Chipotle Q3 2025 earnings: revenue up 7.5%, but traffic slips and outlook cut
Chipotle's sales grew on new store openings, but existing-restaurant traffic declined and the company lowered its full-year sales outlook.
| Q3 2025 | Reported |
|---|---|
| EPS | $0.29 |
| Revenue | $3.00B |
Figures as reported by the company to the SEC for the quarter ended September 30, 2025. Analyst estimates are not part of a filing, so no comparison to expectations is shown.
Key takeaways
- Total revenue reached $3.0 billion for the quarter, up 7.5% from the same period last year. The growth came mainly from opening new restaurants (84 new company-owned locations, most with a drive-thru “Chipotlane”) rather than from more visits to existing stores.
- Sales at restaurants open at least a year (a measure called comparable sales) rose just 0.3%. That was because customers paid slightly more per visit (average check up 1.1%), but fewer people actually came through the door (transactions down 0.8%).
- Net income for the quarter was $382.1 million, down slightly from $387.4 million a year earlier, even as revenue grew, reflecting rising costs.
- Restaurant-level operating margin, which measures profitability at the store level after food, labor and occupancy costs, slipped about one percentage point to 24.5%, and overall operating margin fell to 15.9% from 16.9% a year ago. Management pointed to higher marketing spend, labor cost inflation, and tariffs on imported goods as the main pressures.
- Looking at the trailing twelve months, profitability metrics show a similar pattern of gradual compression: operating margin of 14.65% and net profit margin of 11.42%, with per-share earnings down about 4% from a year earlier even though revenue over that period grew about 7%.
- Digital orders (placed through the app or website) made up 36.7% of food and beverage sales, showing that online and mobile ordering remains a major part of how customers order.
- Chipotle cut its full-year 2025 sales forecast, now expecting comparable restaurant sales to decline by a low-single-digit percentage for the year, a notable step down from the growth it had projected earlier in the year. It also guided for a similar low-to-mid-single-digit decline in the current quarter.
- CEO Scott Boatwright said the company’s “extraordinary value proposition and brand strength remain strong” and that Chipotle is working to accelerate menu innovation and improve its digital experience to “get back to driving positive transaction growth.”
- Despite the margin pressure, the company’s return on equity over the trailing twelve months was high, at 53.26%, indicating it continues to generate strong profit relative to shareholders’ equity even as growth has slowed.
Q3 2025 in context
| Metric | Sep 2025 | Sep 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $3.0B | $2.8B | +7.5% |
| Net income | $382M | $387M | -1.4% |
| Free cash flow | $406M | $299M | +35.9% |
| Diluted EPS | $0.29 | $0.28 | +3.6% |
| Operating margin | 15.9% | 16.9% | -1.1 pts |
| Net margin | 12.7% | 13.9% | -1.1 pts |
Figures for the quarter ended Sep 2025 and the quarter ended Sep 2024, as reported to the SEC.
How the stock took it
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc closed at $39.76 on Oct 29, 2025, the last session before the report, and at $31.69 on Oct 31, 2025, the first session after it — -20.3% across the report.
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Sources: company report · earnings call · Chipotle press release