Month: August 2016

Latest Headlines

Papa John’s loses court ruling on Panera exec poaching, and stock hits record high; Humana nails Q2 revenue and earnings; and Taco Bell’s three-step entry to new foreign markets

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:42 p.m.

PAPA JOHN’S: A federal judge sided with restaurant chain Panera Bread and issued a temporary restraining order barring a former IT executive from working at Papa John’s. U.S. District Judge John A. Ross said Panera would likely win its lawsuit, filed last month, accusing former vice president Michael Nettles of violating his noncompete agreement and misappropriating trade secrets by taking a job as the chief information officer at the Louisville pizza chain (Law 360).

Also today, Papa John’s shares closed at $77.38, up 4.6%, or $3.37, after the chain reported second-quarter results beating Wall Street forecasts after markets closed yesterday afternoon. Earlier today, the stock hit a new record intraday high of $78.09 before easing back. The company has also filed its quarterly 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

HUMANA: Racing to save its $37 billion merger with Humana, Hartford-based Aetna has urged a judge to hear its case in the fall — and before considering a second merger of two other insurance companies that Justice Department antitrust enforcers are trying to stop (Reuters).

Earlier today, Humana reported second-quarter results that beat forecasts on both the top and bottom lines. Revenue was $14 billion vs. $13.7 billion a year ago, and adjusted earnings per share were $2.30 vs. $1.77. Analysts were expecting $13.6 billion in revenue and $2.21 EPS. The Louisville-based health insurer also reaffirmed its full-year 2016 financial guidance increase on July 21 to earn $9.25 a share vs. the previous $8.85 EPS. Humana’s stock closed at $173.48, up $3.91, or 2.3%.

Bruce Broussard
Broussard

“Our second quarter and year-to-date results show the improvement in the effectiveness of our clinical programs and increasing clinical engagement by our members,” CEO Bruce Broussard said in the earnings release. “The improved health outcomes from these programs is not only lowering healthcare costs, but allowing more affordable options for our Medicare members.”

The insurer said it wouldn’t hold a customary conference call with analysts to discuss the report because of the pending merger with Aetna, and doesn’t expect to hold any in the quarters ahead, either (press release and MarketWatch).

Finally today, Humana filed its second-quarter report with the Securities and Exchange Commission — the full 10-Q (SEC document). Humana has 12,500 employees in Louisville and about 50,000 nationwide; more about the company.

TACO BELL follows a three-step process to decide whether to enter a foreign market for the first time, according to Pizza Marketplace:

  1. Move a team to the city under consideration to learn what everyday life is like in the target city, including how people get to work and what they do for fun.
  2. Get to know the locals through focus groups to see how outsiders can become part of the community.
  3. Cook and prepare food to understand what flavors work — and don’t work. In Tokyo, for example, prospective customers wouldn’t order nachos and cheese because they didn’t they want to get messy. Solution? Nachos became seasoned chips with dipping sauces.

Wag n' Wash logoIn other news, franchiser Wag n’ Wash of Denver expects its first Kentucky pet food and grooming store to open soon in Louisville with an in-house bakery menu that includes pumpkin ravioli, sushi, pies and cakes using human-grade ingredients (Courier-Journal). This will be Wag n’ Wash’s 15th store since opening in 1999.

The former publisher of The Voice-Tribune — Tracy Beale, formerly Tracy Blue — is launching online magazine TAB’s View next month with a staff of six, including herself. She left the Voice-Tribune last winter amid her high-profile divorce from the weekly’s then-owner, Blue Equity CEO Jonathan Blue. Blue Equity recently sold the Voice-Tribune and other publications to the owner of LEO (Insider Louisville).

Just Instagrams

With the forecast highs in Louisville at 90 degrees or above through Friday, let’s make every day National Ice Cream Sandwich Day — not just today.

Jobs

For $10-$50 an hour, there are 146 people in Louisville who rent themselves out as friends. (Seriously)

time-clockBoulevard reports extensively on executive pay at big local employers. But we also look at what folks make down in the trenches — and off in the more unexpected corners of the Internet. Here’s our latest installment.

The job: friend for hire.

The duties: accompany clients to the movies; take them bike-riding; hit Oxmoor Center for shopping — basically, anything friends would do, except for that benefits stuff. They’re available through a company called, appropriately enough, Rent-a-Friend. And according to ABC News, this is an entirely legit operation — no romance, and especially no sex. Worldwide, Rent-a-Friend has 531,434 to choose from. We reviewed all 146 local ones, then drew a brief portrait of rentable Louisville, starting with:

Nick, a 23-year-old college undergraduate whose field of study would make an interesting conversation-starter: skeletal forensics. Roger once spent seven months tree-sitting in the Redwoods of California; now 31, he organizes arts grants fundraisers for the annual Burning Man gathering. A guy named Fun Man is 6’6″ tall, and points out: “I am built-in security for you, as I am a trained fighter.”

Another man, who’s nearly (6’5″) as tall and goes by the name Money, loves to travel. As does Derrick, we imagine, because he can write and read Greek. But if you want to travel more widely, Timo speaks three languages (almost) fluently, and can communicate effectively in two more. (And since he’s only 21, he may have already picked up a sixth by the time you meet him.)

Rent A Friend logoCloser to home, Tommy would be handy because, at 51, he’s a jack-of-four-trades: rentable friend, actor, Uber driver, and window cleaner. Now, if you’re thinking about doing something shady for fun, you’d probably want to reconsider renting a 30-year-old woman who calls herself That There One Chick, because she’s a corrections officer. On the other hand, if you did get into trouble, Ryan is an attorney. And finally, last but not least, because he’s got an interesting nickname, G. Carver‘s friends call him “Cadillac.”

Photo, top: Two attendees at Burning Man — an annual event that Louisville’s rentable friend Roger helps support through fundraisers he organizes. That’s a photo by Flickr member Christopher Michel.

Latest Headlines

Papa John’s Q2 report beats forecasts on revenue and profits; shares up modestly after hours

Papa John's logoThe Louisville-based pizza chain reported second-quarter revenues of $423 million, a 6% increase from the year-ago quarter’s $399 million. Earnings were 61 cents per diluted share, a 29.8% bump from a year ago. The results beat forecast estimates. On average, analysts had been expecting 414.8 million in revenue and 54 cents EPS, according to Yahoo Finance.

Papa John’s also boosted its earnings guidance for the rest of the year, to a range of $2.35 to $2.45 a share from the prior range of $2.30 to $2.40, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing after stock markets closed. In the after-hours session, shares were trading for $74.40, up less than 1%. In the regular session, they closed at $74.01, down 20 cents.

Just Tweets

Strange bedfellows: A dainty KFC-eating Trump draws comparisons to Dukakis’ infamous tank photo

That’s just one of the better overnight Twitter reactions to Donald Trump‘s Tweeted photo last night of himself eating a KFC meal with silverware aboard his jet. Perez Hilton posted a nice roundup of the rest.

Here’s Trump and Democrat Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, whose failed 1988 White House campaign took a public relations hit after his staged outing in a tank failed to counter Republican charges he was weak on national defense:

Trump and Dukakis
Trump and Dukakis: in the bucket vs. in the tank.
Latest Headlines

UnitedHealthcare protests $40.5B Humana contract; Roadhouse dives 12% on Q2 report; Trump eats KFC with metal utensils — Internet howls; and Taco Bell workers in Calif. gone after cop-taunting report

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 5:09 p.m.

HUMANA: UnitedHealthcare has filed a formal protest against a Defense Department decision to award the next round of Tricare contracts to Humana and another competitor. The Pentagon selected Humana Government Business to manage the brand new East region, a consolidation of the North and South regions, in a contract worth as much as $40.5 billion. Health Net Federal Services got the West region contract. Humana manages the current South region and Health Net the North (Military Times).

Humana and Aetna logos 250Also, Humana and Aetna announced this morning a deal to sell some of their Medicare Advantage assets to Molina Healthcare for $117 million in cash, in the health insurers’ latest effort to win Justice Department approval for their proposed $37 billion merger. The transactions are subject to the successful completion of the merger, plus approvals from regulators. Under the deal, Molina would get about 290,000 Medicare Advantage members in 21 states, the two companies said, “preserving robust competition for seniors choosing to receive Medicare coverage through Medicare Advantage plans and addressing a key concern of the U.S. Department of Justice in its challenge to the Aetna-Humana transaction” (press release). Today’s announcement followed a July 21 DOJ lawsuit against the two companies to block their tie-up over fears it would be anticompetitive and raise consumer prices.

Aetna, meanwhile, reported better-than-expected second-quarter results this morning, in a report where it also became the last of the five major national health insurers to project a loss on Affordable Care Act plans for 2016. The Hartford-based insurer said it would re-evaluate its participation in the business and cancel a planned expansion. It also said it was setting up a $65 million reserve to account for expected losses on individual plans over the rest of this year (Wall Street Journal).

Kent Taylor
Taylor

TEXAS ROADHOUSE shares fell sharply, closing at $41.80, down 12.4%, or $5.90, after the Louisville-based steakhouse chain reported disappointing second-quarter results yesterday after stock markets had already closed (Google Finance). Founder and CEO Kent Taylor discussed the results with Wall Street analysts in a transcript (Seeking Alpha). The chain has nearly 500 company-owned and franchised restaurants in 49 states plus five foreign countries with 48,000 employees. About 500 of those workers are in Louisville; more about Texas Roadhouse.

FORD said total truck sales, including pickups and vans, grew 5% in July versus a year ago with 87,104 sold. Overall company U.S. sales were down 3%, with 216,479 total vehicles sold (press release). Shares closed at $11.94, down 4.3%, or 53 cents (Google Finance). Ford’s Kentucky Truck Factory employs about 5,100 workers, producing F-250 and F-550 Super Duty pickups, plus Expeditions, and Lincoln Navigators.

KFC: The World Wide Web is chowing down on a photo of GOP White House nominee Donald Trump eating a KFC meal last night aboard his gold-plated private jet, using real cutlery (as opposed to the plastic utensils most everyone else uses or, let’s be clear, hands). Trump tweeted a photo of the moment near 10:30 p.m.; see Tweet, above. “It’s tiny finger lickin’ good,” wrote the New York Daily News, which then went on to quote one Twitter user saying: “Eating KFC with a fork and knife is like eating a candy bar with chopsticks.”

Britain’s Telegraph was even more over-the-top pretend aghast: “What kind of madman — what kind of abominable lizard in an orange human skin suit, a Sunny Delight scare story incarnate — would eat a biscuit with a knife and fork? The same madman who was last night pictured eating a bucket of KFC with a knife and fork, that’s who.” And then there was the whole KFC vs. Popeyes vs. Bojangles’ contretemps (Daily News, Telegraph and Daily Caller). Here’s yet more news coverage — plus, all the Twitter reaction.

TACO BELL: In California, several employees in northwest Bakersfield no longer work at a Taco Bell there after reports they had taunted a local police officer last week, according to the manager of the outlet. A customer had told a local TV station he could hear the employees making “oink oink” sounds and laughing while the officer was ordering. The manager said the employees no longer work there; he could not say how many employees were involved (Kern Golden Empire).