The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that MTY Food Group has expanded from its roots as a Canadian food-court operator to a global franchisor with a diversified portfolio of fast-food and casual-dining restaurants. The Globe's Jennifer Dowty writes that MTY has more than 7,100 locations with about 90 brands. A key milestone for MTY occurred in 2013 when it entered the U.S. market. Now, more than 4,100 of its locations are in the United States. The stock has delivered strong gains to long-term investors with MTY's share price closing at a record high in February driven by its robust earnings growth. Before the pandemic, for the fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 2019, normalized adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization totalled $152-million. For the fiscal year ending Nov. 30, 2022, normalized EBITDA stood at $187-million. For the first half of fiscal 2023, MTY reported normalized EBITDA of $139-million and the consensus estimate for the fiscal year is $271-million. MTY chief executive officer Eric Lefebvre says: "Food inflation is getting better. But prices haven't come down and they're probably not going to go down -- but at least they've stopped going up exponentially."