Newport Beach-based Chipotle Mexican Grill held its spot as Orange County's second-largest public company at $42 billion. That is down from $53 billion in the 2025 rankings, according to the Orange County Business Journal's annual list published Monday, Sept. 28.
The chain's decline came after a rough 2025 that included its first same-store sales drop since going public two decades ago. But the recovery is underway. Same-store sales rose 0.5% in the first quarter of 2026 and climbed 2.2% in the second quarter, according to the OCBJ report.
Not every Newport Beach company fared as well. American Vanguard Corp., a pesticide and agricultural products manufacturer, dropped off the OCBJ's top-41 list entirely. The company's market cap fell 60% to $64 million as of Monday, Sept. 21, well below the list's $100 million cutoff.
The 41 largest public firms headquartered in Orange County recorded a collective valuation of $226 billion as of Monday, Sept. 21, up 12% from the 2025 list. Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine held the No. 1 spot at $51 billion.
Chipotle's bounce-back
In Chipotle's July 29 earnings release, CEO Scott Boatwright pointed to menu innovation and restaurant expansion as drivers of the recovery. The company opened 100 restaurants in the second quarter alone, 80 of them with a Chipotlane drive-through, and reported total quarterly revenue of $3.3 billion, up 9.3%.
After the second-quarter results, Chipotle raised its full-year comparable sales guidance to the low single-digit range, up from an earlier estimate of roughly flat.
Michael Johnston, Chipotle's vice president of finance, told the OCBJ the company is focused on food quality, speed of service and expanding its restaurant count. Chipotle generated systemwide sales of almost $12 billion in 2025, up 5.4%, according to a separate OCBJ restaurant chains report. The chain operates more than 4,200 restaurants internationally.
American Vanguard's exit
American Vanguard's troubles run deeper than its stock price. The company reported a net loss of $49.9 million on $515.1 million in sales for full-year 2025, according to a summary of its annual financial results.
CEO Douglas "Dak" Kaye III, who took over in December 2024, has been cutting costs. In February, the company announced it would move its headquarters from MacArthur Court in Newport Beach to Discovery Park in Irvine's Spectrum District. About 50 employees worked out of the Newport Beach office, which had served as headquarters for 26 years.
"I noticed that we had a significant real estate footprint and believed this was an area where material cost savings were possible," Kaye said in the February announcement. The move was expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2026.
The OCBJ's Monday rankings still listed American Vanguard under Newport Beach. The company's 26-year presence at MacArthur Court ended as part of Kaye's cost-cutting push, leaving one fewer publicly traded firm in the city.
