저자: Kevin · 외국인
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치폴레 소비 둔화와 프로모션 확대로 마진이 압박받고 있으며, 저소득·25~35세 소비가 위축되고 있다고 진단. 스타벅스도 영업이익률이 급락(18.7%→4.5%)했다고 지적. 고마진 AI 반도체 기업(엔비디아 등)과 달리 소비주는 가격 결정력이 약하다고 주장. 소비 둔화가 개인대출(SoFi) 리스크로 이어질 수 있다고 경고. 아마존 로봇 자동화 확대로 산업용 로봇주가 유망하다고 언급. 자막 중심 분석이며 특정 기업의 구체적 가격 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
I think the only reason Chipotle is frankly going down and frequency is going down is because we're used to our memories of like 10 years ago getting a really nice burrito bowl or really fat burrito to go where we're like, "Dude, it doesn't even stay in." You know, you take a bite at one end and like the back explodes because there's so much food in it.
That was the reputation Chipotle had. Now all of a sudden it's like, "Yo, man, I got to order two of these sometimes." Especially when you get them to go. You get them to go, you got to order like two of the burritos to be like what they used to be. Those you know, fat burritos where they're like, "Damn, Chipotle loves me.
They load this crap up." Now, you know, you go in for a burrito or you DoorDash worse a burrito. If you DoorDash the burrito, the $19 burrito with guacamole is going to end up being like $25 cuz of the tip and the delivery fee and all this stuff. Uh and then you get it and it's like half the size of what you're used to and you're like, "Bro, I'm getting scammed." Is what it feels like.
Like it's the worst feeling ever when you're hungry and you DoorDash and then you get the product and it's like, "Yo, this is not not okay." It's the worst feeling ever. So, anyway, it's not a surprise to me that low to middle-income consumers are further reducing their frequency. Now, they saw this earlier this year when consumer sentiment declined sharply.
They say, "Which is not surprising because you know, we sort of had the tariff disaster." But now, what they say is, "We believe that guests with an income of below $100,000 represents 40% of our sales." So, one in four of their customers they believe have an income of under $100,000. Honestly, that's also kind of interesting and this is their estimate.
I mean, they don't really know. So, they're you know, maybe there's a guy like in the back who's like, "That guy's broke." You know, judging us. But anyway, um you know, that means 60% of sales uh are to uh six-figure plus people essentially. Based on our data, dining out less often due to the economy inflation, the particularly challenging cohort is 25 to 35.
We believe this trend is not unique to Chipotle and occurring across all restaurants. Well, it it might makes you an excuse younger. Well, it makes sense because man, I mean, people who are graduating college right now are just absolutely getting effed. You know, new grads today uh uh have a really tough time.
Now, in fairness, millennials had a tough time too who were graduating in 2008, 9, 10, 11, right? So, like unfortunately, cyclically, that can happen. You go through these periods of time where it's it's hard to get a good job. Uh you know, I I was looking at a uh somebody took a screenshot of like a Reddit post the other day uh and they're like there's this person who you know, they uh they they lost their their job in bookkeeping.
They uh now uh are server. They're waiting tables. Their credit score is 500 and they're like, "Man, I just can't get ahead." Like there's there's a little bit of balance here. Uh we generally have to start with the financial education of like stay away from buy now pay later, stay away from debt because often times what happens is you could be waiting tables, but that doesn't mean you need to have a 500 credit score.
So, there's a broader problem there too. Like when I was a server, you know, I had a 770 credit score. Uh actually, I was more just like busboy and host and expediter and occasionally I was able to sneak in serving a table too, but I never actually made it to server. Lauren did. Uh and then she made it to manager.
She's freaking awesome. And I got her the job there, but that was at Red Robin. But anyway, the point is like that's not an excuse for having a bad credit score, right? Uh a credit's really important. But anyway, finally, the promotional environment has intensified. This is not uncommon either. So, you're finding this with Starbucks as well.
And and this is this is what happens when the economy slows down. So, pricing power shrinks, right? PP shrinks. This is one of the reasons why breadth in the stock market is so narrow. Uh people are just plowing money into stocks like Nvidia because the pricing power is absolutely insane at companies like Nvidia.
Remember, they're taking 58 cents out of every dollar to the net income. That is absolutely insane. You know, that's like a great gross margin, but their gross margin is even better. Their gross margin is sitting at you know, 72%. These are incredible margins. That's exactly what you're not seeing at Starbucks uh in their earnings release.
You know, their earnings release yesterday actually indicated more of a deterioration in margins. And we'll look at it as well at Chipotle, but Chipotle's earnings call really points this out to us that this is these are companies that appeal to everyday Americans and they don't have the ability to offset inflation.
This is what we're seeing consistently with companies saying, "Hey, you know what? We're not going to raise prices at the pace of inflation next year." That's what Chipotle was saying. Part of that is because they can't cuz their margins going to tank even more. Look at uh Starbucks's earnings here.
This is a sign of what's going on with the K-shaped recovery. This is why we've got frustration supporting politicians like Ilhan Omar and AOC, right? But look at this. I've got quarter end uh net revenues of $6.9 billion at Starbucks. But look at their actual operating margin. Operating margin at just 4.5%.
A collapse from the 18.7% operating margin that they previously had. Complete collapse. Now, part of that they blame on restructuring associated with the closure of stores and they're trying to get {quote} back to Starbucks. But that's still a massive decline in operating margin and it's likely to continue to worsen even outside uh of their restructuring.
So, get into uh this promotional environment. That squeezes margin. It means you have little PP. PP. It is what it is. Chew on this. Chew on that. If you're still spending hours every week on rental administration, you need to see this. Today's sponsor is Baselane and they just launched a game-changer for real estate investors, Baselane Smart.
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It's like um uh What What is it um uh Oh, what's the What's the joke with the onions? There's a There's a joke about this. Uh it's uh uh There are two times It's something to the effect of like there are two times my eyes water every single time. One is when I peel an onion. Two is when I open my wallet.
It's just the nature of the environment we're in right now. Uh but we aim to get back to consistent share. Yeah, they're trying to climb back, but it's tough because it's not just a tough economy, but they've also got this now reputation of trying to skimp a little bit. And their version of skimping is really because they're also trying to fight inflation.
So, you get what's really called shrinkflation. The generosity gets cut out, right? What made their brand gets cut out. And so then they have to talk about reducing price. But you get this. All of this delivered at a price point that is 20 to 30% below our peers. They're talking about how, "Hey, you know, we're going to try to do better on price." But the problem is even 20 to 30% below our peers is still expensive.
So, of course you're going to get less frequency. This is what we saw with Fiserv. You know, Fiserv responsible for 25,000 transactions a second and they tanked 40-something percent. I think they're even down more today. So, that is a sign of two things. One, people getting nervous about high frequency kind of transaction data, right?
Like you don't even get a dead cat bounce over here on Fiserv today because A, you don't have buyers lining up for the stock because people are basically out of money. And B, transactions per second, I don't think anybody's standing on a hill going, "Oh yeah, they're about to skyrocket." It's important we deliver this exceptional experience consistently across 4,000 restaurants, blah blah blah.
Uh so, let's look a little bit more to see what they say about the consumer especially in the Q&A portion. Uh and then we'll look at pricing. So, consistently peak period. Okay, through our research we found that over 90% of Gen Z uh would say they would visit a restaurant just for the new sauce. You know, I don't I don't think they understand people.
They're like, "Hey, Gen Z's going to come visit our store because we got a new sauce. How about you just get back to the basics and take care of your customers and actually give them true value and rebuild that reputation that you used to have? Maybe get back to that. Maybe get back to like like honestly, if they just did a marketing campaign that was like "Try us.
Order DoorDash on Chipotle and if you get a small burrito, you get your money back." And I just I want to see them load up that burrito so damn fat that it like it comes ripped and then they throw some extra in the bag just on top of that, some extra meat in the bag like the expensive stuff just to reiterate that you're getting your load, right?
Like that I feel like it almost go viral to go anti this. But you're still a tough in a tough environment. So that doesn't change, you know, it all doesn't that doesn't give people more money again, but it maybe gives people to focus on Chipotle more versus the others. So anyway, they they say they're looking at Q4 with a conservative view.
We're trying to re-engage people through extra promotions that we ran. We're trying to get the consumer back into our business. You know, once you lose people, it's really hard to get people back, you know, once you lose that consistency. Uh it seems the consumer yeah, they need a Sydney Sweeney, exactly.
Consumer environment is deteriorating and the many marketing efforts are not fully offsetting traffic. So it's like there that's the thing. You can still try to market, but if you blow too much of like I'd rather than spend the money on advertising, just go pure social in my opinion and and you know, get people to be like, "Damn, they really load up the plate now." That's the business you want to build because that's the business that'll have a reputation for the very long term anyway.
Uh so yeah, I mean, this is a perfect example here of just this layoff environment that we're in where people are really constrained. Uh and and it sucks. I mean, look at this. We believe the consumer slowdown is really affecting our business in a meaningful way. But we would never let a crisis go to waste.
You literally have Chipotle saying what's happening is a crisis. I mean, to be frank, the crisis that I think is going on is the crisis in their stock. Because if you look at their stock since peak, these puppies have eviscerated value. We are now down on Chipotle from their peak of $69. We are now down 52.2% more than half of the value of this company has absolutely been eradicated.
Uh so and I I part of that is because a lot of these restaurant chains, they they grow their revenue by adding stores. But at some point you start cannibalizing your own, you know, other stores by just continuously adding more. That's why comp sales are such a good measure in case you're not familiar.
When you look at uh comp sales, you're comparing your existing restaurant sales to um existing restaurant sales just to see what the difference is. Uh and and these are just companies that are suffering right now. Well, if we we saw this with uh I mean, there's a reason Target is laying off people as well.
Bloomberg just had a piece about how uh the building materials uh sector uh of even housing is probably going to slow down. So uh you know, they're looking at like Owen Corp for example and they're like, "Hey, like we're going to see a slowdown in building materials as well because people are just they're kind of running out of money." They're and and mind you, remember what I say sort of about the consumer.
We had this explosion of enthusiasm and euphoria after Trump got elected because people, you know, have this mindset of okay, pro-business, stocks will do well, we could spend, hiring will do well, there'll be tax cuts. Uh great. But at some point that euphoria also goes away and we get back to reality, which is like, "Ah, we're still kind of in like a I call it a a slow bleed economy." You know, I don't like to say I don't really like the idea of a soft landing mostly because soft landing implies like we're on final approach in a plane and we're actually coming in to land.
I think of this as more as just like we're kind of like, you know, we got like buff uh during COVID or like maybe like really big during COVID or whatever. Uh and and now we're just like slowly getting cut and cut and cut uh walking through a field of cactuses and we're just sort of slowly bleeding out.
Uh and so it's it's that doesn't mean like the stock market's going to fall off a cliff, but you're going to keep seeing these signs where like one at a time these companies just start getting taken out basically. So uh uh comp sales increased 0.3%. It's actually like this is you have to understand that is negative because now I want you to adjust comp sales for inflation, right?
Adjust comp sales for inflation and their sales have basically shrunk what? 2.5%, right? So that sucks. And those delicious margins that uh Chipotle has always had shrinking. It's because of the economy, stupid, you know, as as they say. It's economy, stupid. Uh so high frequency uh companies like Fiserv, uh you know, I'm I'm heavily concerned about SoFi.
I love SoFi, okay? Don't get me wrong. I think they are an example of like banking done right. But I do think that one of the next order effects of a company or of this sort of economy we're in is that a company like SoFi, which is, you know, just rejected the 3175 line essentially here. SoFi is so heavily exposed to personal lending that once we start seeing a rise in personal bankruptcies because people can't get a new job, unfortunately, that's where personal loans probably start getting hit a little bit more.
And so look at what's moving. I mean, look at these. We were looking at these in the course member live stream this morning. Uh Parker-Hannifin, Rockwell Automation, Symbiotic. What do these companies have in common that are doing really well right now compared to like a Cheesecake Factory or Chipotle?
They're not relying on the consumer. The consumer is crushed. The next order effect of that is going to be when the consumer stops paying their bills. You know, SoFi doesn't have that issue yet. So that's obviously a real risk factor. And I'm not trying to like bag on SoFi. I love SoFi. I'm saying if you're in SoFi, it's something to keep in the back of your mind as a very real risk factor.
Uh but you know, the consumer getting whacked. We see it over and over again. Uh so now another thing to look at when you look at Chipotle here uh is they're blunt about it. We continue to see persistent economic pressure. I mean, they're calling this a crisis. Now they say they're trying to sharpen their marketing message.
But again, you still have this this impression of them trying to cut costs everywhere they can. Now let's see if that actually exists in their earnings call cuz sometimes what you could do is you could actually see that executive pressure in here. Additionally, inflation is accelerating in the mid-single digits primarily due to tariffs and rising beef costs and we expect this to remain in 2026.
We do not plan to fully offset this incremental inflation in the near term because uh they don't have PP, right? This will pressure margins. Remember how I have always said that tariffs will bite companies when companies start taking it in the margin. Nobody wants to take it in the margin, but they don't want to lose even more market share than they have.
At the same time they're paying more money for labor, operating costs are up, marketing costs are up. Uh they're trying to spend more on marketing, but they can't it's not working. Uh as if we look at other Yeah, that's all they talk about regarding costs. This their awareness of costs though trickles down.
You know, district managers call store managers, "Hey, we need to get costs down. We need costs down. We need costs down." That just means you're going to get a smaller burrito. I remember that at Jamba Juice, you know, I like when I worked at Jamba Juice, people wanted to see me like load up that that smoothie, you know, with the fruit.
Uh and and then when you when you actually did it by the size that the scooper was supposed to be, it felt like you were kind of like jipping the customer cuz they gave these like really funky small scoops. Wow, what a surprise. The store I worked at uh uh you know, 10 years ago went bankrupt like 4 years ago uh cuz, you know, they started getting into this mindset, "Oh, we got to cut cut cut cut cut." And I'm like, "Man, this is bullcrap." And I don't always try to give people a really thick ladle of food.
Uh but anyway, uh in our best-in-class teams, we focus on doubling down on restaurant execution, sharp messaging, fine. We've got comp [clears throat] sales are basically down. Uh uh now average check did increase 1.1%. That's sad. So average check increased 1.1%, comp sales only up 0.3, which is negative when you look at inflation, uh which means that yeah, no surprise, lower transactions.
So you're getting fewer people coming through the business. So then let's see. Any other comments here? Outlook. We are anticipating declines. Wow. For the full year they think comp sales will actually turn fully negative. So that if you take inflation off of that, it's even more negative. Uh wow wow wow.
Uh yeah, I mean, it makes sense. It's a consumer crisis and and it sucks. Uh somebody writes, "Kevin was the best scooper." Nobody scooped better than I did. Well, like to just say I took care of my customers. Um, remember, you know, the name was Meet Kevin providing more. Uh, maybe who knows, maybe I'm the reason that Jamba Juice went bankrupt.
I just I just loaded up the customers too much. I gave them more than they paid for. I gave them so much. I gave I gave. Uh, but anyway, so so yeah, I mean that's just the consumer environment uh we're in and it makes sense why people flee to companies like even AMD. I mean AMD's had some phenomenal uh momentum.
But look at I want you to understand Symbiotic. You know, Symbiotic has been this play that we've been talking about since 20 bucks in the course member live streams. And the beauty about a company like Symbiotic is that they sell to a company like Walmart. And what's so great about Walmart? Walmart is the place people go to when you get squeezed on money.
Walmart, Sam's Club, which is obviously owned by Walmart. Get it? Sam Walton. Anyway, uh Costco, right? These are where people are going. Now, what helps support those companies? Well, they don't want to raise prices because they want to be known as the value brands. So, what do they do to to uh increase their margins?
They don't hire more people. Walmart effectively has a hiring freeze. So, what do they try to do? More robotics. What does Symbiotic supply to Walmart? Industrial robots for automation. You know, we're like Parker Hannifin, industrial play. What are they trying to do? More robots to try to increase their um uh their automotive uh or um automation capacities.
Look at um if you haven't seen yet the New York Times robotics article with Amazon. This is huge. This is what's happening because companies are getting they're taking it and the margin. Look at this. Amazon for play plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots. We don't even have half a million people working in the automotive industry and unions in America.
I think we've got like 350,000 union workers still working, not retiring, uh in in the UAW. But anyway, over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. Did you know, by the way, I didn't know this? Uh what the Amazon logo, like what what makes the Amazon logo?
I did not know this. So, just like little I guess extra fun fact. I also who knows, maybe it's not true. I think it is. Uh it makes sense that it would be true. But I never knew this, but apparently uh Amazon uh Amazon is the place that you go to to get everything from A to Z. And like that's the the little logo that they the little orange.
Anyway, I I didn't know that. Oh, that's cool. Uh but anyway, uh in it's a center of innovation, second largest employer has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers. Now in interviews and a cash of internal stra- strategic documents. This is what I love about the reporters is that like they get these internal documents and all these leaks, right?
But uh reveal that Amazon executives believe the company's on the cusp of the next big shift, replacing more than half a million jobs with robots. Amazon's US workforce has more than tripled since 2018 to 1.2 mil, but Amazon's automation team expects the company can avoid hiring 160,000 people that it would otherwise need by 2027.
That would save about 30 cents on each Amazon item that it picks, packs, and delivers. Executives told the board that they hoped robotic automation. That's where money's going to be made, folks, not in humans, not in consumer plays, but in industrial robots. Uh to continue avoid adding to its workforce in the coming years.
They expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. I totally agree. Amazon's not going anywhere. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon did not need to hire. Facilities designed for super fast deliveries. Amazon is trying to create warehouses that employ few humans at all. And documents show that Amazon's robotics team has an ultimate goal to automate 75% of all its operations.
Of course. It's it they like Amazon's robotic revolution. All I just want to know is exactly every single company in the Amazon robotics supply chain uh for for, you know, what move the racks, uh the pickers, the industrial arm robots, everything, man. That's what you got to do is put together a list of Amazon uh robotic plays.
Uh but yeah, I mean unfortunately a lot of people, especially even seasonal workers, are going to get hit. By the way, kind of sad. Uh I hate to say this, but uh you see why how she has this transparent backpack right here? A lot of these companies are getting into transparent backpacks because they're worried about workers stealing.
Isn't it Isn't it like this picture is actually really sad if you think about it? It's built into an article of uh you know, a a Well, first of all, I mean let's just be frank, a uh a race that has been horribly discriminated against uh for, you know, hundreds of years or potentially even thousands of years.
Uh and then you're working a job that's going to get replaced by a robot. So, you're not building any like what skill set are you building in this job? You know, you're taking this job because you have to pay the damn bills. You know, maybe you're a mom, you got to feed your freaking kids, right? So, you're not building any skills.
You're getting a a paycheck just to try to try to get by. And then like the definition of like corporate power is you don't even get a nice backpack. You have to use a transparent backpack to show that you're not stealing from the company. You know, it's it sucks. Uh and and this is unfortunately one of the the the big downsides of capitalism is these are going to take a lot of jobs.
Uh and now in the future it does lead typically to greater per capita income, right? Generally wealth across the nation goes up through a capitalistic structure, but there's just going to be a lot of pain in between. And that pain shows up in consumer stocks. That pain shows up in the crisis that we're seeing with Chipotle. Uh an.
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