It should not be surprising that hiring a veteran restaurant executive to replace an inexperienced founder will have a material impact on the business and its stock. Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) is a classic example, as Steve Ells stepping aside for Brian Niccol (formerly of Taco Bell) has launched CMG's shares into the stratosphere:

CMG's customer traffic has rebounded (+2% in Q4 2018) after flat lining earlier in the year and material price increases (+4% in Q4 2018), which were sidestepped after the e coli incidents, have same store sales rising 6% and profits surging even faster. The current analyst consensus estimate has CMG earning $12 per share in 2019 on a mid single digit same store sales increase and 5% unit growth. Those figures would place CMG near the top of the sector.

As is often the case, the biggest issue is the magnitude of CMG's recent stock gains. At more than $600 per share, CMG's forward price-earnings ratio is a stunning 50x. Why a casual dining chain with 2,500 locations already should trade at such a valuation is hard to understand, unless one believes they are going to steal a lot of market share going forward from here. Many folks believe that will happen, but I am less excited.

To give readers a sense as to how nutty this CMG valuation appears to be, let's compare it to Amazon (AMZN). I know AMZN is not a dining stock, but I find it to be an interesting comparison because they are both loved consumer brand stocks right now. Not only that, I would venture to guess that an investor poll would conclude that Amazon's business is better than Chipotle's and is likely to grow revenue and profits faster over the coming decade. And yet, today we can invest in Amazon at a cheaper valuation:

Looking at 2018 reported financial results, CMG trades at 31x EV/EBITDA, versus 28x for Amazon. I used EV/EBITDA to account for balance sheet items as well, but on a P/E basis the numbers are also similar: 50x for CMG and 59x for AMZN.

For those who are intrigued by Chipotle stock, I would simply point out that Amazon has long been a loved growth stock for which investors are often willing to pay sky-high valuations for. Today an argument can be made that CMG is more expensive and you would have a hard time finding people who expect CMG's business to outperform AMZN in coming years.

If that's true, either CMG is overvalued quite a bit, or AMZN is relatively cheap, or both. I would bet that AMZN outperforms from here. For those who like paired trades, being short CMG against an AMZN long looks interesting.