In this segment of the Motley Fool Money podcast, host Chris Hill, Million Dollar Portfolio's Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger, and Motley Fool Pro and Options' Jeff Fischer talk about the once-beloved, now-tarnished fast-casual Mexican chain that can't get out of its own way.
Are things as bad for Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG +2.51%) as they appear to be? And how can it adjust? Meanwhile, in another type of chip business, you have Intel (INTC +4.57%), which clearly has succeeded in its pivot to the new phase of the technology revolution.
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Oct. 27, 2017.
Chris Hill: Shares of Chipotle down 15% this week after a disappointing third-quarter report. Jason, it appears that queso is in fact not the answer.
Jason Moser: [laughs] It seems like the perception out there is that you can get a better meal in The Upside Down from Stranger Things than going to Chipotle. It's scaring people away. Comps were a meager 1%. We've been talking about this a lot. I know you're a little bit hot under the collar, Chris, so I'm not going to try to talk you back off the ledge, because I think things are about as bad as they look. For me, at this point in time, I can absolutely see a scenario where Chipotle, where Steve Ells decides to maybe look at taking this thing private again. I don't know that he is suited to take this company forward as a publicly traded company. And I think part of the problem is, for better or for worse, he's going to put purpose and mission above everything else. And that includes profit. And that's OK, you can do that, but as a publicly traded company, your life is going to be a living hell. So, I think we need to start looking at the options here for the path forward. You look back a year ago, he was targeting 2017 earnings per share of about $10. Fast-forward to today through the first nine months it's at about $5 adjusted, $5.39 adjusted for some one-time events, which basically means they're not going to hit that target this year. The best-case scenario, maybe they hit that target next year. You plunk a 30X multiple on that and you get a $300 stock, all of the sudden it looks like the stock is actually pretty reasonably priced today. And I don't know that it ever garners that multiple that we're so used to seeing, that premium multiple. So, all in all, an extremely disappointing 2017. It seemed like it started off so promising, and boy, the tide just turned quickly.
Hill: Intel's third quarter profits came in 26% higher than Wall Street was expecting, and shares of the chip maker hitting a new all-time high on Friday. Jeff, this was not one of those beat by a penny kind of quarters.
Jeff Fischer: No. Massive results. We have to give Intel credit, when you think about it, how much the industry has changed since the 1990s, let alone the 80s. It has staying power, and it has evolved as technology has changed, where is IBM, Hewlett-Packard, so many other early computer leaders fell by the wayside. Intel is trying to be the driving force of the data revolution. It's making money on the Internet of Things, on storage, data, cloud, on memory, which grew sharply, its memory chips. And of course, on the CPU sold into computing devices. 26% earnings-per-share growth this quarter. The stock trades at 13X expected earnings for the year ahead, so it looks very inexpensive compared to all the other tech giants. It has a good 2.5% yield. I think we've been saying for many years that Intel looks like a good value with a good yield, and the stock has delivered results as well. Not as much as the others, but still decent results. I think it's on a good path.
