.