Chipotle Stock (CMG): Comparable Sales, Restaurants and Valuation

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-07

Chipotle stock (CMG) is the share of Chipotle Mexican Grill, the Newport Beach, California burrito chain. A quote page tells you the price and a P/E. It does not tell you that Chipotle’s revenue now grows mainly because it keeps opening restaurants, that the figure investors actually react to is comparable restaurant sales, or that the stock has already lost about 60% twice in eleven years. That is what this page measures.

Chipotle’s price, ratios and restaurant count

Price is the November 6, 2026 close. Earnings, equity and shares come from the 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, filed October 29. Comparable sales and the restaurant count come from the third-quarter release filed October 28.

CMG closed 2025 at $37.00, so it was down 6.9% in 2026 to November 6 (McDonald’s was down 9.5% over the same dates). Its highest close on record was $68.55 on June 18, 2024, and its 52-week low close was $27.52 on October 23, 2026. All prices here are split-adjusted.

How it works: comps, restaurant margins and new restaurants

Comparable restaurant sales (Chipotle’s name for same-store sales) compare sales at restaurants open long enough to have a full year-ago period with what those same restaurants sold a year earlier. Chipotle splits the change into transactions (how many orders) and average check (how much each order spends). Comps strip out the effect of new openings, so they answer the question a growth stock lives on: are existing restaurants getting busier?

Restaurant-level operating margin is Chipotle’s own measure of what a restaurant keeps after its four big costs: food, beverage and packaging; labor; occupancy; and other operating costs. It is not a GAAP figure, but every release reports it, and it moves with comps because rent and much of the labor bill stay put when sales slow.

New restaurants are the other engine. Chipotle opened 334 company-owned restaurants in 2025 and 233 in the first nine months of 2026, many with a Chipotlane drive-through pickup lane. A new restaurant adds revenue from day one but does not count in comps until it has a year of history.

Chipotle’s comps, margins and restaurant count since 2015

Comps, restaurant-level margin, openings and year-end count are from each year’s fourth-quarter results release. Revenue and operating margin (operating income ÷ revenue) are from the 10-K. Counts are company-owned restaurants.

The 2025-2026 slowdown, quarter by quarter. Comps were -0.4%, -4.0%, +0.3% and -2.5% through 2025, with transactions down in all four quarters (by 2.3%, 4.9%, 0.8% and 3.2%). In 2026 they turned slightly positive: +0.5%, +2.2% and +2.1%. Margins did not follow. In the third quarter of 2026 the restaurant-level margin was 23.3%, against 24.5% a year earlier: labor rose to 25.7% of revenue from 25.2% and other operating costs to 16.0% from 15.0%, while food, beverage and packaging eased to 29.5% from 30.0%. For the first nine months, revenue rose 8.8% but operating income fell 9.3%, to $1.37 billion.

A worked example: where Chipotle’s revenue growth comes from

Revenue growth is roughly the growth in restaurants plus the comps change, with timing effects because openings land through the year.

1. 2024. Restaurants rose from 3,437 to 3,726, up 8.4%. Comps were +7.4%. Revenue grew 14.6%.
2. 2025. Restaurants rose from 3,726 to 4,042, up 8.5%. Comps were -1.7%. Revenue grew 5.4%.
3. Per restaurant. 2025 revenue of $11.93 billion ÷ the average of the two year-end counts (3,884) = $3.07 million. For 2024 the same arithmetic gives $3.16 million. That figure had risen every year from 2017 to 2024, from $1.92 million, before slipping in 2025.
4. The read. New restaurants kept adding about 8 points of growth a year. The swing between a 14.6% year and a 5.4% year came almost entirely from comps.

The P/E side of the same story. The P/E ratio can mislead when profit collapses. At the end of 2016, after the food-safety year, CMG traded at $7.55 split-adjusted against diluted EPS of $0.0154 (77 cents before the split): 490 times earnings. Year-end P/E on that year’s diluted EPS ran 31.8x (2015), 490.0x (2016), 46.8x (2017), 68.4x (2018), 67.6x (2019), 110.8x (2020), 76.3x (2021), 43.4x (2022), 51.4x (2023), 54.3x (2024) and 32.5x (2025). Today’s 32.2x is about where it stood at the end of 2015. A lower multiple records that the market now pays less for each dollar of earnings; it says nothing on its own about what comes next.

The split. On June 26, 2024, CMG began trading after a 50-for-1 split: the last pre-split close was $3,283.04, and $3,283.04 ÷ 50 = $65.66. Older prices on this page are divided by 50 the same way. Our stock split page covers how splits work and how the first post-split open compared.

Buybacks instead of dividends. Chipotle spent $2.43 billion on repurchases in 2025 and $1.46 billion in the first nine months of 2026; its third-quarter release put the remaining authorization at $1.6 billion. Diluted shares were 1,342.6 million in 2025 against 1,414.8 million in 2019, split-adjusted, 5.1% fewer. The stock buybacks page explains the mechanics.

Chipotle’s two 60% drawdowns: food safety, then traffic

A drawdown is the fall from the highest earlier close. CMG has had two deep ones since 2015.

2015 to 2018: food safety. CMG closed at a then-record $15.16 split-adjusted on August 5, 2015. That autumn, E. coli and other food-borne illness incidents were linked to Chipotle restaurants. In its fourth-quarter release the company tied a 14.6% fall in quarterly comps to “publicity during the quarter surrounding food-borne illness incidents.” Comps for 2016 were -20.4%, the restaurant-level margin fell from 26.1% to 12.8%, and operating income dropped from $763.6 million to $34.6 million. The stock bottomed at $5.03 on February 13, 2018, 66.8% below the peak and 923 days after it, and closed above the 2015 high again on July 15, 2019, 3.9 years after the peak.

2024 to 2026: traffic. From the June 18, 2024 record of $68.55, CMG fell to $27.52 on October 23, 2026, down 59.9% over 857 days. Nothing like the 2016 collapse happened to the business: revenue kept growing, and operating margin was 16.2% in 2025 and 14.1% in the first nine months of 2026. What changed was transactions, which fell in every quarter of 2025, and the price the market would pay for each dollar of earnings. At $34.43 it remained 49.8% below the peak.

The original data: 86 Chipotle results filings since 2006

Earnings days. We pulled every 8-K Chipotle filed under Item 2.02, results of operations, from its first as a public company in March 2006 to October 2026: 86 filings, counting a few updates filed between regular reports, such as the one on January 6, 2016. Chipotle files after the close, 83 of 86 times, so the reaction day is usually the next session.

The median earnings-day move was 6.38%, against 1.09% on the 5,105 other trading days in the same span, 5.8 times as large. A move of 5% or more came on 52 of the 86 earnings days (60.5%) but on 3.4% of other days, and 26 earnings days moved 10% or more. Direction was a coin toss: CMG closed higher on 43 of 86 earnings days, against 51.5% of other days. The biggest moves were up 24.4% on April 26, 2018, and down 21.5% on July 20, 2012. Recent ones: down 13.3% on July 24, 2025 and down 18.2% on October 30, 2025, then up 12.5% on July 30, 2026 and up 8.9% on October 29, 2026. Since 2021 the median earnings-day move has been 6.57% across 24 filings, 13 of them up.

Download the data: comps, margins and restaurants by year and quarter, both drawdown paths day by day, and all 86 earnings days with SEC acceptance times. Reuse needs only a credit and a link back, per our site license.

When it fails: turning comps, a falling P/E and one bad quarter of headlines

Comps can turn while the revenue line still looks fine. In 2025 revenue grew 5.4% because of 334 openings, while comps fell 1.7%. Reading revenue alone would have missed the slowdown the stock was reacting to.

A falling P/E is not the same as a cheap stock. The multiple fell from 54.3x at the end of 2024 to 32.2x partly because the price halved and partly because earnings held up. Either part can change.

One bad quarter of headlines can reset the base. The 2015 outbreaks took comps from positive to -20.4% within a year, and the share price needed 3.9 years to get back.

Our ratios age. Each multiple pairs a single close with a single 10-Q, so the glance table shows the date of both.

Questions people ask

Does Chipotle stock pay a dividend?

No. Chipotle returns cash through buybacks: $2.43 billion in 2025 and $1.46 billion in the first nine months of 2026.

Why is Chipotle stock down from its high?

Transactions fell in every quarter of 2025 and full-year comps were -1.7%, while labor and other costs squeezed the restaurant-level margin. The price fell 59.9% from June 2024 to the October 23, 2026 low.

When did Chipotle split its stock?

It split 50-for-1; trading on the new basis began June 26, 2024. A pre-split price of $3,283.04 became $65.66.

What are comparable restaurant sales?

Sales at restaurants with a full year of history, compared with the same restaurants a year earlier. Q3 2026 was +2.1%: average check up 1.3% and transactions up 0.8%.

When does Chipotle report earnings?

In early February, late April, late July and late October, after the market close. The third-quarter 2026 report came on October 28.

Related

Start with the P/E ratio and earnings per share, then drawdown for how to measure the falls above. The split is covered in stock split, and stock buybacks explains where Chipotle’s cash goes. For a sector fund that holds restaurant names, see sector funds, and for another stock page built from filings, see bank stocks.

For another consumer stock read the same way, see Target stock.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.