Chipotle sales crater 30% in December
Sales at Chipotle are falling off a cliff.
In a filing with the SEC on Wednesday, the fast food chain disclosed that for the month of December same-store sales - or sales at locations open for at least a year - were down 30%.
This decline in sales follows an outbreak of E. coli tied to the restaurant chain as well as reports of a norovirus outbreak at a location near Boston College in Massachusetts.
In the fourth quarter same-store sales are expected to decline 14.6%. The company previously said it expected same-store sales to fall 8%-11% during the quarter.
Following this disclosure shares of the company were down about 2% in pre-market trade. In the last three months the stock is off about 40%.
Additionally, Chipotle disclosed in the filing that it was, "served with a Federal Grand Jury Subpoena from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in connection with an official criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, in conjunction with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations. The subpoena requires us to produce a broad range of documents related to a Chipotle restaurant in Simi Valley, California, that experienced an isolated norovirus incident during August 2015."
The company said that at this point it can't estimate any penalties it might incur related to this investigation.
More to come ...