BMO says Tim Hortons’ reputational hit could harm sales, downgrades stock

Declining consumer perceptions about Tim Hortons’ brand have prompted Bank of Montreal to downgrade the stock of parent company Restaurant Brands International Inc., suggesting the public disfavour could hurt sales at Canada’s biggest quick-service restaurant chain.

Following a Leger survey that saw Tim Hortons plunge to the 50th most admired company in Canada from fourth a year ago, BMO Capital Markets conducted its own online survey to probe consumer perceptions about Tim Hortons.

“Overall, while brand perception of Tim Hortons remains overwhelmingly positive with respondents (75 per cent view it positively and only 11 per cent view it negatively), there was a significant shift in participants’ perception of Tim Hortons over the last 12 months,” analyst Peter Sklar of BMO wrote in a report Monday.

In an online BMO survey of 700 Canadians, 16 per cent of respondents said that their perception of Tim Hortons had become more positive in the last year and 28 per cent said that their perception had become more negative. Over the same period of time, their perception of Starbucks remained neutral and their impression of McDonald’s McCafé had improved, Sklar noted.

“Of those respondents who stated that their perception (of Tim Hortons) had become more negative, over 50 per cent stated that it was due to seeing negative press on Tim Hortons in the news and 71 per cent said that the negative attention would cause them to consider going to Tim Hortons less frequently; 27 per cent stated they would prefer to go to another coffee retailer more.”

Sklar revised his first quarter same-store sales estimate for Tim Hortons Canada to zero per cent from 0.8 per cent.

“While the same-store sales at Tim Hortons Canada has a minimal impact on the short-term earnings of Restaurant Brands International, we find that the stock tends to trade on same-store sales results.”

BMO downgraded the stock to market perform from outperform and slashed the target price to US$58 from US$70.