UPDATE: Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) : Our Burrito Trade Has Flies All Over It, With Up To A 10-1 Payout Potential

by Dan June 29, 2011 7:06 am • Commentary

Well last week when I posted on CMG got one thing right here:

MY QUICK TAKE: Technically, the chart looks fairly constructive near term, holding a massive up trend with a series of higher highs and higher lows over the last 12 months…….if the market can hold here, and barring any negative stock specific news, this stock will most certainly make a new all time high above 300.  And with short interest above 10% for a company with a $9billion market could get a nervous short in a little bit of a predicament with the slight bit of perceived good news.”

Stock most certainly made a new high and it started on its way before the market even made it’s little bottom late Thursday.  Some of you may ask if you thought it could do that then why didn’t you buy it?  Well the easy answer is that’s not what I do…..I am not a momentum day trader, but if I were I guess this would be a great name to trade.

I bought the CMG AUG 260 / 240/ 220 Put Fly for 1.70 when the stock was $285 or 7% lower…….I may consider rolling this to higher stikes, but remember to trade in and out of flys is expensive as there are many legs and in a name like this there is a ton of bid ask, so use limits.

As you can tell from the post below this was not a high conviction idea, but I liked the idea of picking on an out-performer with a ridiculous valuation when I thought the market would test and break support.  Well obviously that didn’t happen, yet.  The point of this trade was to make a tactical low premium bet that the stock could trade back to support by AUG expiration wich includes their earnings date that could be used as a catalyst……Again, defining my risk with a low probability but high reward structure.

ORIGINAL POST June 22nd 2011:

Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG $285)

This is just one of those stocks that a cynical guy like me loves to hate…..not because it’s a bad company or their products suck (I really enjoy a nice Chipotle Burrito), but because the stock is up ~700% since the bottom in 2008.  [private] My generally weak short thesis clings to the fact that the stock sold off almost 75% from its then all time in late 2007 and this sort of sell off, or one much more reasonable could come this year at the faintest hint of a slowdown in sales coupled with rising input costs.  A guy can hope can’t he??

[caption id="attachment_2864" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="5 yr CMG chart Provided by "][/caption]

A Few Little Fun Facts On The Name:

-Street fairly mixed on the name with 10 Buys, 14 Holds and 3 Sells with an avg 12 month price target of ~$290 as compiled by Bloomberg.

-short interest is high at almost 12% of the float.

-eps and sales are expected to grow in 2011 and 2012 at 21%/24% and 19%/16% respectively.

-stock trades at a steep valuation premium to its peers at 37X expected 2011 earnings and 42x expected 2012 earnings. MCD for comparison trades at ~16x expected 2011 earnings and sales which are only supposed to grow at about 10.5%

-Potential near term catalyst could be their July 19 earnings announcement, over the last 8 qtrs the stock has had some large moves, with the avg move of ~8%.  Investors will be listening for any comments regarding comp trends as 2H 2011 will face difficult comparisons yoy.

MY QUICK TAKE: Technically, the chart looks fairly constructive near term, holding a massive up trend with a series of higher highs and higher lows over the last 12 months…….if the market can hold here, and barring any negative stock specific news, this stock will most certainly make a new all time high above 300.  And with short interest above 10% for a company with a $9billion market could get a nervous short in a little bit of a predicament with the slight bit of perceived good news.

But If I am right and the market heads back to 1250 in the SPX then this is one of the last stocks on my hit list (AAPL, WYNN, AMZN, NFLX, PCLN, BIDU) to have made massive gains over the last year and not to have adequately corrected and shaken out some weak hands……if we sell off this summer then they will get to this name and will show a period of under-performance in my opinion……

2 BEARISH TRADE STRUCTURES I AM CONSIDERING: I WANT TO DEFINE MY RISK AND LOOK FOR LOW PREMIUM OUTLAYS WHILE ISOLATING JULY 19 EARNINGS AND GUIDANCE EVENT…..

CMG ($285) BUY AUG 270 / 250/ 230 Put Fly for 2.50

-Buy 1 Aug 270 Put for 10.70

-Sell 2 Aug 250 Puts at 11.00 (5.50 each)

-Buy 1 Aug 230 Put for 2.80

Break-Even on Aug Expiration:

Upside-Worst Case:  stock above 270 lose 2.50 or less than 1% of the underlying….

Downside: Bwtn 270 and 267.50 lose up to 2.50

btwn 267.50 and 250 make up to 17.50

Best Case: 250 (down 12%) make 17.50

btwn 250 and 230 (down 19%) payout trails off……

Worst Case: BELOW 230 lose 2.50.

or FOR SLIGHTLY LESS PREMIUM ISOLATE A GREATER MOVE BACK TO THE 200 DAY MOVING AVERAGE OF ~240.

CMG ($285) BUY AUG 260 / 240/ 220 Put Fly for 2.00

-Buy 1 Aug 260 Put for 7.80

-Sell 2 Aug 240 Puts at 7.80 (3.90 each)

-Buy 1 Aug 220 Put for 2.00

Break-Even on Aug Expiration:

Upside-Worst Case:  stock above 260 lose 2.00 or less than 1% of the underlying….

Downside: Bwtn 260 and 258 lose up to 2.00

btwn 268 and 240 make up to 18.00

Best Case: 240 (down 15.5%) make 18.00

btwn 240 and 220 (down 19%) payout trails off……

Worst Case: BELOW 220 lose 2.00