Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (CMG): Choice Equities Capital Management Says New Management is Doing a Good Job

A boutique hedge fund, Choice Equities Capital Management recently shared its Investor Letter for the first three months of 2019, which we shared here. In it, the fund reported being up 10.5% for the quarter, and it also posted comments on a couple of its holding, including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG), for which it said the following:

“Chipotle was the second largest contributor to performance in the quarter, adding~3% to gross returns. New management has the company performing well as a combination of inventive marketing and burgeoning delivery initiatives have returned the store traffic counts to growth for the first time since early 2017. Strong execution and nascent company initiatives in digital and delivery continue to position the company well for continued success as our nation’s preeminent fast casual food chain.”

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Chipotle Mexican Grill is a chain of fast- casual restaurants that provides its professional services not only in the US, but also across the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Germany. It gained wide popularity mainly thanks to its Mission-style burritos and tasteful tacos. Year-to-date, the company’s stock gained 58.60%, and on May 14th it had a closing price of $703.18. Chipotle Mexican Grill’s has a market cap of $19.27 billion while trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 96.10.

At Q4’s end, a total of 38 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 15% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 32 hedge funds with a bullish position in CMG a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) was held by Pershing Square, which reported holding $838 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $535.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, AQR Capital Management, and Generation Investment Management.

Disclosure: None.

This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.