The shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG: sentiment, chart, options) plunged to a new annual low of $67.40 today after the burrito chain's second-quarter earnings fell short of analysts' expectations. After the closing bell on Wednesday, Chipotle said it earned $2.45 million, or 74 cents per share, while revenue rose 24% to $340.8 million. By contrast, analysts were looking for a profit of 75 cents per share on $344 million in revenue.

The earnings miss has prompted a slew of brokerage activity, with downgrades being handed out by J.P. Morgan Chase (from "overweight" to "neutral"), RBC Capital Markets (from "outperform" to "sector perform"), Jefferies & Co. (from "buy" to "hold"), and S&P Equity Research (from "hold" to "sell"). Additionally, Lehman Brothers reduced its price target from $120 to $99, and Deutsche Bank trimmed its price target from $90 to $72.

In addition to the profit miss, many analysts cited inflated commodity costs as a point of concern for the fast-casual restaurant chain.

At last check, CMG is down more than 19% - a slight improvement over its intraday nadir. The stock has been ushered lower by its 10-week and 20-week moving averages since January. However, Chipotle bulls have not been deterred by the weak price action. New call positions are being added in today's session: the August 75 call has seen volume of 3,292 contracts on open interest of 186, and the August 80 call has had 1,049 contracts change hands on open interest of 460.