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In 2008, Michael Burry made a fortune betting against the housing market. You might know him as Christian Bale's character in The Big Short. He's famous for one thing, seeing what everyone else misses. So, when he quietly built a full position in a grocery chain, I wanted to know why. The company is Sprouts Farmers Market, ticker SFM.
The stock has fallen about 60% from its high, and on October 28th, it reports earnings. By the end of this video, you'll understand exactly what Burry might be seeing and what could still go wrong. First, if you've never been inside one, Sprouts is not a normal supermarket. Walk into most grocery stores and you see aisles of chips and soda.
Walk into Sprouts and the first thing you hit is fresh produce, right in the middle of the store. Its shoppers are people who care about what they eat, organic, keto, paleo, gluten-free. And those shoppers tend to care less about saving 20 cents. That matters a lot, and here's why. Grocery is usually a terrible business.
Stores keep only a few cents of every dollar. But, look at gross margin. That's what's left from each sale after paying for the product itself. Kroger, the biggest traditional grocer in America, keeps about 22 and 1/2 cents of every dollar. Sprouts keeps almost 39 cents. Why? Two reasons. Its shoppers pay for quality,
and about a quarter of everything it sells is its own Sprouts brand, which earns more than selling someone else's product. That margin isn't a fluke, either. It's up more than five points since 2019. And after paying for everything, rent, staff, electricity, Sprouts operating profit margin is more than double Kroger's.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. Since 2022, Sprouts earnings per share, the profit each share earns, has more than doubled. From $2.39 to an estimated $5.36. Their sales grew every single year, from 6.4 billion to around 9.4 billion. The business got better, much better, but the stock fell from $160 to the $60.
Here's a simple way to think about it. At the peak, investors paid $33 for every $1 of yearly profit. Today, they pay about $12. That's the kind of price you'd expect for a slow, ordinary grocer, not one whose profits just doubled. So, the market is either seeing a problem the numbers don't show yet,
or it's wrong. Let's find out which. Sprouts has about 500 stores in roughly 25 states. Look at this map. Most of the Midwest and Northeast, barely any Sprouts at all. That's millions of health-focused shoppers it hasn't reached yet. And here's the math on one new store. Sprouts' newer, smaller stores cost about $3.8 million to build.
That's 20% less than its older, bigger stores. In its first year, a new store brings in around $13.8 million in sales and is already profitable. It pays back the full cost of building it in under 4 years. By year four, it's returning about 36% of its cost in cash every year. For comparison, a great year in the stock market is 10%.
You'll hear investors say CAPEX. It just means capital expenditures, the money a company spends on long-term things like new stores, equipment, and distribution centers. Sprouts spends about $310 million a year on CAPEX. Most of it goes toward opening around 42 new stores a year. That's about 8 to 9% more stores every year.
And it has 155 more locations already approved and waiting to be built. So, the next few years of growth are already in the pipeline. Management's long-term goal is more than 1,000 stores, roughly double today, which raises the obvious question. How do they pay for all of it? They don't borrow. They pay for it themselves.
Sprouts stores bring in about $716 million in cash a year from running the business. New stores cost about $310 million. So, growth is fully covered with hundreds of millions left over. It has over $226 million in cash in the bank. And it has a $600 credit line it hasn't touched. Not $1. Two more numbers investors love.
Return on invested capital is about 18%. In plain English, for every $100 put into the business, it earns about $18 a year. And its food sits on the shelf for only about 26 days before it's sold. In grocery, fresh stock moving fast means less waste. Now, here's the part most people miss. Sprouts uses its leftover cash to buy back its own stock, about $350 million a year.
Every share it buys back is gone for good. So, each remaining share owns a bigger slice of the company. And the crash makes this far more powerful. When the stock was $150, that $350 million bought back a small piece of the company. At today's price, the same money buys 2.4 times as many shares, close to 6% of the company every year.
So, the lower the stock goes, the faster Sprouts shrinks its share count, and the faster each remaining share's earnings grow. If the business is this good, why did investors dump it? Two reasons. Reason one, same-store sales went negative. Same-store sales means how much more did stores that were already open sell compared to last year.
It strips out new stores, so it's the cleanest read on whether customers are still showing up. In the first quarter, it fell 1.7%. In the second quarter, 1%. For a growth company, that scared people. Reason two, the CEO is stepping down in January 2027. Leadership changes make investors nervous, but look one level deeper.
Last year, same-store sales jumped more than 10%. So, that's an enormous number for a grocer. This year, Sprouts is being compared against that record. Imagine a runner who sets a personal best, then runs slightly slower the next race. That's not a runner getting worse. And the 116 stores opened over the last 4 years,
their sales are still growing right now. Now, the CEO, the new CEO, Nick Konat, isn't an outsider. He's been running day-to-day operations as president and COO since 2022. And the current CEO, Jack Sinclair, isn't leaving the building. He becomes executive chairman. That's not a shake-up. That's a planned handoff.
Here's why the bulls are looking past this year and toward 2027. By 2027, Sprouts stops comparing against that record year. It'll be up against this year's weaker numbers instead, a much lower bar to clear. It's new nationwide loyalty program will have a full year under its belt. More stores will be open, the new CEO will be in his seat,
and the buybacks will have kept shrinking the share count the whole time. In other words, the things scaring investors today are mostly about 2026. The setup for 2027 looks very different. Which brings us to October 28th. For the third quarter, Sprouts own management guided to earnings of $1.20 to $1.24 per share.
And they expect same store sales to turn positive again around half a percent. That would be the first sign the slowdown is ending. With a stock near its 52-week low, expectations are about as low as they get. When the bar is that low, even a solid quarter can move a stock. Now let's put it together.
This is my own math, so judge it for yourself. About 8.5% more stores each year, same store sales turning positive, and close to 6% fewer shares every year from buybacks. Together, that can grow earnings per share roughly 13% a year. At 13% a year, earnings per share would reach about $8.70 in roughly four years.
If investors keep paying today's low price of about 12 times earnings, that's around $106 a share, about 65% above today. If they go back to Sprouts 10-year average of 18 times earnings, it's around $157, roughly two and a half times today's price. And notice, in the first scenario, the stock still rises a lot even if investors never get more excited about it.
The earnings growth alone does the work. Now I'd be doing you a disservice if I only gave you the bull case. Margins. Sprouts earns far more than a normal grocer. If competitors like Costco, Aldi, or Whole Foods squeeze prices, that advantage could shrink, and this whole math breaks. Same store sales don't recover.
If comps stay negative past the easy comparisons in 2027, the market's fear was right. Expansion risk. New regions like the Northeast are expensive and unfamiliar. Not every new market will work as well as the old ones. October 28th won't answer all of these, but it will start to. So here's the picture.
A grocer that earns like a specialty retailer, half the country still to grow into, growth fully paid for in cash, and a stock price like none of that matters. Michael Burry is betting the market got this one wrong. Is he right? Or is this a value trap? Tell me what you think in the comments. I read every one.
And if you want more breakdowns like this before the earnings, not after, subscribe.
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