Chipotle's sales growth falls short of Wall Street expectations

Shares of Chipotle fell Tuesday after it reported sales growth that fell short of Wall Street expectations.

The Denver-based company said sales rose 4.3 percent at established locations during the second quarter. Analysts on average expected growth of 5.7 percent, according to FactSet.

A year ago, Chipotle said the figure rose 17.3 percent.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is still trying to restore pork supplies to its more than 1,800 restaurants after a shortage that began in January. The company had said at the time it stopped serving carnitas at about a third of its locations after a pork supplier violated its animal welfare standards. More recently, the company said it was adding a pork supplier from the United Kingdom to help bring back carnitas to more locations.

Chipotle has said it doesn't expect pork to be fully restored to all restaurants until the fourth quarter of this year.

For the three months ended June 30, Chipotle's total revenue including new restaurants was $1.2 billion. That fell short of the $1.22 billion analysts expected, according to Zacks Investment Research.

Its stock fell 1.5 percent to $663.29 in after-hours trading after sinking more than 5 percent earlier.

Profit for the quarter rose to $140.2 million, or $4.45 per share. That was more than the $4.41 per share analysts expected, according to Zacks Investment Research.

For the year, Chipotle still expects sales at established locations to rise in the low- to mid-single digits. That's compared to a 16.8 percent increase for last year.

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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on CMG at http://www.zacks.com/ap/CMG

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Keywords: Chipotle Mexican Grill, Earnings Report