Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant chain CAVA (NYSE: CAVA) reported Q4 CY2025 results topping the market’s revenue expectations, with sales up 20.9% year on year to $275 million. Its GAAP profit of $0.04 per share was $0.01 above analysts’ consensus estimates.
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CAVA (CAVA) Q4 CY2025 Highlights:
- Revenue: $275 million vs analyst estimates of $268.6 million (20.9% year-on-year growth, 2.4% beat)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.04 vs analyst estimates of $0.03 ($0.01 beat)
- Adjusted EBITDA: $25.76 million vs analyst estimates of $24.3 million (9.4% margin, 6% beat)
- EBITDA guidance for the upcoming financial year 2026 is $180 million at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $182.8 million
- Operating Margin: 1%, in line with the same quarter last year
- Locations: 439 at quarter end, up from 378 in the same quarter last year
- Same-Store Sales were flat year on year (21.2% in the same quarter last year)
- Market Capitalization: $7.93 billion
Company Overview
Starting from a single Washington, D.C. location, CAVA (NYSE: CAVA) operates a fast-casual restaurant chain offering customizable Mediterranean-inspired dishes.
Revenue Growth
Reviewing a company’s long-term sales performance reveals insights into its quality. Even a bad business can shine for one or two quarters, but a top-tier one grows for years.
With $1.18 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, CAVA is a mid-sized restaurant chain, which sometimes brings disadvantages compared to larger competitors benefiting from better brand awareness and economies of scale. On the bright side, it can still flex high growth rates because it’s working from a smaller revenue base.
As you can see below, CAVA’s sales grew at an incredible 23.9% compounded annual growth rate over the last four years as it opened new restaurants and increased sales at existing, established dining locations.
This quarter, CAVA reported robust year-on-year revenue growth of 20.9%, and its $275 million of revenue topped Wall Street estimates by 2.4%.
Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 20.8% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last four years. Despite the slowdown, this projection is admirable and indicates the market sees success for its menu offerings.
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Restaurant Performance
Number of Restaurants
The number of dining locations a restaurant chain operates is a critical driver of how quickly company-level sales can grow.
CAVA operated 439 locations in the latest quarter. It has opened new restaurants at a rapid clip over the last two years, averaging 18.7% annual growth, much faster than the broader restaurant sector. This gives it a chance to become a large, scaled business over time.
When a chain opens new restaurants, it usually means it’s investing for growth because there’s healthy demand for its meals and there are markets where its concepts have few or no locations.
Same-Store Sales
The change in a company's restaurant base only tells one side of the story. The other is the performance of its existing locations, which informs management teams whether they should expand or downsize their physical footprints. Same-store sales is an industry measure of whether revenue is growing at those existing restaurants and is driven by customer visits (often called traffic) and the average spending per customer (ticket).
CAVA has been one of the most successful restaurant chains over the last two years thanks to skyrocketing demand within its existing dining locations. On average, the company has posted exceptional year-on-year same-store sales growth of 8.9%. This performance along with its meaningful buildout of new restaurants suggest it’s playing some aggressive offense.
In the latest quarter, CAVA’s year on year same-store sales were flat. This was a meaningful deceleration from its historical levels. We’ll be watching closely to see if CAVA can reaccelerate growth.
Key Takeaways from CAVA’s Q4 Results
It was good to see CAVA beat analysts’ EPS expectations this quarter. We were also excited its same-store sales outperformed Wall Street’s estimates by a wide margin. On the other hand, its full-year EBITDA guidance missed. Zooming out, we think this quarter featured some important positives. The stock traded up 8.3% to $73.55 immediately after reporting.
Sure, CAVA had a solid quarter, but if we look at the bigger picture, is this stock a buy? We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
