Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) beat on both the top and bottom lines today. Earnings came in at $4.15 compared to the Zacks Consensus Earnings Estimate of $3.86, and Revenues were at $1.08 billion slightly ahead of the Zacks Consensus Revenue Estimate of $1.053 billion. CMG continued its growth story, outpacing the year ago earnings numbers by 49%, and the revenue numbers by 31%.
The big question going into this earnings announcement was the overall impact the price increase would have on foot traffic and sales growth. Chipotle increased prices about 6% towards the end of the last quarter, with this quarter being the first full quarter with the price increases. Well, prices went up, and sales went up as well.
Chipotle saw sales growth in the forms of increased traffic, and increased average check. Further Comparable Same Store sales increased 19.8%, ahead of the 17.3% expected increase.
On the negative side, management stated that food costs were 34.3% of total revenues, only slightly below the 34.6% last quarter. This was due to increased costs of beef, avocados, and dairy products. Further, management stated that they expect low to middle single digit Comparable Same Store Sales in 2015.
This last bit of news caused the stock to drop in afterhours trading activity. At the time of this writing, the stock is trading down just above 2% on mild volume. Tomorrow, Zacks will publish a fully detailed earnings report on Chipotle Mexican Grill.
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