RBA

RBA was the cleanest asymmetric setup we worked through in the QSR recovery basket. The market was still treating the chain as a tepid reopening story, but the actual unit economics coming out of late 2025 told a different one — three consecutive quarters of same-store-sales growth, completed rental renegotiations at roughly two-thirds of the network, and a leaning operating cost base that meant the next leg of revenue fell almost entirely to the bottom line.

What anchored the call was the open offer at ₹70. That wasn't an analyst handicap — it was a hard, disclosed floor from a promoter who had already committed capital. With the stock sitting around ₹69, the floor was effectively the entry. Risk asymmetry lined up: a break below ₹70 broke the thesis, anything above it let the recovery story compound.

Underneath the support we had three reinforcing drivers. Promoters were quietly rebuilding stake size through ordinary market purchases, which signalled confidence at exactly the prices we wanted in. The store-level margin recovery was mechanical, not speculative — rental renegotiations and supply contract resets had already hit the P&L. And the multiple compression from the 2024 selloff meant we weren't paying for the recovery, we were paying late-cycle multiples on a mid-cycle earnings stream.

We held our feature window open until impact was real and unarguable — operating leverage flowing through consolidated numbers, same-store sales reaching the higher single-digit range, and liquidity rebuilding at the open offer price. Now that what we expected has actually shown up in the prints, we close the pick and publish the full thesis behind it.

Recap coming soon.