Chipotle Shorts Climb as Earnings Loom

Short sellers added to CMG positions ahead of Tuesday's earnings call, pushing short interest to a month high. Options traders turned bullish while three Wall Street firms cut targets.

Price action & positioning

CMG closed at $34.21 on April 24, up 0.91% on the day. The stock fell 4.5% over the week but held a 4.4% monthly gain. Shares traded near the middle of their recent range after pulling back from recent highs.

Short interest & lending

Short interest hit 43.47 million shares as of April 23, representing 3.29% of the float. That's the highest level in a month. Shorts added 547,010 shares over the past day and climbed 1.3% over the week. The month-over-month increase came to 14.7%.

Cost to borrow dropped to 0.32%, down 42% from the prior week and off 15% from a month ago. The metric fell from a spike to 0.55% on April 16 — the highest point in the past 30 days. Utilization ticked up to 0.41% on April 23 from 0.20% the day before. That reading sits well below the April 3 peak of 0.99% and far from the 52-week high of 3.1%.

Options flow

The put-call ratio printed 0.88 on April 24, down from the 20-day mean of 0.99. The z-score of -2.45 signals call buying at a pace more than two standard deviations above the recent average. The PCR fell from 1.01 in early April and sits in the lower half of the 52-week range of 0.65 to 1.23.

Analyst consensus

The Street holds a consensus "hold" rating on Chipotle with a mean target of $43.66. That implies 27.6% upside from current levels. Twelve analysts rate the stock "hold."

Raymond James analyst Brian Vaccaro cut his target to $41 from $43 on April 21 while keeping an "Outperform" rating. RBC Capital's Logan Reich lowered his target to $45 from $50 on April 17, maintaining "Outperform." Citigroup's Jon Tower reduced his target to $44 from $49 on April 14, holding "Buy."

DA Davidson initiated coverage March 6 with a "Buy" and $51 target. Mizuho upgraded to "Outperform" from "Neutral" on March 20, raising the target to $40 from $37.

Bulls point to 9–10% unit expansion potential and improved food costs down to 30.2% of sales. Bears flag restaurant-level margins of 23.4% in Q4 2025, down 140 basis points year-over-year, with flat comps and 3–4% commodity inflation expected in FY26.

Valuation & factor positioning

The P/E ratio of 28.0 fell 1.69 points over the past week but rose 0.87 from a month ago. The price-to-book of 13.8 dropped 0.89 over seven days. EV/EBITDA of 19.9 declined 0.73 over the week and 0.86 over 30 days.

Factor scores show strength in earnings surprise at the 69th percentile and days to cover at the 80th percentile. Utilization ranks at the 78th percentile. EPS momentum scores sit at the 53rd percentile for 30 days and 34th percentile for 90 days. The short score ranks at the 54th percentile while sector score sits at the 31st percentile. EV/EBIT ranks at the 26th percentile.

Institutional positioning

Capital Research and Management added 11.2 million shares in Q1, bringing its stake to 147.9 million shares or 11.4% of the company. Vanguard added 18.7 million shares to 144.6 million (11.1%). ClearBridge Investments increased its position by 9.5 million shares to 14.1 million (1.08%).

FMR LLC added 4.5 million shares to 18.9 million (1.45%). AllianceBernstein grew its stake by 4.0 million shares to 29.7 million (2.28%). Australian Foundation Investment opened a new 39.3 million share position worth 3.02% of the company.

BlackRock, T. Rowe Price, State Street, and JP Morgan made smaller additions. Morgan Stanley trimmed by 1.4 million shares to 13.7 million (1.05%).

Insider activity

Insiders were net buyers of 604,280 shares over the past 90 days, worth $22.0 million.

CEO Henry Scott Boatwright received an award of 229,457 shares on February 13. President Curtis Evander Garner III received 254,846 shares in awards and sold 134,177 shares at $35.84 for $4.8 million the same day. CFO Adam T Rymer received 25,526 shares and sold 8,971 shares at $35.84 for $321,521.

Chief Level Officer Laurie Schalow received 76,577 shares and sold 37,113 shares at $35.84 for $1.33 million on February 13. Independent Director Patricia D Fili-Krushel sold 3,350 shares at $36.58 for $122,543 on February 24.

Historical context

Chipotle has an earnings call scheduled for April 29 at 8:10 PM UTC. The most recent earnings call took place April 24, announced February 3. Prior calls occurred February 4 and February 3.

What to watch

The April 29 earnings call arrives Tuesday evening. Options sentiment has shifted bullish with the PCR z-score at -2.45. Short interest built to a month high ahead of the print. Three firms cut targets in the past week while maintaining positive ratings.