BID TerminalOpen complete report
Research library Consumer

Back of Napkin

Wingstop Inc. WING

Three-pass checkedFresh as companies report

Wingstop's operating income grew 21% last year. Its average restaurant sold $242,000 less than it did a year earlier.

Those two facts coexist because the company opened 566 restaurants while the ones already open shrank, and the stock has fallen 66% as people worked out which number matters.

WING · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$87$177$267$357$448 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jun '25Jan '26Aug '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Wingstop sells chicken wings, boneless wings and tenders in a dozen sauces out of small takeaway units with almost no seating. Around 98% of the 3,255 restaurants are owned by franchisees, so the company collects a royalty on every sale and carries almost none of the operating cost. That structure is why the margins look like a software company's and why the model breaks in a specific way: royalties are a percentage of franchisee sales, so when the average restaurant sells less, the company earns less per unit and can only offset it by adding units.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05The shape of the payoff
  6. 06Closing thoughts
  7. 07Methodology

Continue with WING

Get the complete Back of Napkin free.

Choose this as your free complete report. No card required.

Read the complete report

More company research

View all research
Wingstop Inc. WINGThey pay Michael Skipworth to grow adjusted profit and to open new restaurants, with nothing in the plan tied to the sales of the restaurants already open, which means he will keep the development machine at full speed through a demand slump, because franchisees fund the buildings and every opening pays the scoreboard twice. Proxy Report Wingstop Inc. WINGWingstop's franchise machine is still opening a restaurant nearly every day while the customers inside its existing restaurants quietly thin out. Moat Dive SharkNinja, Inc. SNSharkNinja's growth just reaccelerated to 22%, its fastest quarter since 2024, and the stock has responded by doubling off its April low to 38 times trailing earnings. Back of Napkin AutoZone, Inc. AZOAutoZone's operating income fell in two consecutive quarters and then grew 6.6%, while revenue growth sat perfectly still at roughly 8% throughout. Back of Napkin