Chipotle Mexican Grill Conference Call Highlights

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. CMG reported its third quarter earnings on Tuesday. Shares of the company were down 7 percent.

Below are some key highlights from its conference call.

Operational and Financial Highlights:

• We have continued the momentum we built through the first half of the year growing revenue to $1.08 billion.
• An increase of 31.1% on same-store sales growth of 19.8% and the opening of 43 new restaurants.
• This produced diluted earnings per share of $4.15 for the quarter, an increase of 56%.
• Our efforts to build and strengthen our cultures continued with the addition of 41 new restaurateurs.
• We paid out nearly $700,000 in the quarter in people development bonuses and nearly $2 million year-to-date.
• While we expect to end this year with total new restaurant openings at the high end of our guidance of 180 to 195 new restaurants.
• For the year, about 70% of these locations will be in proven markets with 15% new markets and 15% in established or developing markets.
• Given the strength of our position, we expect to open between 190 and 205 new restaurants in 2015.
• We're delighted to report an even higher third quarter sales comp of 19.8%, making it the strongest sales comps since becoming a public company in 2006.
• Our third quarter same-store sales comp of 19.8% has helped to drive average sales volume for the restaurants that have been opened for at least 12 months to an all-time high of $2.4 million.
• Overall sales for the quarter increased 31.1% to $1.08 billion driven by the comp of 19.8%
• Year-to-date sales were just over $3 billion, an increase of 28.2%.
• The average check in the quarter is up about 8.5%, driven primarily by an effective price increase of about 6.3% as well as from catering and a slightly larger group size.
• Although our menu prices increased, we continue to see very strong transaction growth.
• And we're experiencing very little price resistance, just under 1% so far with very little menu trade down.
• So we will finish this year comparing to a higher comp of 9.3% in the fourth quarter of last year.
• We continue to expect comps for the full-year 2014 will be in the mid-teens.
• Our new restaurants continue to perform very well and we still expect strong opening sales volumes in the $1.7 million to $1.8 million range or higher.
• Diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $4.15, an increase of 56% from last year.
• Year-to-date, diluted earnings per share was $10.29, an increase of 29.8% over last year. Restaurant level margins year-to-date were 27.4%.
• Underlying food inflation was around 8% over last year.
• As we look to 2015, we hope our costs will stabilize, but we expect food cost inflation will be in the low-single-digits from where food costs were in Q3.
• Currently, we estimate over 10,000 of our hourly employees will have the opportunity to sign up for health insurance.
• Overall, we've invested $673 million to purchase nearly 4.2 million shares at an average price of $161 per share.
• We finished the third quarter with over $1.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents and short-term and long-term interest-bearing investments and no debt on our balance sheet.