Earlier this morning we got an email newsletter from YCharts Pro that compared the stock of Chipotle Mexican Grill’s, hot salsa of a stock performance with another red hot stock (and no I don’t mean the new iPad inventory), Apple.
…just a niche burrito maker… has hit a new 52-week high most trading days this year. Not a lot of investment experts saw that coming.
Chipotle shares are up more than 20% this year. That makes a 60%-plus gain for the past 12 months and 470% plus gain for the past three years – a figure that made it a better investment than Apple (AAPL).
So is Chipotle really the Apple of the burrito business? People who invest the big money seem skeptical. More hedge funds own Apple as a Top 10 investment than any other stock, and analysts’ buy recommendations on its shares outweigh holds more than 5 to 1. Chipotle doesn’t even make the list of important hedge fund stocks, and its shares get a decidedly more mixed reception among analysts. YCharts Pro gives the company great marks for fundamentals, but the worst possible score for share valuation.
Now there isn’t much love for Chipotle in the rest of the newsletter, but when we look around the GigaOM offices post lunchtime, I see a lot of Chipotle wrappers. Their salads seem to be popular with our team. For me, it is all too salty, so I instead focus on somewhat more prosaic and basic salads while I window shop on my new iPad.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- Monetizing music in the post-scarcity age
- Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
- CES 2012: a recap and analysis
