So what's driving all the traffic to their bars? It isn't just the sports games. Buffalo Wild Wings has introduced a new "Guest Service" plan just a few months ago and the results have brought in the customers. The restaurant now offers table-side tablets for you to enjoy trivia games and guest experience "captains" who help you figure out how to use the aforementioned tablets. Welcome to the 21st century, sports bars.
But that wasn't the only news the company had to report -- CEO Sally Smith also took the opportunity to announce that she's sold over $214,000 of her own personal Wild Wings stock recently, which leaves her equity stake in the company at around $11 million. She doesn't have to give a reason, but keep in mind that, as a company insider, she did have to report this to the SEC and make public the news. We assume she'll spend the money by buying us a round.
As any good Twitter user knows, there are good tweets, and there are bad ones -- similarly, this earnings report had some positives and some negatives. On the plus side, the number of users improved after shrinking over the past four quarters (monthly active users, of which there are 255 million, rose nearly 6% from last quarter). On the negative side, investors are getting worried that most Americans aren't flocking to Twitter like birds of a feather, and this could hurt the company's ability to become a big advertising player.
The bottom line is that investors are expecting a $25 billion company like Twitter to stop generating losses and become a huge advertising moneymaker ... soon. Twitter's execs though have heard the concerns and are making adjustments -- no wonder they recently changed the homepage to look more like competitor Facebook.
3. Big M&A drama for pharmaceuticals and telecom giants
4. The Fed slashed stimulus (again)
The Federal Reserve didn't have any party treats for investors after its two-day, eight-times-per-year policy-setting meeting. Instead, the central bank announced that it's cutting its "quantitative easing" stimulus policy from $55 billion in monthly bond purchases (which keep interest rates low to encourage economy-boostin' borrowing) to $45 billion. Although Wall Street loves stimulus and has sold off stocks before when the stim was cut, investors didn't react this time around, because the policy change was expected.
- Monday: ISM Non-Manufacturing Index; first-quarter earnings reports: Kate Spade, Manchester United, Pfizer
- Tuesday: earnings reports: DirecTV, Walt Disney, Whole Foods Market
- Wednesday: Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen speaks; earnings reports: Ceasars Entertainment, Hugo Boss, Molson Coors
- Thursday: Weekly jobless claims; earnings reports: MercadoLibre, Monster Beverage, Wendy's
- Friday: Wholesale trade report