Chipotle (CMG) shares fell as much as 8% in premarket trading after the company announced the resignation of its CEO Brian Niccol, who will assume the same role at Starbucks (SBUX) starting next month.
Niccol has been CEO of Chipotle since 2018. Scott Boatwright, COO, will serve as the company’s interim CEO.
Niccol has been instrumental in Chipotle’s recovery in recent years as the company recovered from an E. coli crisis that began in 2015 and weighed on the stock for years.
In the year before Niccol joined the company, Chipotle’s annual revenue was about $4.5 billion; by 2023, revenue had more than doubled, totaling $9.9 billion. Over the past five years, the stock has risen more than 240%, while the S&P 500 has gained just 85%.
As part of the executive restructuring, Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung, who had announced his intention to retire in 2025, has agreed to stay on as Chiptole’s president of strategy, finance and supply chain “indefinitely.”
“Thanks to our robust talent planning process, we are well prepared for events like this given the large number of employees within the organization,” said Scott Maw, Chipotle’s chief executive officer.
Josh Schafer is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X @_joshschafer.
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