After years of questions about why Taste Holdings holds two incongruous business units, the small-cap company is selling out of the jewellery business to focus on food, which includes its licences for Starbucks and Domino's Pizza. CEO Carlo Gonzaga said this week that the luxury-goods and food businesses were in different phases of maturity, capital returns and working capital requirements, which meant different financial and operating models. Gonzaga said that after stabilising Domino's Pizza and launching Starbucks, management had a clearer picture of the long-term potential for the food business. "We have ended up with two businesses that are really disparate. One is a start-up that should be debt free and one is a mature business that is a bankers' dream - they require very different funding models," he said. "Probably the only thing that's really changed is we've, for the first time, had a real view of the potential of the food business ... Certainly more than we originally ant...
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