CKE Restaurants Enacts 'Poison Pill' Defense: Takeover Brewing?

The destruction of CKE Restaurants' (CKR) share price has made it an interesting acquisition target.<!--more--> Triarc's (TRY) (owner of Arby's) recent acquisition of Wendy's (WEN) 6,600 locations at $2.3 billion, equates to a purchase price of about $348,000 per store, while CKR's current market cap values each of its 3,083 locations at a deep 50% discount to that figure, or about $181,000 per location.

CKR's long term debt position of $333 million is 40% lower than Wendy's $570 million debt load, while CKR owns and operates 31% of its locations with its franchisees operating the balance. WEN has ownership and operation of 27% of the stores within its system. Since the mixes of debt and percentage's of company owned stores are similar, it could be deduced that CKR's value in a takeover scenario would also be similar, and if you do the math, you'll discover that based on Triarc's offer, CKR shares could fetch as much as $20 - nearly double its current share price.