Chobani Pulls IPO Plans
Chobani scuttled its public offering plans on Friday, citing “current market conditions.” The news comes over a year after the Greek yogurt maker initially filed with the SEC to go public and six months after announcing it would delay an IPO and undergo leadership team changes.
“Our focus remains on strong execution and driving profitable growth, and we continue to be excited about the future of Chobani,” a spokesperson for the company said in a prepared statement.
Chobani’s public offering was initially planned for November 2021, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, but told NOSH in March the IPO was pushed to the second half of 2022 or possibly 2023. Despite the vague timeline, Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukay told the Chobani team that the company will be “continu[ing] our journey to being a public company.”
News of the IPO delay broke amid a leadership shuffle at the company. In March, Chobani president and COO Peter McGuinness also announced he would depart the brand for an undisclosed role, later revealed to be CEO of Impossible Foods. Following McGuinness’ move, the company announced that its former president and COO Kevin Burns would return to the role, which he previously held from 2014 to 2016. That same month, Chobani also saw several key executives leave including chief corporate affairs officer Cristina Alescii, chief people officer Grace Zuncic and chief strategy officer Michelle Brooks.
At the time of its initial 2021 IPO filing, Reuter’s valued the deal at over $10 billion. Chobani said net proceeds from the offering would be allocated to pay down debts, undertake a corporate reorganization, expand capacity and introduce new innovations in probiotic food and beverages.
The 15-year-old Greek yogurt company has grown its portfolio to include coffee, creamers, milk, probiotic beverages and nut butter over the years. However, in April, after Burns joined, it exited the fluid dairy milk business which it had entered only two months prior. Citing inflationary pressures, Chobani abruptly ceased production of the beverage products, which had garnered national distribution, but chose to maintain its fluid oat milk offerings.
Chobani isn’t the only food and beverage company to pull back from an IPO amid ongoing economic turmoil. Grocery chain The Fresh Market, which also announced a public offering last year, first delayed its own IPO before canceling it entirely in July.
Publicly-traded food and beverage companies like Oatly and Laird have also had their fair share of struggles lately. Laird announced a 6% drop in sales during an earnings call last month citing the increasingly challenging operating environment. Oatly has slowed growth plans down a notch, implementing double-digit price increases across all channels and decelerating capital expenditure projections in order to meet existing demand amid increasing inflationary pressures.
