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DIN, Dine Brands Global Inc.

Restaurants consumer brand Cyclical

A restaurant business, earning on traffic through its doors and the returns on each new unit.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

DIN · Dine Brands Global Inc.

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$879M

+8.2% YoY · 5% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $890M 5-yr avg $866M

Gross margin 64% 5-yr avg 62%

Operating margin 11.2% 5-yr avg 15.6%

ROIC 9% 5-yr avg 14%

Owner-earnings margin 4% 5-yr avg 11%

Free cash flow margin 4% 5-yr avg 11%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

Situation: Cyclical. Margins collapse and recover repeatedly across the record; a single year, good or bad, misstates the through-cycle earning power.
What moves the needle: Gross margin has run about 63% and operating margin about 14% through the cycle, a wide spread between price and the cost of what it sells — whether that advantage is durable pricing power or a margin that can erode is the question the record is for. The operating margin has swung widely — from −50% to 28% — on a steadier 63% gross margin, so what moves it sits below the gross line, in operating spend and one-off charges more than in the cost of the product itself. Read this kind of business on same-store sales and unit economics. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?: Return on capital has sat near the cost of capital (median 9%). By owner earnings: roughly 12% of revenue reaches owners as cash, consistently. The cycle and the balance sheet decide this one; the worst year tells more than the median, and the rest is in the 10-K.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2016’16	2017’17	2018’18	2019’19	2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMMar 2026
											Income statement
$788M	$732M	$781M	$910M	$689M	$896M	$909M	$831M	$812M	$879M	$890M	RevenueRevenue
63%	60%	58%	66%	65%	67%	65%	59%	58%	63%	64%	Gross marginGross mgn
19%	23%	21%	18%	21%	19%	21%	24%	24%	23%	23%	SG&A / revenueSG&A/rev
$219M	($366M)	$111M	$209M	($33M)	$193M	$182M	$186M	$90M	$25M	$100M	Operating incomeOp. inc.
27.8%	−50.1%	14.2%	22.9%	−4.7%	21.6%	20.1%	22.3%	11.0%	2.9%	11.2%	Operating marginOp. mgn
$101M	($343M)	$80M	$104M	($104M)	$98M	$81M	$97M	$65M	$17M	$16M	Net incomeNet inc.
36%	—	27%	25%	—	20%	29%	13%	28%	32%	28%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$118M	$66M	$140M	$155M	$97M	$196M	$89M	$131M	$108M	$89M	$80M	Operating cash flowOp. cash
$31M	$31M	$32M	$42M	$43M	$40M	$38M	$36M	$39M	$43M	$44M	DepreciationDeprec.
($24M)	$367M	$17M	($2M)	$145M	$47M	($46M)	($14M)	($12M)	$16M	$6M	Working capital & otherWC & other
$6M	$13M	$14M	$19M	$11M	$17M	$35M	$37M	$14M	$36M	$44M	CapexCapex
0.7%	1.8%	1.8%	2.1%	1.6%	1.9%	3.9%	4.5%	1.7%	4.0%	5.0%	Capex / revenueCapex/rev
$112M	$52M	$126M	$136M	$86M	$179M	$54M	$94M	$94M	$53M	$36M	Owner earningsOwner earn.
14.3%	7.2%	16.1%	14.9%	12.4%	20.0%	5.9%	11.3%	11.6%	6.1%	4.0%	Owner earnings marginOE mgn
$112M	$52M	$126M	$136M	$86M	$179M	$54M	$94M	$94M	$53M	$36M	Free cash flowFCF
14.3%	7.2%	16.1%	14.9%	12.4%	20.0%	5.9%	11.3%	11.6%	6.1%	4.0%	Free cash flow marginFCF mgn
$0	$0	$20M	$0	$0	$0	$78M	$100K	$9M	$0	$0	AcquisitionsAcquis.
$67M	$70M	$51M	$47M	$24M	$0	$31M	$32M	$31M	$31M	$26M	Dividends paidDiv. paid
$55M	$10M	$34M	$110M	$30M	$4M	$120M	$26M	$12M	$61M	—	BuybacksBuybacks
10%	-30%	8%	17%	-3%	23%	17%	22%	8%	2%	9%	ROICROIC
											Balance sheet
$141M	$117M	$137M	$116M	$383M	$361M	$270M	$146M	$187M	$128M	$104M	Cash & investmentsCash+inv
$51M	$55M	$43M	$41M	$37M	$56M	$52M	$36M	$38M	—	$34M	Accounts payablePayables
$366M	$386M	$382M	$347M	$587M	$574M	$480M	$358M	$386M	$352M	$284M	Current assetsCur. assets
$286M	$305M	$316M	$358M	$349M	$411M	$471M	$460M	$445M	$366M	$320M	Current liabilitiesCur. liab.
1.3×	1.3×	1.2×	1.0×	1.7×	1.4×	1.0×	0.8×	0.9×	1.0×	0.9×	Current ratioCurr. ratio
$697M	$339M	$345M	$344M	$252M	$252M	$254M	$254M	$249M	$250M	$250M	GoodwillGoodwill
$2.3B	$1.7B	$1.8B	$2.0B	$2.1B	$2.0B	$1.9B	$1.7B	$1.8B	$1.7B	$1.7B	Total assetsAssets
$1.3B	$1.3B	$1.3B	$1.3B	$1.5B	$1.3B	$1.3B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.2B	Total debtDebt
$1.1B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.2B	$1.1B	$918M	$1.1B	$1.0B	$1000M	$1.1B	$1.1B	Net debt / (cash)Net debt
3.6×	-5.9×	—	3.0×	-0.4×	2.7×	2.7×	2.5×	—	—	1.3×	Interest coverageInt. cov.
$196M	($216M)	($202M)	($242M)	($355M)	($243M)	($301M)	($301M)	($216M)	($274M)	($290M)	Shareholders’ equityEquity
1.4%	1.5%	1.4%	1.2%	1.8%	1.3%	1.8%	1.4%	2.0%	1.5%	1.6%	Stock comp / revenueSBC/rev
—	$358M	—	—	$92M	—	—	—	$7M	—	—	Goodwill written downGW imp.
											Per share
18.1M	17.7M	17.8M	17.2M	16.2M	16.9M	15.9M	15.2M	14.9M	14.3M	12.6M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$43.45	$41.25	$43.90	$52.78	$42.47	$53.06	$57.19	$54.68	$54.52	$61.49	$70.61	Revenue / shareRev/sh
$5.57	$-19.32	$4.52	$6.05	$-6.41	$5.79	$5.10	$6.39	$4.36	$1.20	$1.29	EPS (diluted)EPS
$6.21	$2.95	$7.09	$7.87	$5.27	$10.60	$3.40	$6.18	$6.32	$3.73	$2.86	Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$6.21	$2.95	$7.09	$7.87	$5.27	$10.60	$3.40	$6.18	$6.32	$3.73	$2.86	Free cash flow / shareFCF/sh
$3.72	$3.93	$2.87	$2.72	$1.47	$0.00	$1.93	$2.09	$2.10	$2.17	$2.04	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$0.31	$0.75	$0.80	$1.13	$0.67	$1.00	$2.22	$2.45	$0.95	$2.49	$3.52	Cap. spending / shareCapex/sh
$10.82	$-12.15	$-11.37	$-14.02	$-21.85	$-14.38	$-18.93	$-19.81	$-14.50	$-19.15	$-23.02	Book value / shareBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+3.9%/yr	+7.7%/yr
Owner earnings / share	−5.5%/yr	−6.7%/yr
EPS	−15.7%/yr	—
Dividends / share	−5.8%/yr	+8.0%/yr
Capital spending / share	+26.0%/yr	+29.9%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count

14Mpeak FY2016

ROIC

2%low FY2017

Gross margin

63%low FY2018

Net debt ÷ owner earnings

19.9×peak FY2017

Owner earnings vs. net income

Owner earningsNet income

The accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.

$53Mowner earningsvs.$17Mnet incomelow FY2017

Where the cash went

ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedBeyond op. cash

Each year's outlays against its operating cash: the mix, and how it drifts. The hatched cap is spending beyond that year's operating cash — financed from the balance sheet or borrowing, not operations.

FY2016FY2025

Owner-earnings bridge

FY2021–FY2025cash-flow statement, SEC EDGAR →

Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.

In fiscal 2025 the business turned $17M of profit into $53M of owner earnings: more cash than the profit line showed, after the non-cash charges and the capital it put back in.

Reported net income$17M

Owner earnings$53M · 6% of revenue

	FY2025	FY2024	FY2023	FY2022	FY2021
Reported net income	$17M	$65M	$97M	$81M	$98M
Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back	+$43M	+$39M	+$36M	+$38M	+$40M
Stock-based compensationreal costnon-cash, but a real cost	+$13M	+$16M	+$12M	+$16M	+$12M
Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items	+$16M	−$12M	−$14M	−$46M	+$47M
Cash from operations	$89M	$108M	$131M	$89M	$196M
Capital expenditurecash put back in to keep running and to grow	−$36M	−$14M	−$37M	−$35M	−$17M
Owner earnings	$53M	$94M	$94M	$54M	$179M
Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue	6%	12%	11%	6%	20%

Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the capital it must spend to hold its position . The cash-flow statement also adds stock comp back as non-cash, but it is a real cost paid in shares; counted as the expense it is (less $13M), owner earnings is nearer $40M.

Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Will it survive?

Can it pay its interest? 1.3×

Thin

Operating income $99M ÷ interest expense $74M

What this means
Operating profit covers interest, but with little room. A bad year, a refinancing at higher rates, or a revenue wobble closes the gap fast.
How heavy is the debt, net of cash? $1.1B · 10.7× operating profit

Heavy net debt

Cash $128M − debt $1.2B

What this means
Netting $128M of cash and short-term investments against $1.2B of debt leaves $1.1B owed, about 10.7× a year's operating profit (12.0× on the gross debt, before the cash). Net debt is the leverage figure that matters: the cash is already set against the debt. Strategic or illiquid investments aren't counted here.
How long is cash tied up? —

Not enough data

What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.

Is it a good business?

Return on invested capital 8%

Solid through the cycle

10-yr median, range -30%–23%; 9% latest = NOPAT $67M ÷ invested capital $786M

Industry peers: median 7%

What this means
The rate the business earns on the money tied up in it, Buffett's north star, because over time a stock tracks the ROIC beneath it. Above ~15% sustained hints at a moat; a return below the cost of capital (~8%) erodes value as a business grows rather than building it — the test Buffett weighs most. The headline is the median of the last 10 years (it ran 9% most recently), so one peak or trough year doesn't set the verdict. Asset-light businesses (R&D expensed, little capital) read artificially high, pair this with Owner Earnings.
Owner-earnings margin 12%

Solid through the cycle

10-yr median margin, range 6%–20%; latest $53M = operating cash $89M − maintenance capex $36M

Industry peers: median 6%

What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's 6% of revenue this year, a 12% median across 10 years. Treating stock comp as the real expense it is (less $13M of SBC) leaves $40M.
Are earnings backed by cash? 5.20×

Cash-backed

Cash from ops $89M ÷ net income $17M

What this means
How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy, growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.

How is the cash used?

Where do the earnings go? 172%

Returned more than it generated

Dividends + buybacks $92M ÷ Owner Earnings $53M

What this means
The company returned more than it generated: against $53M of Owner Earnings, $92M (172%) went back to shareholders, $31M dividends, $61M buybacks — the excess came from the balance sheet or borrowing, not the year's operations. Net of $13M stock comp, the real buyback was about $48M. Sustained, that pattern draws down cash or adds debt; the net-debt line above shows where it stands.
Investing or harvesting? 0.83×

Maintaining

Capex $36M ÷ depreciation $43M

What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.

Graham’s defensive tests · 0 of 5 met

Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.

Adequate size Miss

Revenue ≥ $2B · $879M

What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
Strong liquidity Miss

Current ratio ≥ 2× · 0.96×

What this means
Current assets at least twice current liabilities, near-term bills covered without touching the business. Strict by design: many cash-rich modern firms run leaner and miss it, holding their cushion in longer-dated securities.
Conservative debt Miss

Debt ≤ working capital · $1.2B vs ($14M) WC

What this means
Graham's rule that borrowings not exceed net current assets. Capital-heavy and buyback-heavy firms routinely fail it, read it next to interest coverage, not alone.
Earnings stability Miss

A profit every year (10-yr record) · 2 loss years

What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
Dividend record Near

Uninterrupted dividends · 9 of 10 yrs

What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
Earnings growth —

Earnings +33% over the record · —

What this means
Earnings were negative early in the record, a growth rate isn't meaningful.
Moderate price —

P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price

What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $4.71/share (latest year $1.35), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $-21.59/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.

Durability & moat, 2016–2025

Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.

Profitable years 8 of 10

What this means
Lost money in 2 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
Return on capital ≥ 15% 4 of 10 yrs

What this means
A moat shows up as a high return on invested capital that holds year after year, not one good vintage.
Operating margin −3% → 12% (3-yr avg ends)

In the filing’s words The record and the words agree: the margin widened and the filing attributes the gain to its own pricing, not volume alone.

What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about −3% early to 12% lately, median 14% — pricing power intact or improving.
Reinvestment, incremental ROIC returns capital

What this means
The capital base barely grew: this business returns cash through dividends and buybacks rather than reinvesting. Judge it on the cash returned, not on compounding.
Owner earnings growth −1%/yr

What this means
Owner earnings shrank about 1% a year over the record.
Worst year 2017 · −50.1% op. margin

What this means
Operations went underwater in 2017, understand why before trusting the good years.
Share count −2.6%/yr

What this means
The share count is shrinking, buybacks are quietly growing your slice of the business.
Dividend record paid

What this means
Paid a dividend in 9 of the years on record.
How management talks about it Owner’s terms

What this means
Returns have thinned, but the filing discusses it in an owner’s vocabulary rather than selling past it — candor about a hard stretch counts for more than an adjective.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Moderate contestability

AI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.

In its own filing Named as a competitive risk

Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.

“Our failure to obtain or adequately protect our intellectual property rights (including in response to developments in artificial intelligence technologies), may diminish our competitiveness and could materially harm our business and financial condition.”

The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Current Position

as of the latest quarter, Mar 29, 2026

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assets$284M

Cash & short-term investments$104M
Inventory$12M
Other current assets$167M

Current liabilities$320M

Accounts payable$34M
Other current liabilities$286M

Current ratio0.89×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×

Quick ratio0.85×stricter: inventory excluded

Cash ratio0.33×strictest: cash alone against what's due

Working capital($37M)the cushion left after near-term bills

Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+4.8%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing

Current ratio, recent quarters0.9× → 0.9×

Deeper floors

Tangible book value($1.1B)equity stripped of goodwill & intangibles

Net current asset value($1.7B)Graham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities

Debt incl. operating leases$1.6B$391M of it operating leases; with finance leases, “total fixed claims” below reaches $1.6B (annual-report basis)

Deferred revenue$39Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

Lease obligations

the lease note, SEC EDGAR →

Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, operating and finance leases together, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.

Operating leasesFinance leases

'26$99M

'27$79M

'28$61M

'29$59M

'30$53M

later$175M

Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.

Due in the next 12 months$99Ma fixed cash payment, owed whether or not the business has a good year

Total lease payments$528Mevery year plus the tail, undiscounted: the full cash the leases will take

On the balance sheet$410Mthe present value of those payments, the recognised lease liability

True leverage: debt plus leases

On-balance-sheet debt$1.2B

Lease obligations (present value)$410M

Total fixed claims on the business$1.6B

Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $1.6B, of which the leases are 26%. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.

Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Dec 28, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.

How the cash was used, 2016–2025

Over the record, the business generated $1.2B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a cash returner, paying most of what it earns straight back to owners.

Reinvested$203M · 17%
Dividends$384M · 32%
Buybacks$462M · 39%
Retained (debt / cash)$141M · 12%

Returned to owners$846M
86% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $384M as dividends and $462M as buybacks.
Average price paid for buybacks—
Buybacks ran $462M over the span, but a stock split in the window left the reported buyback-share counts on a basis the diluted-share count doesn't match, so a comparable average price can't be drawn.
Net change in share count−30.5%
The diluted count fell from 18M to 13M, so the buybacks outran the stock issued to staff.
Dividend record$2.17/sh
Paid in 9 of the years on record, the per-share dividend shrinking about 6% a year. It was cut at least once along the way.

Buybacks are gross of stock issued to staff; the share-count line above is the net of that, the figure that decides whether owners gained. The average price paid blends a year of purchases (and any accelerated repurchase), so it is close, not exact. The record of where the cash went and on what terms.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill & intangibles$784M45% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equity—goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital

Cash spent acquiring$109Mover 10 years buying other businesses, against $203M of capital spent building

$458M written down across 3 years (2017, 2020, 2024): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal year	Chief executive	Pay, as filed	“Actually paid”	Owner earnings
2021	John W. Peyton	$10.8M	$12.9M	$179M
2021	John W. Peyton	$156k	$8.4M	$179M
2022	John W. Peyton	$4.4M	$5.4M	$54M
2023	John W. Peyton	$4.5M	$1.7M	$94M
2024	John W. Peyton	$4.7M	$2.5M	$94M
2025	John W. Peyton	$5.4M	$6.7M	$53M

Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.

Insider ownership6.7%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
Stock-based compensation$13M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 13% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.

Inverting the record

Invert: instead of why Dine Brands Global Inc. is a good business, the question is what would make owning it a mistake, and whether those marks are in the record. Disconfirming tests across 2016–2025.

2 of the 5 tests turned up something to look into; the other 3 came back clean.

Look hereIs it less profitable than it was?9.7% vs 12.5%
The owner-earnings margin averaged 12.5% early in the record and 9.7% across the last three years, and the latest year has not recovered. Ask the filing whether that is a structural drift or a cyclical trough — price, mix, cost, or a competitor — and whether it is permanent.
Look hereAre "one-time" charges a yearly habit?5 of 10 years
Management took an impairment or write-down in 5 of the last 10 years, $505M in all. Taken across the majority of the record, the "one-time" label is wearing thin — ask whether these are past deals coming due rather than genuinely isolated events. Read it beside the goodwill the company still carries.

And these came back clean

Did the share count rise anyway?
Did debt outgrow the business?
Did reported profit become cash?

Each test is read from the filings and is noisy alone; a flag can mark a cyclical trough or a year of heavy investment as easily as a problem. The filing says which.

Peers, Restaurants

The same industry, side by side on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

Company	Revenue	Gross margin	Op. margin	ROIC	Owner earn. margin
JACKJack in the Box	$1.5B	56%	19.1%	19%	8%
BJRIBJ's Restaurants Inc.	$1.4B	74%	2.2%	6%	3%
FWRGFirst Watch Restaurant Group Inc.	$1.2B	—	2.3%	2%	4%
CAVACAVA Group	$1.2B	—	0.6%	10%	7%
DINDine Brands Global Inc.	$879M	63%	17.1%	9%	12%
PTLOPortillo's Inc.	$732M	—	8.2%	7%	6%
WINGWingstop	$697M	80%	25.6%	48%	19%
SGSweetgreen Inc.	$679M	—	-30.2%	-43%	-16%
Group median	—	69%	5.2%	8%	6%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Dine Brands Global Inc. has delivered.

Today’s price $

Through the cycle, Dine Brands Global Inc. earns about $106M on its 12.0% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 6.1% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.

Base Normalize · through-cycle ($106M) Net of stock comp (−$14M) Steady-state · maintenance capex ($45M)

—

The assumptions Required return 9% Years of high growth 10 Terminal growth 2.5%

9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.

Enter a price above to run it.

Implied by the price—

Owner-earnings growth · ’21→’25−11%/yr

Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25−1%/yr

Owner-earnings yield—

P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—

P/B—

Graham’s price gate—

Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.

Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%

Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.

Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.

Free cash flow $36M on 13M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-24; net debt $1.1B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. Capex ($44M) runs well above depreciation ($44M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $45M, the cash it would throw off if it stopped expanding. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.

Weigh DIN against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Dine Brands Global Inc. (DIN), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/DIN, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← DHR its page in the Manual DINO →

Industry order: ← CMG the Restaurants chapter DNUT →