El Pollo Loco Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: LOCO) has gone from a super-hot initial public offering (IPO) to a serious reality check. The grilled chicken chain’s quiet period has ended, so now the analysts from the underwriting syndicate have been freed up to initiate coverage with formal analyst ratings.

Unfortunately for El Pollo Loco, these initial ratings have been issued with a whimper because of how much the stock has already run up. After its 7.14 million shares IPO went off at $15.00, this has traded in a range of $18.48 after the IPO all the way up to $41.70. Shares closed Monday at $33.36, and were down 6% or so at $31.20 in early trading Tuesday.

24/7 Wall St. has created an analyst montage of each new coverage alert for El Pollo Loco. The calls are as follows:

• Baird started as Neutral with a $32 price target
• Jefferies started as Hold with a $30 price target
• Morgan Stanley started as Underweight and with a big downside $22 price target
• Stifel started as Hold with a $30 price target

The one positive rating we have heard about was that William Blair started coverage with an Outperform rating.

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24/7 Wall St. has not exactly been favorable to El Pollo Loco since its shares initially went parabolic. Had the stock traded up marginally we would have been extremely positive, but the hype-chasers took out all the implied upside and then some. On August 13 we asked if reality was setting in and on August 3 we questioned when the stock would cool off — it turns out that it cooled off immediately.

Some traders and investors were hoping that El Pollo Loco would be the next Chipotle. That is just too ambitious on the surface.

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