CAVA 2Q Preview

CAVA — Preview: the bar has moved to Q3 traffic and FY26 flow-through

CAVA reports tonight, August 11, with the release expected around 4:10 PM ET and the call at 5:00 PM ET. UBS’s August 10 restaurant comp sheet had CAVA at roughly 34x NTM EBITDA, still one of the highest valuations in the group.

Q2 itself should be good and is largely understood. The first real question is what happened to traffic after the July food-safety headlines. The second is whether management can preserve the FY26 earnings model despite that slowdown. The third is whether Q2 restaurant margins show that salmon and the current investment cycle are producing the dollar-profit outcome management promised.

Consensus lock

There has been a small amount of movement in the reported-quarter numbers, so I would not pretend there is one perfectly precise revenue consensus. RBC’s August 5 Visible Alpha snapshot had Q2 revenue $359.5 million, restaurant-level margin 25.7%, adjusted EBITDA $52.2 million, EPS $0.18 and SSS 7.4%. By August 10, UBS had SSS consensus at 7.6%, Q3 SSS at 4.3%, FY26 SSS at 6.7%, FY26 adjusted EBITDA at $190.9 million and FY26 openings at 77. UBS says the investors it has spoken with are higher than Street on Q2 SSS, generally 7.5–9%, and expect an EBITDA beat.

Let’s get to the bogeys: