Litany of woes send Chipotle’s quarterly profit down

Avocado prices shot up. Hurricanes forced restaurants to close. The bill for a hacker attack came in.

Those were reasons Chipotle Mexican Grill cited to explain its huge profit shortfall in the third quarter — just a few of the troubles on a long list. The burrito chain also was hit with a norovirus outbreak in Virginia and a public-relations nightmare when customers complained about rodents falling from a ceiling at a restaurant in Texas.

In short, it was a three-month stretch in which seemingly everything that could go wrong did. Executives made the case that the quarter of unfortunate events was an aberration, nothing indicative of foundational disarray. But investors who have been watching Chipotle work on its rocky comeback from the depths of the E. coli disaster in 2015 were skeptical: They sent the shares down as much as 15 percent, their worst intraday plunge in five years.

“There is a sense that Chipotle’s rebirth is running out of steam,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said in a note.

Profit amounted to 69 cents a share, net of expenses tied to the data-security breach this year and hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Analysts estimated about $1.63 a share.

The Denver-based company has been reeling since a wide-ranging food-safety crisis sickened hun-