Panera Bread has no interest in M&A

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Panera Bread Co (PNRA.O), which carries no long-term debt and boasts a nine-year high in free cash flow, may be well-positioned to make acquisitions but the bakery cafe said on Wednesday it has no interest in mergers.

Panera had purchased a bakery in Phoenix, Arizona, as a way to break into that market, but it has no future plans to make acquisitions.

"Our board looks at our cash position at the end of every quarter," said William Moreton, Panera's co-chief operating officer. "We think the best use of our money is to open more bakery cafes."

Panera plans to stick to its heritage of selling bakery items, soup, salads, sandwiches and coffee.

"We think people in our industry get into a lot of trouble when they start to buy across different segments or different categories that they don't know as well," Moreton said at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago.

"That isn't something that we would see ourselves doing," Moreton said.

Instead, Panera plans to invest in itself by opening 80 to 90 bakery cafes over the next year.

"We think there's a great deal of growth left," Moreton said.

The company has been testing drive-through windows in some locations and has been weighing the idea of opening bakeries within some retailers, Moreton said.

(For summit blog: blogs.reuters.com/summits/)