One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$20.13 our estimate vs market $44.87
Wall Street consensus: $45.00 (123.6% higher than our fair-value estimate)
123% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.
CBRL · NMS · Consumer Cyclical · Restaurants
Current price
$44.87
52-week range
$24.85 - $60.26
Market cap
$1.00B
Balance sheet
Distressed
3.66x Stretched
Net debt $1.12B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
2 Rewards
3 Risks
2 rewards · 3 risks
- Reward Free cash flow was positive in 9/10 years.
- Reward Dividend yield is 2.2% with 41-year payout history.
- Risk Forward P/E (39.8x) is higher than trailing (39.0x) - earnings are expected to drop.
- Risk Stock trades 68.1% above its 5-year average P/E.
What this company does
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store runs a chain of combined restaurants and gift shops, primarily located along American highways. The company makes money from two main sources in one building: selling Southern-style comfort food to diners and a wide range of gifts and food items to shoppers. This dual business model is important because it encourages restaurant guests to shop after their meal, increasing how much money the company can make from each visitor.
How the company got here
Cracker Barrel was started in 1969 by Dan Evins, who ran a Shell gas station in Tennessee. He thought he could attract more travelers on the newly expanding interstate highways if he added a restaurant and a gift shop. The concept of a roadside stop offering a warm meal and a taste of nostalgia was a hit, and the company grew quickly, opening more locations along highways. By the early 1980s, the company became publicly traded on the stock market and had phased out selling gasoline to focus entirely on its restaurant and retail combination.
What it actually does
Cracker Barrel operates a chain of locations that each combine a full-service restaurant with a gift shop, designed to look like an old-fashioned country store. Most of its stores are located along interstate highways, making them a popular stop for travelers. The restaurants serve Southern-style comfort food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The attached gift shops sell a variety of items, including rocking chairs, old-fashioned candy, toys, clothing, and home decor.
Restaurant
This is the main part of Cracker Barrel's business, making up about 81% of its total sales. Customers pay for classic American comfort food served in a dining room with a rustic, nostalgic theme. The menu features breakfast all day, as well as traditional lunch and dinner meals like meatloaf and fried chicken. This segment's success depends on attracting enough guests (customer traffic) and how much they spend on average (the average check).
Retail
The other part of the business is the gift shop that every customer walks through to enter or exit the restaurant. This segment brings in about 19% of the company's revenue (money from sales). Shoppers buy a wide range of items, from home goods and apparel to toys and packaged food items like jams and candies. While smaller than the restaurant business, these retail sales are a key part of the company's unique identity and add to the total revenue per visitor.
What management is betting on now
The company's leadership is focused on strengthening the main Cracker Barrel brand. They recently sold off a smaller, separate restaurant chain they owned, Maple Street Biscuit Company, to concentrate their efforts and improve overall profitability (the ability to make a profit). Management is also using the company's real estate assets to pay down debt, which strengthens its financial health. The plan is to drive growth by refining the brand, optimizing the menu, and improving the store and digital experience for guests.
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q4
$22.05M
FY2025 Q1
$-43.35M
FY2025 Q2
$59.97M
FY2025 Q3
$-13.62M
FY2025 Q4
$56.75M
FY2026 Q1
$-88.92M
FY2026 Q2
$24.47M
FY2026 Q3
$66.88M
Revenue
$797.37M
Net income
$42.81M
Diluted EPS
1.90
Operating cash flow
$94.67M
Free cash flow
$66.88M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$874.82M
Net income
$1.28M
Diluted EPS
0.06
Operating cash flow
$51.26M
Free cash flow
$24.47M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$797.19M
Net income
$-24.62M
Diluted EPS
-1.10
Operating cash flow
$-53.43M
Free cash flow
$-88.92M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$868.01M
Net income
$6.75M
Diluted EPS
0.29
Operating cash flow
$102.22M
Free cash flow
$56.75M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$821.15M
Net income
$12.57M
Diluted EPS
0.56
Operating cash flow
$22.98M
Free cash flow
$-13.62M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$949.44M
Net income
$22.21M
Diluted EPS
0.99
Operating cash flow
$98.09M
Free cash flow
$59.97M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$845.09M
Net income
$4.84M
Diluted EPS
0.22
Operating cash flow
$-4.39M
Free cash flow
$-43.35M
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Sources
Revenue
$894.39M
Net income
$18.14M
Diluted EPS
0.80
Operating cash flow
$69.52M
Free cash flow
$22.05M
Fetching…
Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $20.13 vs current price $44.87
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $45.00 (123.6% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $20.13 a share — about 55.1% below today's price of $44.87, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Distressed
Net debt $1.1B. Interest coverage 3.7x.
Net debt
$1.12B
Interest coverage
3.66x
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.'s profit covers its interest bill about 3.7 times over.
Distressed
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
CBRL
BASELINE
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.
Total debt $1.15B Interest coverage 3.66x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $1.09B Interest coverage 3,831.36x +104,445% vs CBRL Carries about 1045.5x more debt cushion than CBRL.
Total debt $8.05B Interest coverage 8.18x +123% vs CBRL Carries about 2.2x more debt cushion than CBRL.
Total debt $1.92B Interest coverage 2.44x -34% vs CBRL Carries about 1.5x less debt cushion than CBRL.
Total debt $434.66M Interest coverage 10.12x +176% vs CBRL Carries about 2.8x more debt cushion than CBRL.
What you should know
The case for and against CBRL
2 Rewards
3 Risks
Rewards
-
Free cash flow was positive in 9/10 years.
-
Dividend yield is 2.2% with 41-year payout history.
Risks
-
Forward P/E (39.8x) is higher than trailing (39.0x) - earnings are expected to drop.
-
Stock trades 68.1% above its 5-year average P/E.
-
Operating margin compressed from 4.7% to 0.8% over 3 years.
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
39.02x
Forward P/E
39.77x
P/B
2.15x
P/S
0.30x
EV/EBITDA
17.41x
PEG ratio
1.56x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
31.6%
Operating margin
0.8%
Net margin
0.8%
ROE
5.6%
ROA
-0.0%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
2.47x
Current ratio
0.50x
Quick ratio
0.12x
Total debt
$1.15B
Total cash
$26.05M
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$3.34B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
5.4%
EPS TTM
1.15
EPS 5Y CAGR
-28.6%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$194.73M
Free CF TTM
$59.76M
FCF margin
1.8%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
2.2%
Payout ratio
87.0%
Last ex-div date
2026-07-17