Retail

Chipotle Gets Its Most Bullish Call on Wall Street

Jon C. Ogg

Published: March 13, 2019 12:10 pm

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 11:30 pm

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE: CMG) was featured among the top analyst calls for Wednesday morning, but what wasn’t noted was just how much more bullish the analyst report was than peers. BTIG Research reiterated Chipotle as a Buy, but the firm’s Peter Saleh is the most bullish of all Wall Street analysts with official price targets.

The call raised Chipotle‘s price target to $700 from $620. The consensus analyst target price was $554.58, and Saleh now has the highest official price target on Wall Street.

Saleh is more bullish because of the Chipotle Rewards new loyalty program that has been unveiled, and he thinks tangible benefits will come from it via increased store traffic (as other stores have seen) and increasing digital sales. While some may worry that this will act to lower margins, Saleh thinks that higher second make-line utilization will help to protect their margins.

As a reminder, it was just on February 7 when two analysts were moving away from Chipotle after its shares had recovered so much.

It is important to realize that Chipotle shares have risen almost 50% since the end of 2018, even if that is under the $750 highs from back in 2015.

Chipotle was last seen trading up 0.6% at $634.65, but that is almost $80 higher than its consensus analyst target price of $554.58. The 52-week trading range is $307.70 to $637.99, and the market cap is $17.5 billion.