Chipotle Mexican Grill shares were rising early Friday after a healthy quarter.

Late Thursday, the restaurant chain reported a 91% increase in earnings per share to 99 cents a share, topping the consensus target of 81 cents a share.

Same-store sales comparisons rose 2%, which was better than the 1.5% expected, and marked the first inflection to positive traffic since the second quarter of 2009, wrote William Blair analyst Sharon Zackfia, who has an outperform rating on the stock.

Revenue grew to $387.5 million from $345.3 million, helped by the opening of 45 new restaurants during the quarter.

Shares initially fell post-close Thursday, after the company stayed with guidance for a flat 2010, but were helped by an upgrade from Jesup & Lamont to hold from sell early Friday.

Some of the pressure also eased as analysts said the company tends to guide conservatively.

The bottom line: Zackfia continues to model a positive low-single-digit comparison with the potential for upward revisions should the consumer climate continue to firm or new marketing prove effective.

Traffic rose about 60 basis points in the quarter, and Zackfia says that based on her conversations with management, trends may well have improved as the quarter progressed.

Symantec Down

Symantec shares were falling early Friday after Jefferies downgraded the stock to hold from buy, predicting competitor McAfee will score a major contract.

Jefferies analyst Katherine Egbert downgraded Symantec on the belief that McAfee has won a contract to embed their anti-malware products on to all of Hewlett Packard's consumer PCs. Because McAfee has a lower operating margin for its consumer division than Symantec does, they can offer more attractive terms to HP, the analyst writes.

Initially, we thought McAfee would win a piece of the contract, perhaps certain SKUs or certain geographies, but splitting up the contract is probably too unwieldy, she writes. HP currently offers 41 different desktops, laptops and mini PCs on its web site.

The bottom line: The analyst estimates the five-year contract expected to begin in January of 2011 -- is worth $200 million annually, and thus adjusted her forward estimates downward, and her price target to $18 from $20.