shares of sweetgreen inc soared in active trading thursday after bofa securities’ katherine griffin turned bullish on the salads restaurant chain citing increasing foot traffic loyalty and automation griffin raised her rating on the stock sg to buy from neutral while boosting her price target by 89 to 17 from 9 that makes griffin the most bullish analyst of the nine analysts surveyed by factset who cover the company griffin said according to placerai foottraffic data visits to sweetgreen in the second quarter are up 46 from a year ago after rising 39 in the first quarter based on this data she raised her estimate for secondquarter samestore sales growth or sales from stores open more than a year to 70 which is well above the current factset consensus of 43 growth “sweetgreen has multiple sales layers to capture demand including menu innovation and loyalty” griffin wrote in a note to clients with the launch in april of its new loyalty program sweetpass “we see potential for higher digital sales mix and in turn higher frequency” the stock shot up 166 in afternoon trading to put it on track for the biggest oneday gain since the record 254 rally on march 4 2022 the stock was also headed for the highest close since nov 8 2022 trading volume bulged to 54 million shares compared with the fullday average of about 16 million shares griffin is also bullish about sweetgreen’s plan to continue to invest in automation which should help streamline its variable labor costs she believes that provides “significant opportunity” for the company to narrow its margin gap with rival chipotle mexican grill inc cmg  which is currently the sector leader in the first quarter sweetgreen reported restaurantlevel profit margin of 14 while chipotle’s restaurantlevel operating margin was 256 also read sweetgreen is renaming its burrito bowl to resolve lawsuit from chipotle sweetgreen is slated to report secondquarter results on july 27 after the closing bell while chipotle is scheduled to report results after the july 26 close sweetgreen shares have rocketed 1024 over the past three months while chipotle’s stock has rallied 247 and the sp 500 index spx has gained 74 after bofa’s upgrade five of the nine analysts surveyed by factset who cover sweetgreen are bullish and four are neutral meanwhile the average stock price target of 1213 implies about 20 downside from current levels