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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-08-23): Designation Watch · Gem Score -11 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 73 · Value -80 · Sentiment -34 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $18.06 vs $33.20 at analysis
Page map (sections in order; each card carries a stable
reference-name attribute you can cite):
profile-header/price-overview— company profile, live quote, market capextended-analysis— the core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memofuture-predictions— our forward price-band predictionsmarket-narrative/ai-findings/gpt-critique— narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)- Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers):
price-history,income-trend,key-metrics,financials(statement tables),insider-trading. The analysis above is public; the raw data tables require a free account.
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any ticker resolves at delvantic.com/stock/TICKER ·
raw inputs are public-company filings and market data (via licensed data feeds);
every model, score, lens read, and prediction on this page is Delvantic's own analysis.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.
CMG NYSEChipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. is a public fast-casual restaurant company specializing in Mexican-inspired food served through a streamlined, quick-service format. The brand focuses on a simple, customizable menu built around burritos, bowls, tacos, quesadillas, and salads, allowing customers to choose from a range of proteins, toppings, and sides prepared in front of them. Chipotle emphasizes responsibly sourced, high-quality ingredients, avoiding artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives, and positions its offering as real food that combines convenience with quality. The company generates revenue primarily from dine-in, takeout, catering, and digital orders, including app and web-based channels that support pickup and delivery. Headquartered in Newport Beach, California, Chipotle operates thousands of company-owned restaurants across the United States and in international markets such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and parts of the Middle East. In the consumer services and restaurant sector, Chipotle is a prominent player in the fast-casual segment, influencing industry standards for operational simplicity, menu focus, and ingredient sourcing.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 1.14
Total Equity: $2.83B
Shares: 1,347,158,772
Total Debt: $5.08B
Cash: $350.55M
EBITDA: $2.45B
Total Debt: $5.08B
Cash: $350.55M
Revenue: $11.93B
Revenue: $11.93B
Revenue: $11.93B
Total Equity: $2.83B
Tax Rate: 23.6%
Equity: $2.83B
Total Debt: $5.08B
Cash: $350.55M
Current Liabilities: $1.19B
Long-Term Debt: $4.77B
Total Debt: $5.08B
Total Equity: $2.83B
Shares: 1,347,158,772
Shares: 1,347,158,772
CapEx: -$666.34M
Shares: 1,347,158,772
Stock Price: $33.20
Net Income: $1.54B
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Jul 28, 2026 12:24am (26d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $7.5B | $8.6B | $9.9B | $11.3B | $11.9B |
| Cost of Revenue | $5.8B | $6.6B | $7.3B | $8.3B | $8.9B |
| Gross Profit | $1.7B | $2.1B | $2.6B | $3.0B | $3.0B |
| Operating Expenses | $861.5M | $851.0M | $953.0M | $1.0B | $1.0B |
| Operating Income | $845.5M | $1.2B | $1.6B | $2.0B | $2.0B |
| Net Income | $653.0M | $899.1M | $1.2B | $1.5B | $1.5B |
| EBITDA | $1.1B | $1.5B | $2.0B | $2.4B | $2.5B |
| EPS | $0.46 | $0.65 | $0.89 | $1.12 | $1.15 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $0.46 | $0.64 | $0.89 | $1.11 | $1.14 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Jul 25, 2026 3:16am (29d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $815.4M | $384.0M | $560.6M | $748.5M | $350.5M |
| Total Current Assets | $1.4B | $1.2B | $1.6B | $1.8B | $1.5B |
| Total Assets | $6.7B | $6.9B | $8.0B | $9.2B | $9.0B |
| Current Liabilities | $873.7M | $921.9M | $1.0B | $1.2B | $1.2B |
| Long-Term Debt | $3.3B | $3.5B | $3.8B | $4.3B | $4.8B |
| Total Liabilities | $4.4B | $4.6B | $5.0B | $5.5B | $6.2B |
| Total Equity | $2.3B | $2.4B | $3.1B | $3.7B | $2.8B |
| Retained Earnings | $3.9B | $4.8B | $6.1B | $1.6B | $619.9M |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Jul 28, 2026 12:24am (26d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $1.3B | $1.3B | $1.8B | $2.1B | $2.1B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$442.5M | -$479.2M | -$560.7M | -$593.6M | -$666.3M |
| Free Cash Flow | $839.6M | $844.0M | $1.2B | $1.5B | $1.4B |
| Acquisitions (net) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Dividends Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Stock Buybacks | -$466.5M | -$830.1M | -$592.3M | -$1.0B | -$2.4B |
| Net Change in Cash | $210.4M | -$437.3M | $177.2M | $192.2M | -$392.5M |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Jul 28, 2026 12:24am (26d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +14.4% | +14.3% | +14.6% | +5.4% |
| Gross Profit Growth | +20.8% | +25.4% | +16.7% | +0.3% |
| Operating Income Growth | +43.2% | +34.8% | +21.6% | +1.4% |
| Net Income Growth | +37.7% | +36.7% | +24.9% | +0.1% |
| EBITDA Growth | +35.8% | +30.9% | +17.8% | +2.6% |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — if the last quarter repeats
Live · as of 2026-08-19 08:43Even the bull case prices 49% below today — the ratio here measures the model-vs-market gap, not payoff odds. Another quarter like the worst recent one costs 70%.
| Case | Growth | Margin | Fair value | vs price ($33.20) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull — recovery | +14% | 13.1% | $17.06 | -49% |
| Base — stabilizes | +9% | 11.4% | $13.09 | -61% |
| Bear — keeps slipping | +4% | 9.7% | $9.85 | -70% |
| Stress — last quarter repeats | +7% | 8.8% | $9.93 | -70% |
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
Claude Reading
Starting with the raw tape: revenue growth is decelerating meaningfully. 2023 grew 14.3% ($8.63B→$9.87B), 2024 grew 14.6% ($9.87B→$11.31B), but 2025 only 5.5% ($11.31B→$11.93B). Q1 2025 revenue of $2.88B vs Q1 2024 $2.70B is +6.7% — and net income $386.6M vs $359.3M is just +7.6%, a far cry from the 20%+ earnings growth that justified peak multiples. Operating margin held at 16.9% and net margin at 12.9%, but they're no longer expanding — 2024 op margin was 17.6%, so 2025 actually compressed ~70bps. This is the tell: the flywheel of unit growth + traffic + pricing + margin leverage has stalled simultaneously. That's not a "mature earner" — that's a growth story hitting the wall.
The prior models are directionally right but disagree on magnitude, and I side with the synthesis/narrative view over the pre-flight framing. Pre-flight calling this "high-growth" with a "decade-long runway to 7,000 units" is stale bullishness — the Q1 print already contradicts it. The synthesis fair value of $16.76-20.51 is aggressive-bearish but defensible: at $33.2 with a $42.6B market cap, CMG trades at 27.6x TTM earnings and 3.6x sales for a business now growing 5-7% with flat margins. Apply a PEG-reasonable 18-20x to $1.54B NI and you get $28-31B market cap, or roughly $22-24/share. The narrative layer's "$16 fundamental + $16 story premium" split is a useful frame; I'd put fundamentals closer to $22 and narrative premium at $11, but the direction is unambiguous. Market Forces flagging "losing competitive battle during favorable conditions" aligns with the deceleration — CAVA, Sweetgreen, and a resurgent Taco Bell are pulling incremental fast-casual demand.
The contrarian case: CMG has $2.11B operating cash flow and $1.45B FCF on $42.6B cap — a 3.4% FCF yield, not egregious for a category-leading brand with 20% ROIC and 54% ROE. Debt/equity of 1.79 looks scary but it's operating lease capitalization, not real leverage — cash of $350M against genuine financial debt is manageable given $2B+ annual OCF. If Niccol's successor executes on Chipotlanes (higher-margin format), international (Middle East, Europe pilots), and throughput initiatives get traffic back to +5%, the stock re-rates. Also: the "6,880 share A-Awards" all dated 2026-06-11 look like scheduled director/officer equity grants, not conviction buying or selling — the "Neutral Insider Activity" tag is correct, but note the G-Gift is mildly bearish (executives don't gift stock they think is cheap). Also worth flagging: the current price of $33.2 against a $42.59B market cap implies ~1.28B shares, which is post-50:1 split (June 2024) — the metrics look sane on that basis, so no data error there.
Where the data is thin: only two quarters have net income disclosed (Q1'25 and Q1'24), so margin trajectory intra-year is a black box — the deceleration could be worse or better than annual figures suggest. The 2025 annual figure being present alongside a Q1'25 quarterly suggests fiscal-year data may be projected/estimated rather than reported; treat the 5.5% 2025 growth number with caution but note it aligns with the Q1 run-rate ($2.88B × 4 ≈ $11.5B). I dissent modestly from the synthesis $16-20 fair value — that assumes multiple compression to ~13-15x, which only happens if same-store sales go negative. More likely path: multiple grinds to 20-22x on 6-8% growth, yielding $24-27. Agree with the overvalued verdict, disagree with the depth. This is a $25 stock trading at $33, not a $17 stock trading at $33 — meaningful downside but not catastrophic, and quality of business (ROIC 20%, FCF conversion strong) argues against the deep-bear case unless traffic actually breaks.
GPT Reading
What jumps out to me in the raw numbers is not a broken restaurant concept but a business that has crossed from compounding phase into yield-on-growth phase much faster than the market story admits. Revenue rose from $7.55B in 2021 to $11.93B in 2025, which is excellent scale growth, but the more important read is that earnings quality is already mature: 2025 operating income of $2.01B on $11.93B of sales is a 16.9% operating margin, and net income of $1.54B is 12.9%. Those are strong restaurant economics. The problem is that they now look largely harvested, not emergent. Gross profit was basically flat from $3.02B in 2024 to $3.03B in 2025 despite $620M more revenue, which means the incremental sales are coming at much lower gross contribution. Free cash flow of $1.45B is real and healthy, but against a $42.6B market cap it is only about a 3.4% yield, which is too skinny for a company whose annual revenue growth appears to have slowed from mid-teens to mid-single digits. At 29.1x earnings, 3.75x sales, and 20.0x EV/EBITDA, this is being priced more like a still-accelerating growth chain than a highly profitable but moderating one.
I agree with Opus’s core claim that the growth engine has slowed materially and that the market is still paying for an older version of the story. The Delvantic AI Findings says “the flywheel of unit growth + traffic + pricing + margin leverage has stalled simultaneously.” That is directionally right. The cleanest evidence is the mismatch between top-line expansion and income progression: 2024 revenue grew to $11.31B from $9.87B, then 2025 only to $11.93B, while net income barely moved from $1.53B to $1.54B. Q1 2025 revenue of $2.88B versus $2.70B a year earlier is decent, but a 13.4% net margin on that quarter is essentially unchanged from 13.3% in Q1 2024. So yes, the earnings algorithm has flattened. I also agree with Opus that the debt/equity ratio overstates true financial risk in a lease-heavy restaurant model. A business producing $2.11B of operating cash flow and $1.45B of FCF is not balance-sheet stressed just because reported debt is $5.08B and equity is $2.83B.
Where I disagree is on magnitude and on a few narrative flourishes. Opus argues “this is a $25 stock trading at $33,” but I think that still gives too much credit to a premium multiple unsupported by current momentum. If net income is $1.54B and the business is no longer expanding margins, a 22x multiple already assumes durable high-single-digit growth and unusually stable restaurant economics; that gets you roughly $33.9B equity value, or about $26.5 per share on the implied 1.28B share count. But I would not start with 22x. For a company with recent revenue growth of 5.4%, recent earnings growth of 0.1%, and annual operating income basically flat at $1.99B to $2.01B, 18-20x is more appropriate, which points to about $21.5-$24 per share. I also think Opus overreaches when saying competitive pressure from CAVA, Sweetgreen, and Taco Bell “aligns with the deceleration.” Nothing in the supplied data isolates competition as the cause; all we can really say from the briefing is that growth slowed and margins stopped expanding. On the other side, I disagree even more strongly with the prior “high-growth” framing and the narrative engine’s suggestion that there is a clean fundamental anchor anywhere near the current price. A 15.8x book multiple and sub-4% FCF yield are not what you pay for a 5-6% grower unless you believe a reacceleration is imminent, and the data here do not show that.
I also part company with Opus’s relative dismissal of the harsh valuation synthesis. He says $16-20 fair value requires “same-store sales go negative.” I don’t think that is necessary. If a mature branded restaurant with 12.9% net margins and 20.4% ROIC grows revenue mid-single digits and earnings low-single digits, the market can easily settle around 16-18x earnings without any collapse in comps; that would imply roughly $18-$21 per share. The quality is real, but quality alone does not immunize a stock from de-rating when the market has been underwriting a much steeper growth path. Put differently, I agree with Opus that CMG is “overvalued but not broken,” but I disagree that downside is only moderate. The business is not broken; the stock can still be expensive enough to matter a lot.
A careful skeptic of both my view and Opus’s would say we are both leaning too hard on annual 2025 figures that may be estimated, while only two quarterly net-income points are actually disclosed. That skeptic would also argue that 20.4% ROIC, 54.3% ROE, and continued positive Q1 revenue growth justify a persistent premium multiple, especially if unit growth and throughput initiatives are underappreciated in these backward-looking figures. Fair. But even granting that, the burden of proof belongs to the bull at $33.2, not the bear: the stock already discounts a better trajectory than the reported numbers currently show.
Grok Reading
grok-critique step) alongside the other Big-3 seats, when a
report is run on this ticker.
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
The business generates $1.45B of FCF on $11.93B revenue with operating margin at 16.9% and gross margin at 25.4%, both roughly triple what a typical restaurant chain earns. Earnings integrity is genuinely high: OCF/NI is 1.53x, accruals are -7% of assets, Beneish M is -2.95, and Altman Z is 6.34 — reported profits are converting to cash cleanly. Capital allocation is shareholder-friendly: diluted share count fell from 1.43B to 1.35B (a -1.4% CAGR), buybacks are 818% of SBC, and SBC itself is only 1% of revenue. Net cash is -$4.03B, but that is almost entirely operating lease liability common to restaurant chains, not funded debt distress; $1.45B annual FCF easily services obligations.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Whether the 2025 revenue slowdown is same-store-sales driven or unit-growth driven (10-K comparable sales disclosure).
- Composition of the $4B+ net debt figure - split between operating lease liabilities and any funded debt.
- Any brand/traffic issues flagged in 2025 transcripts (e.g., portion size controversy, value perception) that could explain the margin dip.
- CEO transition context and management continuity following prior Niccol departure.
- New unit opening cadence and Chipotlane productivity to confirm growth runway is intact.
The composite fair value sits at $20.51 and the signal-adjusted FV at $16.76, with the DCF at $17.79 and an anchored P/E at $25.95. Even the most generous of those inputs (anchored P/E at $25.95) implies ~22% downside from $33.20; the DCF and composite imply 40-50% downside. That is a wide, consistent gap across independent methods - not a single runaway model - which makes the 'rich' read hard to dismiss.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- 2026 unit growth guidance and comp trajectory - is the 2025 deceleration a blip or a trend
- Restaurant-level margin guide vs 2025 tick-down
- Any change in buyback pace given the flat net income print
- Assumptions embedded in the DCF (terminal growth, WACC) to confirm it is not overly punitive
The macro backdrop is a mild but fresh risk-off tilt (VIX 18.7, S&P -2.6% off highs, 10y at 4.69%, market PE 26.6). With a beta near 1, CMG absorbs the tape roughly one-for-one, and it does so as a consumer-cyclical name where discretionary QSR spend is exactly what wobbles first when investors de-risk. That is a modest but real headwind for this specific ticker. The narrative is where the pressure really concentrates. CMG is a classic cult-favorite: high cult coefficient, strong intensity, but only moderate durability, and the bear framing (priced for perfection, saturation, structural labor and delivery pressure) is gaining airtime. The story that has to hold is 'next McDonald's for the digital age' - a premium narrative that de-rates fast when the tape turns and when analyst pieces start openly questioning entry timing, as the July 25 'Should You Buy Before July 29?' piece signals. Newsflow is thin and promotional (free guac on Avocado Day) - no fresh bull catalyst to feed the cult, just brand maintenance. Net: mild macro headwind amplified by a stretched narrative with no new fuel, partially offset by an intact loyal-brand story and positive price momentum.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- The July 29 earnings print - guide and comps are the single biggest sentiment fulcrum
- Whether VIX pushes above 20 and the risk-off regime extends beyond its nascent 1-day duration
- Any sell-side target cuts or downgrades that would validate the bear framing
- Traffic and pricing commentary - the cult narrative cracks fast if comps disappoint
This lens hasn't been run for this ticker yet.
When we made this prediction on Jul 28, 2026, CMG was $33.20. We expect it to be $26.20 by Jan 2027, and we consider it great value under $22.00. This is an early model (v0.6.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Jul 28, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.