UPDATE: William Blair & Company Upgrades Sonic Corporation to Outperform Following Investor Meetings with Management

In a report published Wednesday, William Blair & Company analyst Sharon Zackfia upgraded the rating on

from Market Perform to Outperform. In the report, William Blair & Company noted, “We recently hosted investor meetings with Sonic's management team and came away with enhanced conviction in the company's ability to drive sustainable 15% to 20% EPS growth on low-single-digit same-store sales. While we believe the fiscal first quarter (ended November) is likely on track to meet consensus expectations ($0.13 on an approximate 2.0% to 2.5% comp), we are raising our full-year fiscal 2014 EPS estimate slightly ahead of consensus and our fiscal 2015 estimate even more so as we expect the upcoming rollout of a new POS system and point-of-personalized-service (POPS) menu boards to add greater predictability to comp trends while driving material margin improvement.” Sonic Corporation closed on Tuesday at $19.69.