ON THE SPOT
Cash-strapped Starbucks owner still has a Taste for profit
A "brutal and sustained" drop in consumer spending has knocked Taste Holdings to a first-half operating loss of R73.3m. The owner of Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza, NWJ and Arthur Kaplan says any operational gains have been overshadowed by consumers snapping their wallets shut. Taste is also trading under cautionary as it considers how to raise cash. Business Day asked CEO Carlo Gonzaga how the company was going to dig itself out of the hole in which it found itself. There are two key bits of the puzzle we’ve got to solve, which we knew about at the beginning of the year [2017]. The one is that the food business is too highly geared, so we have to pay down our long-term debt, and we also need to get capital to grow the Starbucks and Domino’s stores. Restructuring our balance sheet is a necessity, which is not particularly new news, but that is the step number one. Step number two, which we are comfortable with, is that our Starbucks and Domino’s stores are profitable and rolling out more...
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Subscribe now to unlock this article.
Support BusinessLIVE’s award-winning journalism for R129 per month (digital access only).
There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in SA. Our subscription packages now offer an ad-free experience for readers.
Cancel anytime.
Questions? Email helpdesk@businesslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00. Got a subscription voucher? Redeem it now.