Nexstar Broadcasting Group (NASDAQ:NXST): Though the company boasted a beat in revenue but fell short on earnings, Wells Fargo says the real story lies behind the “$5 per share FCF number that Nexstar threw out,” building on its acquisition of CCA Group. Once the details of the consolidation are ironed out, Wells Fargo “wouldn’t be surprised  to see NXST increase its capital return payout ratio significantly.”

Dunkin’ Donuts (NASDAQ:DNKN): Dunkin’ is shaking up its board, and has put CEO Nigel Travis to take on the additional role of becoming the company’s chairman, in place of John Luther, who is stepping down. The change will become fully effective on May 15.

Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLK): FBR Capital remains very bullish on the company, noting that Splunk ”remains in the very early stages of a fertile growth story.” Investments in hiring and growth may negate near-term margins, but ”nevertheless, we believe that from both a secular and product perspective, Splunk is in the right place at the right time and will begin to show positive operating margins on an annual basis with its red-hot growth rates over the coming years.”

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T = Trends for a Stock’s Movement

Dunkin’ Brands owns, operates, and franchises quick service restaurants under the Dunkin’’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins brands worldwide. The company operates in four segments, including Dunkin’ Donuts U.S., Dunkin’ Donuts International, Baskin-Robbins International, and Baskin-Robbins U.S. Its restaurants offer coffee, donuts, bagels, ice cream, frozen beverages, baked goods, and related products. The increasing popularity that the product offerings being seen by Dunkin’ Brands is fueling excellent growth for the company. As consumers continue to enjoy the Dunkin’ Brands products, look for the company to see rising profits well into the future.

T = Technicals on the Stock Chart are Strong

Since its initial public offering in 2011, Dunkin’ Brands stock has witnessed a wonderful uptrend of higher highs and higher lows. The stock is now trading near all-time highs and shows no signs of slowing just yet. Analyzing the price trend and its strength can be done using key simple moving averages. What are the key moving averages? The 50-day (pink), 100-day (blue), and 200-day (yellow) simple moving averages. As seen in the daily price chart below, Dunkin’ Brands is trading above its rising key averages which signal neutral to bullish price action in the near-term.

(Source: Thinkorswim)

Taking a look at the implied volatility (red) and implied volatility skew levels of Dunkin’ Brands options may help determine if investors are bullish, neutral, or bearish.

What does this mean? This means that investors or traders are buying a significant amount of call and put options contracts, as compared to the last 30 and 90 trading days.

As of today, there is an average demand from call buyers or sellers and low demand by put buyers or high demand by put sellers, all neutral to bullish over the next two months. To summarize, investors are buying a significant amount of call and put option contracts and are leaning neutral to bullish over the next two months.

E = Earnings Are Increasing Quarter-Over-Quarter

Rising stock prices are often strongly correlated with rising earnings and revenue growth rates. Also, the last four quarterly earnings announcement reactions help gauge investor sentiment on Dunkin’ Brands’s stock. What do the last four quarterly earnings and revenue growth (Y-O-Y) figures for Dunkin’ Brands look like and more importantly, how did the markets like these numbers?

Dunkin’ Brands has seen increasing earnings and revenue figures over the last four quarters. From these figures, the markets have been pleased with Dunkin’ Brands’s recent earnings announcements.

P = Excellent Relative Performance Versus Peers and Sector

How has Dunkin’ Brands stock done relative to its peers, Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), Yum! Brands (NYSE:YUM), McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), and sector?

Dunkin’ Brands has been a relative performance leader, year-to-date.

Conclusion

Dunkin’ Brands provides products that fulfill the cravings of many consumers and will continue to do so well into the future. The stock has been in a strong uptrend since its initial public offering, just a few years ago. Earnings and revenue figures have been growing at an excellent pace in recent quarters which has really pleased investors. Relative to its peers and sector, Dunkin’ Brands is a year-to-date performance leader. Look for Dunkin’ Brands to continue to OUTPERFORM.

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Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc (NASDAQ:DNKN): Jim Cramer ranked this stock a Buy. Cramer previously ranked this stock a Buy on March 8, 2013. The stock’s 52-week high is $40.00, and its 52-week low is $27.93.

Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR): Jim Cramer ranked this stock a Buy. Cramer previously ranked this stock a Sell on January 16, 2013. The stock’s 52-week high is $56.82, and its 52-week low is $37.12. “I like Dollar Tree,” Cramer said.

iShares MSCI Mexico Index Fund (NYSE:EWW): Jim Cramer ranked this stock a Buy. Cramer previously ranked this stock a Buy on March 1, 2013. The stock’s 52-week high is $76.80, and its 52-week low is $53.49. ”If you want emerging markets, buy EWW,” Cramer said. “My charitable trust owns that, and that is the best situation.”

Gafisa S.A. (NYSE:GFA): Jim Cramer ranked this stock a Sell. Cramer previously ranked this stock a Buy on June 10, 2010. The stock’s 52-week high is $4.67, and its 52-week low is $2.05. ”That is too hard,” he said. “It is a Brazilian company. I’ve been struggling with Brazil lately.”

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The carrier has posted its preliminary traffic results for March, and year-to-date 2013. Traffic — revenue passenger miles — in March rose by 19.1 percent year-over-year from 2012 on a capacity (available seat miles) increase of 16.5 percent. Load factor was 87.9 percent, a rise of 2 percent over the same period. Spirit’s preliminary completion factor for March was 99.6 percent. As for its first quarter guidance, the company estimates its total revenue per ASM will increase between 0.5 and 1.5 percent year-over-year.

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Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT): Current Price $78.53

Wal-Mart confirmed on Wednesday that the mid-level Wal-Mart executive Jerry Murray, who called the retailer’s early February sales “a total disaster” in an email made public by Bloomberg, has exited the company. On Wednesday, Bloomberg said that Murray had left on April 5t, while Wal-Mart told Reuters that it was Murray’s decision to leave and that his last day was Friday, and that a replacement has not yet been chosen. Murray, who was a Wal-Mart vice president who worked on finance in the domestic logistics division, said in a February 12th email to other executives that “In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February (month-to-date) sales are a total disaster. The worst start to a month I have seen in my (about) seven years with the company.”

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Dunkin’ Donuts (NASDAQ:DNKN): Current price $39.40

Presently, the company has 1,748 restaurants in South Korea and the Philippines, but only one in California, located at a Marine Corps base near Oceanside that opened last year. However, Chief Executive Nigel Travis wants to spread the chain up and down the West Coast, with 150 stores in southern California for starters. This marks the third time in the past 30 years that Dunkin’ Donuts will try to hook Californians into its sugary baked goods and coffee drinks, as the chain actually had around a dozen stores in California until it pulled out in the late 1990s. Then in 2002, it made a short-lived attempt to reenter Sacramento. It now plans to have in excess of 1,000 restaurants eventually throughout the state.

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Massachusetts-based coffee and pastry chain Dunkin’ Donuts (NASDAQ:DNKN) wasn’t about to miss the ride, either. The company recently released its own app, which among other things, allows customers to purchase, register and reload a Dunkin’ Donuts card; pay directly from the app itself by presenting the screen to a cashier; and of course, perhaps most importantly, locate the  Dunkin’ location nearest the user.

That all sounds good, but now Dunkin’ has released news that will make the app even sweeter: it is now integrated with Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Passbook program, which allows iPhone and iPad users to store tickets, coupons, gift cards and boarding passes on their phone in a simple and easy-to-manage interface.

Guests can now easily add their Dunkin’ Donuts Cards to Passbook and pay for food, beverages and merchandise at participating U.S. Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants simply by scanning their Dunkin’ Pass in the store or at the drive-thru. The Dunkin’ Pass is also location-aware, meaning it will conveniently appear on a guest’s lock screen when they are near their favorite Dunkin’ Donuts location, Yahoo reports.

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Starbucks had nearly 20,000 locations as of September 8, 2012. Even for the brand that defined coffee for America — sorry, Dunkin’ Donuts (NASDAQ:DNKN) — there can be too much ubiquity in image. Any given American could recognize a Starbucks from their periphery, but the new storefronts may have would-be customers and anti-Starbucks diehards doing a double take.

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Starbucks has a few real competitors in the United States, but the company has proven time and time again that it’s out to win. Dunkin’ Donuts has seen comfortable growth in share value this year to date, but the company just landed one star at the Motley Fool CAPS. With Tim Hortons (NYSE:THI) moving into the United States from Canada, brewed-coffee competition could be stepping up.

McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), which has attracted mixed attention recently, has been increasingly trying to position itself as a breakfast destination. The company gave away free coffee as part of a National Coffee Day on September 29.

IBISWorld reports that the coffee and snack shops market pulls in $28 billion in revenue and has grown 1.2% annually.

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“It really exceeded our expectations,” said Starbucks spokeswoman Alisa Martinez.

Despite Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz claiming that the relationship between the two companies will remain intact, many investors feel otherwise. GMCR shares plummeted in March when the machine was initially announced, and have lost 44.57 percent of their value this year. The company makeS coffee pods for Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts (NASDAQ:DNKN), but with the patent expired it seems likely that the two coffee outlets will find a way to become independent.

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Schultz has drawn a distinction between the type of consumer who would buy the $199 and up latte-producing Verismo, and those who only want a brewed coffee machine. It’s possible that Keurig and GMCR will remain the morning companion of choice for brewed coffee drinkers, but as some are quick to note, Starbucks looks unstoppable. The company makes up 29 percent of the United States coffee market, has $2.5 billion in cash, boasted a profit margin of 56 percent in 2011, and has a market cap of $38 billion. GMCR is about a tenth of the size.

Starbucks is also aligning its already powerful brand image with the even more powerful brand image of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), as rumor has it that the company will support Passbook, a type of digital wallet pre-loaded into the iPhone 5.

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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ:GMCR) currently dominates the single-serve coffee market. The company acquired Keurig in 2006 along with the patent on K-cup technology. A Keurig machine retails for between $99 and $189 dollars, operating in a market for people who “only want brewed coffee.” This emphasis is important because now that the patent is up, Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) is entering the single-cup competition with a higher-end machine called Verismo.

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GMCR already produces coffee pods for Starbucks, and according to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, the Verismo won’t damage their relationship. Shultz believes the two brewers can “coexist and be complementary,” as the Verismo is targeted at a consumer more inclined toward espresso-based drinks that can only be made using the machine’s high-pressure system.

But investors are skeptical of a symbiotic relationship. When the machine was announced in March, GMCR shares took a dive and never really recovered. In a statement released by the company, it said, “Since the early days of single-serve coffee, we have successfully competed against well-resourced companies.” This may be true, but there’s no denying that Starbucks has every reason to aggressively enter the market.

Shultz said in an interview on CNBC, “This is a great economic proposition for the company for a number of reasons. This is an $8 billion dollar category growing at over 100 percent a year. Three out of four Starbucks customers don’t already own a machine because they’ve been waiting for the Starbucks machine.”

Dunkin’ Donuts (NASDAQ:DNKN) also has a line of single-serve K-cups made my GMCR that have generated positive sales for the company. It’s unclear what role Dunkin’ Donuts could play in changing single-serve landscape. Dunkin’ Donuts is certainly the provider for those who “only want brewed coffee.”

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During a launch event held in New Delhi on Wednesday, the Massachusetts-based company said it plans to open 350-450 outlets outside of the U.S. in 2012, with many of them being in Asia. The launch event was held to celebrate Dunkin’s third store opening in India. Earlier this month, Dunkin’ opened two stores in the country through its joint venture with Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd. Over the next 15 years, the joint venture has a goal of opening 500 outlets.

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“Emerging markets are attractive because they are growing very quickly, they’ve a fast-growing middle class, and they love American brands,” Dunkin’ Brands Chief Executive Nigel Travis explained, according to the WSJ. He also added that emerging markets will contribute a “disproportionate” part of the company’s future revenue and Dunkin’ plans on entering the Brazilian market this year.

As the chart above shows, publicly traded coffee names have largely been correlated with each other until recently. The sell in May and go away mantra has left Dunkin’ Brands and Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX) as the two clear winners on the table. Year-to-date, the two coffee giants have gained 29 percent and 19 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, Peet’s Coffee & Tea Inc. (NASDAQ:PEET) and Caribou Coffee Co. (NASDAQ:CBOU) have declined 4 percent and 15 percent, respectively. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ:GMCR) has been the most sobering coffee play this year, with shares crashing more than 44 percent.

Dunkin’s push into new growing markets bodes well for the C= ‘Catalyst for a Stock’s Movement’ in our CHEAT SHEET investing framework. According to the WSJ, India’s café market is expected to increase to $680 million in annual sales by the end of March 2016, compared to $190 million last year. Starbucks is also worth a look, as the Seattle-based company plans on opening its first store in India later this year.

On Wednesday, shares of Dunkin’ Brands closed 1.76 percent lower. At the end of last year, Dunkin’ Brands’ nearly 100 percent franchised business model included more than 10,000 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants and more than 6,700 Baskin-Robbins restaurants. The company also has nearly 200 stores located in China and plans on opening 250 more stores in the nation over the next four years.

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Although selling alcoholic beverages at its stores would differentiate itself from McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) and Dunkin’ Brands (NASDAQ:DNKN), Starbucks is stirring up emotions in Coronado, California. The city sent several letters of protest to the company over its Orange Avenue store, which was scheduled to add alcohol to the menu. U-T San Diego explains, “In its letter to Starbucks, the city noted that a number of young people congregate at the coffee house and would be discouraged from doing so if alcohol was served. The Coronado Police Department also protested, based on what it believes is an over-concentration of establishments serving alcohol in the area.”

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Due to the backlash, Starbucks has decided to pull its liquor license application for Coronado. In an email to City Manager Blair King, Starbucks Senior Manager of Government Affairs, Kim Winston, said, “Based on our due diligence process and our respect of the Coronado community, Starbucks took self-selected and proactive actions to pull its application,” according to eCoronado. Starbucks is still considering adding another alcohol coffeehouse outlet in San Diego County, but no decision has been finalized yet. The company has also already applied for liquor licenses at three other Southern California stores.

The incident in Coronado shows that expanding its business and gaining alcohol sales from companies such as Constellation Brands Inc. (NYSE:STZ) and Boston Beer Co. (NYSE:SAM) may be harder than previously thought for Starbucks. However, the alcohol market still has a huge upside for Starbucks. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control, about 17 percent of the US population binge drinks at least four times a month. The average number of drinks during each sitting is eight. Although Starbucks does not plan on offering alcoholic drinks in all of its 17,000 cafes around the world, the move will likely broaden its appeal to customers and give sales a boost. It would also give customers an incentive to choose Starbucks over other coffeehouses such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Caribou Coffee Co. (NASDAQ:CBOU).

Starbucks explained previously that “As our customers transition from work to home, many are looking for a warm and inviting place to unwind and connect with the people they care about. We’re pleased with the response of our customers to the introduction of wine, beer and premium food at several of our stores in the Pacific Northwest.” If Starbucks can continue to expand its alcoholic offerings, even by trial-and-error based on city residents and officials, the hassle of dealing with the backlash will most likely be worth it and lead Starbucks to a much larger alcohol market than just the Pacific Northwest.

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