NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) - Get Report are trading lower by 1.44% to $395.27 on Thursday afternoon, following a tweet by Eric Van Lustbader, author of the Jason Bourne series, indicating that eating at a Manhattan-based location resulted in the hospitalization of his editor.

The casual Mexican food chain has been working to bring back customers and improve sales after several restaurant patrons at different Chipotle locations became ill from an E. Coli outbreak in late 2015.

Nick Setyan, analyst at Wedbush Securities, joined CNBC'S "Power Lunch" to discuss the future of Chipotle and its potential recovery.

"Everyone's jittery, every incremental data point that may impact even more visibility into a sales recovery in the near term is impacting the stock," Seytan said when explaining his "sell" rating for the company.

"Bottom line is we need to see, starting in Q4, positive comps and now being in Q3 we need to see that the Q2 reports show some sort of incremental data points that comps are going to turn positive," Seytan noted.

Chipotle has been aggressively attempting to clean up its image, most recently with an advertising film depicting its commitment to healthier, unprocessed foods, however as Setyan explained, it doesn't seem to be helping.

"So far it hasn't been, no. With every incremental data point that's come out we've had to extend our recovery assumptions, and I would expect more of the same when Q2 is announced," he added.

"I still think the stock is a short and I do think that every incremental data point that comes out is going to delay the recovery trajectory," Setyan concluded.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings rates Chipotle as a "Hold" with a ratings score of "C". The primary factors that have impacted the rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. 

The company's strongest point has been its very decent return on equity which TheStreet Ratings feels should persist. At the same time, however, TheStreet Ratings also finds weaknesses including a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself, deteriorating net income and poor profit margins.

TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: CMG

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