What to Make of the Credit Cycle. Part 9. (Long Summer Associate Programs)

Milbank Tweed Gives Summer Associates A Dose of Reality

Welcome to Part 9 of our ongoing series “What to Make of the Credit Cycle.” You can view previous parts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (some paywall, some not…roll the dice).

Around a year ago, a partner at a major law firm shared his view with us that a clear-cut sign of a market top is when biglaw associate salaries go up. Subsequently, per CBS, this happened:

Some lines of work pay more than others. While Americans have largely seen lackluster wage growth during the past year, the roughly 500 associates laboring at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy just drew a large bump in pay, putting the law firm at the top of the legal heap in terms of salaries paid to attorneys just starting out.

A spokesperson for the 690-lawyer firm confirmed that it is hiking associate salaries by $10,000 to $15,000, bringing a first-year associate's salary to $190,000. A second-year associate at the firm will now make $200,000, while an eight-year associate will pull in $330,000.

The prior high mark had been set two years ago by Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which upped starting pay by $20,000 to $180,000, an industry standard that was quickly matched by Milbank and multiple other firms.

Not to be over-powered in the ever-feverish stampede for the next generation of, cough, ”legal talent,” multiple firms (got bent and) fell in line, upping associate pay to match (or exceed) Milbank’s salary raise. Count on Abovethelaw for some added color:

Summer 2018 has really been the summer of money for Biglaw associates. Milbank got the party started by finally bringing NY (and its other offices) to $190K. Simpson Thacher upped the ante just two days later by matching the new salary scale and adding in special summer bonuses. And just a few days after that, Cravath reasserted its dominance as the firm that sets the market standard by increasing the standard base salary for senior associates over what was set by Milbank. 

And yet, elsewhere in the broader macroeconomy, economists everywhere are wondering why there are underwhelming wage increases (maybe because corporate legal bills just went up?!? 🤔). Per Forbes:

Wages rose 2.7% from a year earlier in June, below the 2.8% increase economists had expected and the increase may make little difference because inflation is also picking up and could soon outpace wages, meaning many workers have no real increase in buying power.

Bloomberg adds:

There are currently 6.7 million job openings — a record high. And the rate at which workers are quitting their jobs is higher than it was before the onset of the Great Recession. But wage growth is still noticeably slower than many economists and analysts expect (despite all the stories about employers desperate for workers).

Meanwhile, after a 5% salary increase prior to even working for a single (billable) hour, entering Milbank associates be like:

Source: Giphy

(PETITION Note: hopefully those associates don’t ever run the hourly calculation).

Law students looking forward to these new riches need to work hard this summer to ensure that they get an offer at the end of their respective summer associate programs. Indeed, they need to not screw up this:*

Nothing gives a realistic snapshot of life as a biglaw attorney like axe throwing, escape the room(s), the Olympics, cooking classes, and spectacular rooftop views. We’re serious.

Really. We are.

Having the aggressiveness, discipline and vigilance of an Olympic athlete is needed to navigate the halls of a biglaw firm (PETITION Note: sadly, they don’t teach you inter-office politics in law school). Knowing how to throw an axe may actually help lawyers wade through the morass. In fact, if we were associates, we would go on a shopping spree at Best Made and hang some dope-looking axes on the wall to leverage the intimidation factor.

Escape the room? Junior associates will want to do that every Friday evening to avoid the inevitable partner phone call asking for an “urgent!!”memo on some esoteric legal question that more-likely-than-not will NEVER come up. By Monday morning, of course. (Hot PETITION tip: the likelihood of said partner reading that memo on Monday morning — let alone by the end of the following week — is roughly about 1.27%).

Cooking classes? Sh*t. The closest you’ll get to cooking once you’re making that sweet $190k is receiving someone else’s via Seamless, UberEats or Caviar. In the office. Of course.

Rooftop views? Awesome. There’s nothing more lit than having a bird’s eye view to thousands of New Yorkers living their lives eating drinking and being merry while you’re stuck in the office. Those views are a double-edged sword, broheim. Make no mistake about that.

So, again, kudos to Milbank for giving its summer associates a realistic view of practice.

*Milbank “promoted” this tweet, by the way, which means that it wanted the world to know that we’ve once again reached peak-summer-associate. We’re old enough to remember when the earth exploded and summer associate offers were reneged or deferred starting dates. This will end just as well.

Is Delivery Killing Fast Casual Too? (Long Busted Narratives)

Zoe's Kitchen is Latest Restaurant Showing Signs of Trouble

Fast casual is supposed to be a bright spot for restaurants. But as the segment has grown in recent years, there are bound to be winners and losers. Zoe’s Kitchen Inc., a fast casual Mediterranean food chain with 250 locations in 20 states ($ZOES), is increasingly looking like the latter.

Last week the company reported sh*tty earnings. Comp restaurant sales declined by 2.3% despite rising prices pushed on to the consumer. The decline is attributable to the usual array of externalities (e.g., weather) but also location cannibalization. Apparently, the company’s growth strategy is pulling consumers from previously established locations. Moreover, the company noted “inflationary pressures in produce and freight costs, that are expected to impact cost of goods sold for the balance of the year.” Wages also increased 3.3%, an acceleration from the 2.9% realized in Q4 ‘17. Accordingly, adjusted EBITDA decreased 30.9%. The net loss for the quarter was $3.6mm or -$0.19/share. The company lowered guidance. The stock tumbled.

Before you get too excited, note that this is a debt-light company: it currently has a ‘22 $50mm revolving credit facility with JPMorganChase Bank NA, of which $16.5mm is outstanding (with $3.7mm of cash on hand, net debt is only $12.8mm). It also, believe it or not, has covenants — leverage and interest coverage, among others — and the company is in compliance as of April 16, 2018. It also plans to continue its expansion: in the sixteen weeks ended 4/16/18, the company opened 11 company-owned restaurants with a plan to open approximately 25 (inclusive) over the course of fiscal year ‘18. That said, it does intend to rationalize existing locations (and expects some impairment charges as a result), cut G&A and take other operational performance improvement measures to combat its negative trends. There’s a potential opportunity here for low-to-middle-market FAs and real estate advisors.

For our part, we found this bit intriguing (unedited):

We are definitely seen more competitive intrusion, more square footage growth in some of those smaller kind of mid to kind of large markets where we've been there for some time now that's a little bit of what we're seeing in those markets.

We've also seen more competitive catering competition as every ones ramped up catering. And also the value and discounting as we spoke to in the call, in the prepared remarks we've seen that $10 check with that single user kind of moving around and we think that's so from the new competition square footage growth, the value and discounting and then the delivery interruption, we've seen or felt that in many of our markets.

There’s a lot to unpack there. Clearly competition, as we noted upfront, is increasing in the $10-check size cohort of fast casual. Catering is always a competitive business for restaurants like this too. But, the point that really got out attention was that about delivery. The company says pointedly, “We also believe that disruption from delivery and discounting has created headwinds.” The company further states,

Digital comps were 26% positive in Q1 as we leverage improvements from last year's investments in web and mobile platforms to build greater convenience for our guests. Early in Q2, we relaunched and upgraded our loyalty program, which is expected to help drive traffic by making it easier and clearer for our guest to earn and redeem rewards. Delivery sales grew in both our non-catering and catering businesses by 155%. And we have a clear plan to build out the channel for more profitable growth in 2018.

The impact of mobile food ordering and the need for delivery cannot be overstated. Companies need to act fast to activate delivery capabilities that makes sense to a mobile consumer who, more and more, goes to Postmates, Caviar, UberEats and other food delivery services for discovery. This is precisely why Shake Shack ($SHAK) is now on Postmates and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. ($CMG) is now available on Doordash. Others, like privately-owned Panera Bread are taking a step farther by building out its own delivery infrastructure in an attempt to own all its data and deliver without owing a cut to a middleman. Query whether this is far too much dependence on the likelihood of people to go directly to Panera’s app when they’re hungry…?

It sounds like the Zoe folks are increasing their focus on delivery. The question is whether they can execute fast enough to offset in-store dining declines. And whether they can do it on their own.

Recent Feedback - The (Hard) Business of Eating

"Excellent narrative on the restaurant industry in Sunday’s Petition. Btw, I really love the snarky tone of the writing – it’s awesome!" - Managing Director, Financial Advisor. 

PETITION Response: Thank you! We love receiving feedback like this; we noted that QSRs were generally doing fine while fast casual was looking a bit shaky and casual dining was looking like total dogsh*t. Insert Restaurant Brands International Inc. ($QSR), owner of Burger King (comps up 3.6%), Tim Hortons (up 0.3%), and Popeyes (down 1.8%). It reported an earnings beat on higher revenues (and then stock traded down). Meanwhile, Chipotle Inc.($CMG) - bloodbath. No queso for you. Meanwhile, if you feel like trusting Uber with even MORE of your data, maybe THIS new credit card (which promotes 4% off UberEATS) is for you. With news that Aldi's move into the US is compressing grocery prices even further, the casual dining space looks primed for a lot more hurt. 

10/31/17 Updated: Not to belabor the point, but this story by The New York Times helps drive home the issue currently in the restaurant space. There are currently 620,000 eating establishments in the United States. 620,000. That is bananas. 

Too many restaurants? Too many brands? You think? It's a shame that so many folks are sinking their livelihoods into these businesses. We expect the chart to the right to show continued downward trends given recent reports of the likes of McDonalds ($MCD) and Shake Shack ($SHAK) automating.

The (Hard) Business of Eating

Long VC Subsidies & Facebook's Copying Skills

Generally speaking, there are four categories in the dining space. First, there are the QSRs (quick service restaurants). Your run-of-the-mill fast food spots fall into this space. For the most part, these guys are doing okay: McDonald's ($MCD) and Wendy's ($WEN), for instance, have both seen great stock performance in the TTM. Second, there's the fast casual space. Competition here is fast and furious covering all manner of ethnicities and varieties. Chipotle ($CMG) and Panera Bread are probably the two best known representatives of this category. The former has gotten SMOKED and the latter got taken private. Generally speaking, there'll be some shakeout here, but the category as a whole has been holding its own. Third, there's the fine dining space. This is a tough space to play in but there are clear cut winners and losers (Le Cirque, see below): not a lot of chains fall in to this category. And, finally, there is the casual dining category. Here is where there's been a ton of shakeout. This past week, for instance, Ruby Tuesday Inc. ($RT) - the ubiquitous casual dining restaurant loosely associated with bad New Jersey strip malls - got bailed out...uh, taken private by NRD Capital at a fraction of its once $30/share price. (There was some assumed debt, too, to be fair). Moreover, Romano's Macaroni Grill filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. In RMG's bankruptcy papers, the company's Chief Restructuring Officer said the following, "The Debtors’ operations and financial performance have been adversely affected by a number of economic factors, but perhaps most notably by an overall downturn for the casual dining industry. The preferences of such customers have shifted to cheaper, faster alternatives. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a trend among younger customers to spend their disposable income at non-chain “experience-driven” restaurants, even if slightly more expensive." No. Bueno. See below for a more in-depth (and slightly repetitive summary) of this particular bankruptcy filing. 

Unfortunately, the restaurant world received some other (slightly under-the-radar) bad news this past week: UberEATS, Uber's food delivery service, reportedly generated 10% of the company's total global bookings in Q2 - which, extrapolated, equates to $3b in gross sales for the year. That's a lot of food delivery to a lot of people sitting at home doing the "Netflix-and-chill" thing instead of the eat-microwaved-mozzarella-sticks-at-the-local-Ruby-Tuesday-thing. Of course, this is attributable to Softbank and other venture capitalists who are subsidizing this money-losing endeavor: UberEATS is unprofitable in 75% of the cities it services. On the other hand, do you know what IS profitable? Facebook ($FB). Yeah, Facebook is profitable. And Facebook is going after this space too; it released its plans to get into the online food ordering business earlier this week. And many suspect that this may be a precursor to a foray into food delivery as well. Why? Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg saw Cowen's prediction that US food delivery would grow 79% in the next several years. Delivery or not, anything that helps make online food ordering easier and more mainstream is an obvious headwind to the casual dining spots. Given that this area is already troubled and many casual dining spots have already fallen victim to bankruptcy, there don't seem to be many indications of a near-term reversal of fortune. Headwinds for the casual dining space correlate to tailwinds for restructuring professionals. Sick? Yeah. Sad? Sure. But true.