Burgers and buyouts were passing ships that were fit to be featured this past week. Let's take a closer look.
Wag your finger, but please don't leave it in the chili
Things may be getting hot and juicy at Wendy's (NYSE:WEN) now that the third-largest burger chain is being pressured to unload some of its concepts. With investors excited about the recent move at McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) to take Chipotle public, we really can't assume that Wendy's Baja Fresh chain will garner the same kind of mouth-watering zeal.
I'm a fan of Baja Fresh. I would say the chain wins my business at least once a month. However, I'm not exactly in the majority here, given that Baja Fresh has struggled under its beefy parent company.
Wendy's is already set to take a small chunk of its Tim Hortons chain public. Tim Hortons is a Canadian institution and is a much larger contributor to Wendy's results than second-tier concepts like Baja Fresh, Pasta Pomodoro, and Cafe Express.
There is another factor here working against Wendy's caving in to the pressure to spin off its ancillary eateries: The stock hit a new all-time high on Thursday. If it isn't broken, the cries to fix it will go unheard.
The company has clearly come a long way from when many -- me included -- thought the finger-in-the-chili incident would slug Wendy's in the kisser. I didn't think Wendy's would be able to bounce back so quickly, even after it was determined that the incident was faked. I even thought that the free Frosty promotion to cleanse itself would backfire.
Companies usually take more than just a few quarters to snap back from adversity. Odwalla eventually turned to Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) for redemption. Foodmaker went on to ditch its name to become Jack in the Box (NYSE:JBX). But Wendy's got its groove back a lot quicker, perhaps because no one was physically harmed as it won back its temporarily tainted name.
So I wouldn't hold out for a Baja Fresh IPO anytime soon, though I do recommend the chicken tortilla soup.
When dots attack
As Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) announced that it was buying del.icio.us, my thoughts were pretty much the same as Alyce Lomax's -- what the heck is del.icio.us beyond a clever application of the third-tier US domain extension?
Well, del.icio.us is a bookmarking site where folks can share music, books, and website links. I had kind of the same reaction when Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) bought Orkut, an obscure social networking site.
Google and Yahoo! are flush with cash, so why are they buying these tiny companies? One can argue that Yahoo! and Google are so mighty that it's the cost-effective approach to build out their online empires. I would argue that they are doing themselves a disservice by leaving the more important players out there for an eventual rival to win over. Why didn't Yahoo! or Google buy up social networking leader MySpace.com? Why didn't it beat out Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) for Skype? Taking the cheap way out may seem to make sense, but leaving a giant out there to be acquired by a different company does not make sense.
No, Google and Yahoo! should not have corporate mandates to buy every single company out there that attracts eyeballs. However, they need to respect the possibility that if they don't hold up their bid cards, some of these companies will go to competitors that will only get stronger.
Yes, the Internet can be that way. It can be oh-so-very vi.cio.us.
The headlines behind this week's stories:
Until next week, I remain,
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz loves to look back, even if it means he falls on his face going forward. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. The Foo l has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
