y private buyers of fast-food restaurant companies in the private market have been higher than the mean valuations of many publicly traded fast-food companies, excluding only the extremely large chains such as McDonald's. Approximately 60 percent of the larger publicly traded fast-food chains have been selling at valuations below the mean multiple of EBITDA (earnings before interest and taxes, with depreciation and amortization added back) of recent private acquisitions in the fast-food segment of the restaurant industry.
Trend sales growth in the fast-food segment of the restaurant industry slowed in the last-half of the decade of the 1990s from the rapid rate of growth that characterized the long period stretching from the mid-1960s to the mid-1900s. A part of this slowing may be explained by simple arithmeticùthe larger the base sales level, the more difficult it is to maintain an increasing rate of growth. Nevertheless, some analysts believe that the slowing of the sales growth rate in the last-half of the 1990s was not fully
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