Valuing Chipotle

Ticker: CMG

Sector: Consumer Discretionary

Size: Large-cap

Website: http://www.chipotle.com


A "messy" recent history: In the last few months, Chipotle has had a bad case of burrito indigestion (chipotle.com). Five incidents of outbreaks have been reported (WSJ):

"Since July, there have been a total of five outbreaks linked to Chipotle, including a little-reported case of E. coli that sickened five people in Seattle and which was a different strain unrelated to the larger outbreak that began in October, as well as a norovirus case in Southern California, a salmonella outbreak in Minnesota and the Boston [norovirus] outbreak."

From a close of $720 in September 2015, the stock closed at $448 yesterday, a fall of 38 percent. Its stock chart is a mess -- though the downward momentum of the fourth quarter of 2015 seems to have abated:

Not surprisingly, analysts have ratcheted down their earnings per share estimates sharply. For the fourth quarter of 2015, estimates have fallen 57 percent from $4.37, ninety days ago, to $1.86 today. For 2016, estimates have fallen 37 percent from $20.46, ninety days ago, to $12.86 today (Yahoo! Finance).

In terms of earnings per share, roughly, 2016 represents a setback of 2.5 years.

General Analysis: Chipotle is a high-growth stock, a class of stocks notoriously difficult to value because high growth tends to be unstable. With Chipotle, however, growth is stable, making it easy to value. In this post, I follow the guidelines and format in Twenty dividend growth stocks to consider in Investing in Dividend Growth Stocks (pages 219 - 272) (Amazon). Chipotle is not a dividend growth stock -- it does not pay a dividend -- but its underlying business stability makes it, with one tweak for two scenarios, similar to value. I use Chipotle's results from 2010 through 2014 to unearth the underlying characteristics of the business. Incorporating a messy 2015 would distort the analysis.


The Business: Chipotle sells burritos, tacos, burrito bowls, and salads -- "a few things, thousands of ways" -- at its more than 1,900 fast casual restaurants, primarily in the U.S. The company also operates a much smaller chain of 11 Southeast Asian Kitchen restaurants and invests in an entity that operates 3 Pizzeria Locale restaurants. The company's by-line is "food with integrity." Its grander aim is to change "the way people think about and eat fast food."


Risks: After the outbreaks, will consumers return? According to the company, same restaurant sales fell about 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015 (Bloomberg). Nevertheless, I believe consumers will eventually return. With good, honest companies, the underlying business eventually recovers. In the 1980s, Johnson & Johnson had the Tylenol scare. They fixed it. Consumers returned. A few years ago, Johnson & Johnson had problems with manufacturing. They fixed it. Consumers returned. Where there is value -- and integrity -- in the brand, as with Johnson & Johnson and Chipotle; and problems are addressed, as Johnson & Johnson did and Chipotle is doing (chipotle.com), consumers do eventually return.

Of the other risks, commodity costs are one. Consumers do visit restaurants less often during recessions -- though Chipotle's relatively inexpensive food may mean it may not see the dramatic declines symptomatic of higher-priced restaurants.

Few other risks, longer term, meaning, in the next 10 or so years.


The Numbers: Profit margins have averaged ten percent the last five years. Asset turnover is 1.6. Chipotle does not have long-term debt -- in the traditional sense. It does, however, disclose deferred rent obligations. Financial leverage is low, 1.3. Return on equity is 22 percent. Likewise, return on equity has averaged 22 percent the last five years. Moreover, because the company has excess cash and investments on its balance sheet, its "true" return on equity is higher.


Dividends and Share Buybacks: The company does not pay a dividend. The company does buy back shares, mostly, it seems, to offset dilution. Over the last five years, the company has retired its shares at a modest 0.4 percent per year clip. (Comparatively, dividend growth stocks typically retire their shares at a much higher rate, but Chipotle is a high-growth stock. In fact, that it even retires its shares is somewhat of a bonus.)


Spreadsheet Parameters: (I use the spreadsheet described in Investing in Dividend Growth Stocks (Amazon) -- with a slight tweak to adjust for the possibility of a robust recovery in earnings per share -- to value the stock. See pages 158 - 176.) Actual dividend payout ratio of 0 percent; assumed payout ratio of 35 percent. Return on beginning equity: 30 percent. It is currently 29 percent. It has averaged 27 percent the last five years. In fact, because the company has excess cash and investments on its balance sheet, its "true" return on beginning equity is higher -- I am likely conservative with my 30 percent. Earnings growth has averaged an impressive 29 percent the last five years. Few large companies can sustain such high growth rates over long periods and, in that sense, Chipotle is one of the rare ones. Dividend growth: n/a. Earnings per share growth roughly mirrors earnings growth because share buybacks are muted. Chipotle operates more than 1,900 restaurants. The company opens more than 200 net new restaurants a year. It is not unreasonable to assume they can maintain this pace for at least the next several years. I do not believe the market is near saturation. For instance, McDonald's is virtually everywhere in the U.S. -- and McDonald's has 14,300 U.S. restaurants (though they do intend to close a handful this year (New York Times)). Moreover, Chipotle will almost certainly expand outside the U.S. more aggressively at some point and the company is testing a few new restaurant ideas. Reasonable growth rates for our spreadsheet, if sales were to resume their historical growth rates: (Years 1-5: 26 percent) (Years 6-10: 22 percent) (Years 11-20: 16 percent) (Years 21-30: 10 percent) (Years 31+: 3 percent).


Sample Spreadsheet Results: Because earnings per share can vary dramatically the next several quarters, I use four potential scenarios to gauge the scope of variability:

• (1) Reset -- current depressed earnings per share.
• (2) Quick Reset -- higher current earnings per share.
• (3) Reset ++ -- current depressed earnings per share, then full recovery next year.
• (4) Quick Reset ++ -- higher current earnings per share, then full recovery next year.

Explicitly, I use the following values:

Scenario	Stock Price	EPS - current	P/E ratio - current	EPS - next
(1)	450	11	41	13.86
(2)	450	15	30	18.90
(3)	450	11	41	22.55
(4)	450	15	30	22.55

These earnings per share are for periods centered on January 1 -- thus the last 6 months of 2015 plus the first 6 months of 2016 for the current period, for example.

Of course, even within these patterns, we have many other possibilities -- but at least they help establish a range. Using a current stock price of $450, and the spreadsheet described in Investing in Dividend Growth Stocks (Amazon), I get the following results:

Scenario	Expected Return
(1)	12.33%
(2)	13.85%
(3)	14.80%
(4)	14.79%

Screenshots from the spreadsheet for scenario (3), also showing the slight tweak in red (also needed in scenario (4)) I made in the Projections section:

These are long-term returns. All are outstanding -- because growth remains deliciously high. If Chipotle produces these gains, investors will be well ahead of the market. That said, none of these results make any sense if growth permanently collapses (YouTube) but I do not believe this happens.

In addition, risk is not low under any of our scenarios -- as the relatively high P/E ratios attest.

As a comparison, if we were to live in a parallel universe (YouTube), with the recent company-specific indigestion nonexistent and Chipotle humming along, at a stock price of (say) $600 (to account for the recent market decline -- the market still declines in the parallel universe) and earnings per share of $19, all other assumptions the same as above, the expected return is 13.59 percent a year -- and, yes, with a P/E ratio of 32, the stock is still not low risk. Blame those high P/E ratios -- even in the parallel universe.

Disclosure: I own a tiny position in Chipotle, entirely for fun. I always order a carnitas burrito. It rocks. Do not interpret this post as a recommendation to buy or sell or trade or whatever, including buying a Chipotle burrito. Always do -- and depend -- on your due diligence.

How dividend growth stocks outperform the market

The following graph plots the weekly returns of the market versus VIG (Yahoo! Finance), the dividend growth ETF from Vanguard, which I use as a proxy for dividend growth stocks:

The graph shows that dividend growth stocks have a higher peak than the market and the distribution of weekly returns "spreads" less, that is, the distribution has a lower standard deviation, and is therefore less risky (Wikipedia). With dividend growth stocks, probability is concentrated in the center -- with a much smaller left tail and a smaller right tail than the market. Thus, dividend growth stocks do not suffer from collapses and manias nearly as much as the market -- especially with regard to collapses -- and their outperformance during bear markets more than makes up for their somewhat muted performance during bull markets. Net, they march silently up and to the right.


The following statistics compare dividend growth and the market:

	Dividend Growth	Market	Difference
Mean	0.14	0.11	0.03
Standard Deviation	2.26	2.61	-0.34
Quantiles: 0%	-15.76	-18.20	2.44
25%	-0.95	-1.06	0.11
50%	0.29	0.22	0.07
75%	1.41	1.42	0.00
100%	10.42	12.03	-1.60

As unquestionable positives, dividend growth stocks have:

• a higher mean than the market,
• a lower standard deviation,
• a higher median, and
• a shorter left-tail.

In exchange, what dividend growth stocks give up is:

• a shorter right-tail.

The following plots show the spread of returns in another way. The line within the boxes is the median, the lower border the 25th percentile, the upper border the 75th percentile. The first plot compares the full pattern of returns (extreme returns show up as gray points though you have to look closely to spot the gray dots -- they also appear as duplicates, though this is not relevant here, and I ignore this):

The second plot zooms in on the left tail. Importantly, dividend growth stocks perform quite a bit better than the market in the left tail --  these are weekly returns so the 0.11 difference, as shown in the table above, is material. These stocks do not collapse nearly as much as the market when the nasty times arrive. In my opinion, this relative outperformance is one of the key reasons long-term investors should invest in dividend growth stocks.

The third plot zooms in on the right tail. Importantly, dividend growth stocks perform just slightly weaker than the market in the right tail --  the difference is just 0.01:

Thus, dividend growth stocks underperform during bull markets (but not by much, in general) and outperform during bear markets (by a lot). This combination helps ensure good risk-adjusted long-term returns and explains how dividend growth stocks outperform the market.


As far as the current (early 2016) market malaise goes, not surprisingly, dividend growth stocks are outperforming the market. Admittedly, they are getting hit but these are high-quality companies and they are not getting hit nearly as much as many other segments of the market, or the market itself:

An important tenet of Investing in Dividend Growth Stocks (Amazon) is that dividend growth stocks are core holdings because they generate good long-term risk-adjusted returns. They do so through a combination of moderate returns and relatively low volatility. Quoting from page 20:


"[A] portfolio [of dividend growth stocks] rises less than the market during bull markets and falls less than the market during bear markets. The latter more than makes up for the former. These stocks march to the beat of a different drummer -- but a very sensible one."



In my opinion, these stocks are excellent long-term investments (subject to not paying too much, as always, of course) for anyone who wants to preserve and build their wealth.


These are not gimmicky companies or slow-growth companies or risky companies. These are companies that last. They grow moderately over long periods, which when combined with relatively low return volatility results in strong gains in long-term wealth.

Sector earnings for the S&P 500

(Data courtesy of Standard & Poor's)

Generally speaking, stocks follow earnings. For the financials, earnings have been recovering and, not surprisingly, the sector has staged a strong recovery since the mass hysteria of 2008/2009. (Of course, this was after quite a few of them crumpled and the rest were just one Bernanke put expiration date away from purgatory.)

Volatile earnings trends are more suited to traders than investors. Traders yearn for the volatility of prices. Investors should want a slow and steady rise up and to the right. They should not want to buy and sell. For this to work, they need sectors that do not go through stomach-churning drops every now and then.

Trends such as these are evident in graphs of sector earnings. (Even better are long-term graphs of sector earnings.) Consumer staples, for instance, is one such sector for long-term investors. Others are health care (though this one has too much government meddling) and possibly industrials. Earnings don't yo-yo around. Earnings trend slowly and up and to the right.

Still, a lack of volatility is not the only requirement for long-term investors. They also need growth. Thus, the utility sector is generally not a good choice. And valuations, as always, do matter. Finally, as has been proven time and time again, most analyst estimates are biased toward the optimistic end. Many analysts also miss the macroeconomic picture.