Investing.com - Shares in Chipotle (NYSE:CMG) fell in premarket U.S. trading on Wednesday after the burrito chain flagged a dip in comparable sales in the opening month of its current quarter.
Speaking in a post-earnings call to analysts, Chief Financial Officer Adam Rymer said demand in January had been negatively impacted by the New Year's Day holiday "falling in the middle of the week", which led to more people going back to work and school "a little bit later" than usual.
Along with recent wildfires in Los Angeles, Rymer predicted that this trend would dent Chipotle's comparable sales by "about a 400 basis point" in January. The figure in the first quarter is subsequently tipped to be "somewhere around flattish" compared to the year-ago period, Rymer said.
In a note to clients, analysts at KeyBanc predicted that first-quarter same-store sales are "likely to fall in the low-single digit range", while the second quarter could be "slightly lower given holiday shifts and difficult year-on-year comparisons".
For the three months ended December 31, the company reported earnings per share of $0.25, above estimates of $0.24 a share. Revenue of $2.85 billion fell short of projections of $2.85 billion.
Comparable restaurant sales increased by 5.4%, compared with Wall Street estimates of 5.6%. In the corresponding period last year, the figure had come in at 8.4%.
Chipotle also noted that efforts to expand portion sizes pushed food, beverage and packaging costs to 30.4% of total revenue, up from 29.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023.
"The increase was primarily due to higher usage of ingredients as we focused on ensuring consistent and generous portions, a protein mix shift from the success of our Smoked Brisket limited time offer, and to a lesser extent, inflation across several items including higher avocado and dairy costs," the firm said in a statement.
For its 2025 financial year, Chipotle is expecting low- to mid-single digit same-store sales growth.
(Yasin Ebrahim contributed reporting.)