Key Takeaways for CAVA Stock as of September 2026
- Sales Outrun the Stock: CAVA stock has fallen roughly 24% since early March to $61, even as second quarter revenue rose 31.3% year over year and same-restaurant sales accelerated to 9% on 5.3% traffic growth.
- Coverage Still Bullish: CAVA carries 14 buy ratings, 4 outperforms, 9 holds and 1 sell.
- Target Barely Budged: The Street’s mean target sits at $85, down just 1% since April even though the stock has collapsed 36% over that stretch, a gap that now points to roughly 40% upside from here.
- Model Sees $185: TIKR’s mid case model targets $185 by December 2030, implying 204% total return and a 29% annualized rate from today’s price.
Why CAVA Stock Has Fallen 24% Even as Sales Accelerated
CAVA Group (CAVA) stock has fallen 24% since early March, closing at $61 on September 4 even as second quarter revenue jumped 31.3% year over year and same-restaurant sales accelerated to 9%. That gap, a stock sliding while the underlying business speeds up, is the whole story of the past six months.
The first blow landed in July. A multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak tied to Taylor Farms lettuce made diners wary of restaurants broadly, and even though CAVA sources neither Mexican leafy greens nor iceberg lettuce, the scare still bled into its traffic. CEO Brett Schulman addressed it directly on the Q2 earnings call: “While we do not source leafy greens from Mexico and do not serve iceberg lettuce on our menu, exiting Q2, we saw near-term sales impacts related to broad concerns around lettuce and fresh produce consumption due to the Cyclospora outbreak. We have since seen same-restaurant sales begin to rebound.” Growth that had been running strong through the spring dipped toward flat in early July before climbing back to mid-single digits as the quarter closed.
Then came an earnings beat that didn’t stick. CAVA topped estimates on August 11, posting $365.4 million in revenue against a $360.5 million consensus and adjusted EBITDA up 30% to $54.7 million. Shares jumped as much as 12% in extended trading. But management reiterated rather than raised its full year outlook, guiding to 4.5% to 6.5% same-restaurant sales growth and $181 million to $191 million in adjusted EBITDA, citing the food safety backdrop and a fluid macro and geopolitical environment. The pop faded fast.
CAVA stock’s forward multiple has cooled just as sharply as its price. NTM price to normalized earnings ran as high as 186x over the past year, well above its trailing average of 122x, and has fallen to 92x as of September 4, a compression of 50% that has weighed on high-multiple restaurant growth names broadly.
The result is a stock priced for caution even as the numbers behind it show acceleration, not deterioration.
CAVA’s COO Buys the Dip With a $432,000 Stock Purchase
The selloff hasn’t shaken everyone close to the business. COO Douglas W. Thompson bought 6,500 CAVA shares at $66.52 on September 2, a $432,380 purchase that lifted his direct stake to 19,371 shares. The buy came after the stock had already given back its post-earnings bounce, and it reads as a bet that the cyclosporiasis-driven pullback and the multiple compression sitting on top of it overshot the business CAVA actually reported on August 11.
Insider buying carries limited predictive power on its own, but a sitting operating executive putting more than $400,000 into CAVA stock during a six-month slide is a data point the Street’s flat target already seems to reflect.
Wall Street’s CAVA Stock Target Hasn’t Moved With the Price
CAVA stock carries 14 buy ratings, 4 outperforms, 9 holds and 1 sell as of September 4.
Separately, 24 analysts publish a price target, and their mean sits at $85, about 40% above the stock’s $61 close.
That gap tells only half the story. Back on April 19, CAVA closed at $95 and the mean target stood at $86, a target-to-close ratio of 91% that meant the Street actually saw the stock as roughly 9% overvalued at its spring high. Since then the price has collapsed 36%, but the mean target has slipped just 1%, to $85.
Individual firms moved plenty after the August print: D.A. Davidson cut to $75, JPMorgan to $85, Mizuho to $70, TD Cowen to $85, while RBC raised its target to $95. Yet the consensus mean held almost exactly where it started. The table’s first-ever sell rating showed up in July and is still there in September, a reminder that the bullish tilt on CAVA stock isn’t unanimous even as the average target refuses to fall with the price.
TIKR Values CAVA Stock at $185, Pricing In Years of Unit Growth
TIKR’s mid case model values CAVA stock at $185 by December 2030, implying 204% total return from the current price of $61, or 29% annualized over roughly four years.
That annualized rate sits well above what a mature quick-service chain would command, reflecting a model still treating CAVA as an early-innings unit growth story rather than a fully scaled operator.
The target’s reachability rests on the same numbers underneath the past six months’ pullback: 9% same-restaurant sales growth, 31% revenue growth, and a new-restaurant productivity rate that management said again on the August call is running above 100%. Nothing in the cyclosporiasis scare or the multiple compression that dragged the stock down touched those figures, and the Street’s own $85 mean target, unmoved through the decline, points in the same direction as TIKR’s model.
Dig into the assumptions behind TIKR’s $185 target for CAVA stock on TIKR for free →
Should You Invest in CAVA Group, Inc.?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
