What Happened?
Shares of restaurant company Bloomin’ Brands (NASDAQ:BLMN) jumped 5.1% in the pre-market session after JPMorgan upgraded the company from Underweight to Neutral and raised its price target to $13.00 from $6.00, as reported by Investing.com.
The upgrade followed an in-person lunch at an Outback Steakhouse where JPMorgan analysts met with Chief Executive Officer Mike Spanos, Chief Financial Officer Eric Christel, and Outback President Pat Hafner, according to a research note by JPMorgan. JPMorgan analyst John Ivankoe wrote that the restaurant's operational execution and guest experience recalled the chain's peak performance from two decades ago, pointing to visible traffic improvements. The note added that Outback generates approximately $4.1 million in average unit volume, providing headroom to narrow the gap with casual dining peers. The company said in its second-quarter earnings release that adjusted diluted earnings were $0.39 a share.
After the initial pop, the shares cooled down to $8.23, up 4% from the previous close.
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What Is The Market Telling Us
Bloomin' Brands’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 37 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 14 days ago when the stock dropped 3.9% on the news that Restaurant Stocks Drop Following Nationwide Decline in Dining Foot Traffic. Foot traffic across U.S. dining chains fell 2.4% year-over-year in August amid weakening consumer sentiment and elevated living costs, according to Placer.ai’s August 2026 Retail and Dining Index.
According to Placer.ai, dining locations nationwide saw reduced visitor volume as average gasoline prices stayed above $4 per gallon throughout August and menu-price inflation continued to weigh on discretionary spending. Food-away-from-home prices rose 3.4% year-over-year, outpacing a 2.2% increase for groceries and reinforcing the shift toward eating at home.
Sustained weaker traffic pressures restaurant operators by reducing sales volumes and limiting their ability to absorb elevated labor and operating costs without further menu price hikes. With consumer budgets still constrained by macroeconomic pressures, investors are growing more cautious about margin compression and slower revenue growth across the dining and hospitality sector.
Bloomin' Brands is up 28.9% since the beginning of the year, but at $8.23 per share, it is still trading 30.6% below its 52-week high of $11.85 from August 2026. Despite the year-to-date gain, investors who bought $1,000 worth of Bloomin' Brands’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at only $310.73.
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