I participated in my first-ever investor conference call yesterday. It was one of the most interesting and exciting experiences I have had so far this year.

You might think it would be boring to listen to how the head honchos at the Panera Bread Company assess their business’s performance and expectations for the next year. But it really juices me. I am very excited about where this company is going and its long-term potential.

For those of you that don’t know, Panera Bread is a group of 700+ company and franchise-owned bakery cafes. Kind of like Starbucks with a bakery– homemade bread baked daily in the cafe. Their food is top-notch, and they have received countless awards for their excellence.

And to top it off, almost every Panera Bread has free wireles internet. In fact, they were recently featured on SlashDot because they have the largest number of free Wi-Fi hotspots in the USA– over 500 and growing every day.

With everything I’ve learned so far, I believe that Panera Bread might have what it takes to meet Peter Lynch’s criteria as a “fast grower”:

The same thing happened to Taco Bell in the fast food business, Wal-Mart in the general store business, and The Gap in the retail clothing business. These upstart enterprises learned to succeed in one place, and then to duplicate the winning formula over and over, mall by mall, city by city. The expansion into new markets results in the phenominal acceleration in earnings that drives the stock price to giddy heights.
–Peter Lynch, in “One Up On Wall Street”

It is pretty funny to think that a billion-dollar company like Panera Bread, that has over 31 million outstanding shares (28 million shares plus 3 million options), had less than 2000 separate shareholders at least count (February 2004). Who would have thought?

As someone who participated in the conference call live, I felt like a true investor. Even though I only own approximately 0.000516% of the company, it was great. I have felt like some corporations treated me as a peon, but this experience was different. It truly awakened the giant within.

I even seized the opportunity to ask the head honchos a question– after all, they do work for me. I was caught a little off guard after hitting *1 and hearing I would be next. But I still felt like I was on the road to becoming truly wealthy.

(Incidentally, I asked what their intentions were for international growth. As they have sold franchise rights for 75% of the country, I think that they are ripe for foreign markets. However, there are no plans at this time.)

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