Article

Commodities: Papa John's is only gainer

The price of cheese continues its upward trend, while the prices for other common commodities monitored by pizzamarketplace.com fell over last week.

August 1, 2016 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

The price of cheese continues its upward trend, while the prices for other common commodities monitored by pizzamarketplace.com, fell over last week. Pizza stocks  also fell over the week, except for Papa John's, which got a nudge upward in price. 

Cheese  
The price of cheese continued its upward trend last week, ending Friday at $1.73—that's up 2 cents from the previous Friday's close, which was $1.71. In fact, over the last month, the price has risen a full 10 cents. 

Wheat  
Wheat continues to fall in price to $4.88 a bushel. That's down 7 cents from the previous week.

Gasoline and diesel fuel 
Gas and diesel continue to drop in price as we move toward the end of the summer vacation season. The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas today is about $2.13 on average nationwide. That's down 3 cents from the previous week and 15 cents from a month ago, when the price was $2.28. Last year the price was $2.65.

The story is about the same for other grades of fuel. For instance, mid-grade today is $2.41 nationally, down 3 cents from a week ago, 13 cents from last month and 50 cents lower than a year ago. For premium grade, today's price is $2.65 nationally, down 3 cents from a week ago, as well as 13 cents from a month ago and 46 cents from last year when a gallon was $3.16 on average. 

Diesel fuel is averaging about $2.32 a gallon nationally, down 2 cents from a week ago and a nickel lower than last month. This time last year, a gallon of diesel was 41 cents higher at $2.73. 

Natural gas
For the report week ending Wednesday, July 27, spot prices at most market locations rose. The Henry Hub spot price rose 8 cents from $2.72 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) last Wednesday to $2.80/MMBtu yesterday.

At the New York Mercantile Exchange, the August 2016 contract expired yesterday at $2.672/MMBtu, up a cent from last Wednesday. The September 2016 contract rose to $2.660/MMBtu, up 4 cents Wednesday to Wednesday. Net injections to working gas totaled 17 Bcf for the week ending July 22. Working gas stocks are 3,294 Bcf, which is 15 percent greater than the year-ago level and 19 percent greater than the five-year (2011-15) average for this week.

According to Baker Hughes, for the week ending Friday, July 22, the natural gas rig count fell by one to 88. Oil-directed rigs increased by 14 to 371. The number of miscellaneous rigs increased by two during the week. The total rig count increased by 15, and now stands at 462.

The natural gas plant liquids composite price at Mont Belvieu, Texas, fell by 10 cents, closing at $4.87/MMBtu for the week ending July 22. The price of ethane, propane, and butane fell 6 percent, 2 percent, and 1 percent, respectively. The price of isobutane was flat, and the price of natural gasoline rose 1 percent.

Pizza company stocks
Papa John's was the only gainer in this week's review of four common pizza stocks monitored by pizzamarketplace.com. Shares in Pizza Hut's  parent company, Yum! Brands, closed Friday at $89.42, which is down 68 cents from the previous week's close and 84 cents off from the previous day.

Domino's was down $1.48 from the previous week to $147.30, which was up a nickel from the day before. 

Meanwhile, Papa John's continued an upward trend to $73.95, up 70 cents from last week's close and up 30 cents from previous day. 

Papa Murphy's was off 16 cents to close at $7, which was also a 16-cent drop from the previous day's close. 

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.