...Case Study: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. Problem The problem in this case deals with the loss in value of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts’ stock. Was the main reason for the fall in stock price due to article posted in the Wall Street Journal about the SEC investigation? Were there deeper issues within the company that caused the loss in earnings per share? Analysis In April of 2000, the CEO of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts took the company public and had one of the largest IPO’s in recent years. After Krispy Kreme went public, they stated that they were planning to expand from 144 to 500 stores over the next five years. The company grew rapidly for the next few years, and stock prices rose well above the S&P 500. On May 7, 2004 the company reported adverse results and told investors to expect earnings to be 10% lower than originally anticipated. Krispy Kreme’s reasoning for the decrease in expected earning was the growing trend in America toward a low-carbohydrate diet. On May 25, 2004 the Wall Street Journal published an article on the aggressive accounting treatment used by Krispy Kreme during a franchise acquisition. A franchisee owning seven stores in Michigan owed the company several millions of dollars. They asked him to close two underperforming stores and pay Krispy Kreme accrued interest on past-due loans. In return, the franchisor promised to raise the purchase price of the franchise. Krispy Kreme accountants recorded the interest paid as interest income resulting in...
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...Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. I. POINT OF VIEW This case is analyzed from the point of view of a third party consultant. II. PROBLEM There is inefficiency in the management of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. in terms of its operations, marketing, accounting, and investment planning. III. OBJECTIVES a. To gradually gain back analysts’, investors’ and lenders’ confidence in the company in the succeeding months. b. To increase sales and profitability in terms of its core business, selling of doughnuts. c. To regain and increase stock price therefore increasing shareholder value. d. To correct inaccurate entries in the financial statements of KKD and to present a clean and unbiased reports. e. To extend further reach to consumers strategically to achieve significant growth in the next five years. f. To implement extensive marketing measures for its brand and products and investment strategy for both on and off premise operations. IV. AREAS OF CONSIDERATION • Fortune magazine had dubbed Krispy Kreme Doughnut, Inc. “the hottest brand in America.” With ambitious plans to open 500 doughnut shops over the first half of the decade. • The company generated revenues through four primary sources: on-premise retail sales at company owned stores (27% of revenues), off-premises sales to grocery and convenience stores (40%); manufacturing and distribution of product mix and machinery (29%); and franchise royalties and fees (4%). • Roughly 60% of sales at a Krispy Kreme store were...
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...Journal of Business Case Studies – April 2008 Volume 4, Number 4 Lessons From Krispy Kreme J. Richard Anderson, Stonehill College ABSTRACT The recent decline of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. raises a natural question: shouldn’t investors (and auditors) have been more wary of this Wall Street darling? Weren’t there tipoffs that would have allowed investors to avoid another franchisor “crash and burn” situtation like Boston Chicken or TCBY frozen yogurt? This paper traces the meteoric rise and fall of Krispy Kreme and discusses a number of advance indicators of future problems: insider share-dumping, conflicts of interest within the Board of Directors and senior management, turnover in the CFO position, the use of synthetic leases, repurchased franchises, disappointing join venture results, and the problems of earnings management in the quarterly reports of a fairly small publicly-owned business. Keywords: Corporate Financial Reporting, Investor Awareness, Reading Financial Reports INTRODUCTION S hould we be surprised when a Wall Street darling like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts crashes and burns? Shouldn’t there be warning signals when a company ranked as the best IPO of the 2000-02 period with a 711% stock price runup in three years loses all of that appreciation over the next 18 months? What causes a company to go from a market capitalization of just under $3 billion to little more than $300 million in such a short period? This paper argues that there were numerous...
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... Ethics-Krispy Kreme Introduction The purpose of this case study is to analyze the accounting scandal at Krispy Kreme. "The Krispy Kreme story is one of a newly public company, experiencing rapid growth, that failed to meet its accounting and financial reporting obligations to its shareholders and the public,"(as cited in Maremont & Brooks, 2005). The senior managers were the ones who profited from this accounting scandal and the shareholders and the public suffered as a result. There are several prevention methods that can be taken to prevent this from occurring in the future. It will benefit Krispy Kreme to hire internal auditors who can report to management any regulations. Analysis Company Overview Krispy Kreme opened its first store July 13, 1937 in Winston-Salem, NC (Krispy Kreme). According to the Krispy Kreme website, “Vernon Rudolph bought a secret yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a New Orleans French chef, rented a building in what is now historic Old Salem in Winston-Salem, NC, and began selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts to local grocery stores”(Krispy Kreme). Krispy Kreme donuts can be found at many grocery stores with sixty personal stores around the United States. Krispy Kreme offers a fundraiser program for schools and churches. Krispy Kreme has expanded its business internationally “celebrating the 100th shop in Mexico” in 2013 (Krispy Kreme). Accounting Scandal “Former executives at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. who oversaw...
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...Krispy Kreme Financial Analysis Case Study ukessays.com /essays/economics/krispy-kreme-financial-analysis-case-study-economicsessay.php Introduction Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. is one of the world's leading retailers and wholesalers of doughnuts and packaged sweets. The company owns and franchises Krispy Kreme doughnut stores which make and retail varieties of doughnuts and a wide range of coffees and other beverages. It operates about 530 stores both locally and in foreign countries like Australia, Canada, Indonesia, and Mexico among other countries. The company is head quartered in Winston-Salem in North Carolina, the US Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. In this paper financial analysis is done between Krispy Kreme and average industry which is comprised of other companies in the restaurant industry for example the Starbucks and McDonalds. Financial Ratio Analysis Some of the key ratios analyzed in this case study includes the following: Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Investments (ROI),profitability, margins and returns, liquidity and leverage, financial position and efficiency ratios. Quick ratio: This is the measuring of liquidity ratio which is done by comparing current assets minus inventories divided by current liabilities. Krispy Kreme's quick ratio is 1.73, while the industry's is 0.69. This is a very positive ratio for the firm because it indicates that the firm has a competitive advantage over the industry when it comes to...
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...Project of Strategic Management Case Study Krispy Kreme Doughnut HAILEY COLLEGE OF COMMERCE UNIVERSITY OF THE PUNJAB We are thankful to ALLAH (all mighty) for guiding us and giving us power and courage. Project submitted: Sir Ishfaq Ahmed This project is based on our course of S.M. We have tried to utilize our knowledge about the subject which was taught by our professor. S.M is a vast field and it was a bit difficult for us to cover it all at our learning phase. We have applied many concepts of S.M to the case study We are very much thankful to our Sir Ishfaq Ahmedfor teaching us this important subject with all dedication and interest. It was very necessary for us to understand the real concepts of S.M.for our future practical working life. Project prepared by: Bilal Raja 792 Krispy Kreme Doughnut History and Growth The founder, Vernon Rudolph, worked for his uncle, Ishmael Armstrong, who purchased a secret recipe for yeast-raised doughnuts and a shop on Broad Street in Paducah, Kentucky, from Joseph LeBeouf of Lake Charles, Louisiana. Rudolph began selling the yeast doughnuts in Paducah and delivered them on his bicycle. The operation was moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and other family members joined to meet the customer demand. The first store in the nation with the Krispy-Kreme name opened on Charlotte Pike in 1933. Rudolph sold his interest in the Nashville store and in 1938 opened a doughnut shop in Winston-Salem, and began selling to groceries and then directly...
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...POINT OF VIEW This case is analyzed from the point of view of a third party consultant. II. PROBLEM There is inefficiency in the management of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. in terms of its operations, marketing, accounting, and investment planning. III. OBJECTIVES a. To gradually gain back analysts’, investors’ and lenders’ confidence in the company in the succeeding months. b. To increase sales and profitability in terms of its core business, selling of doughnuts. c. To regain and increase stock price therefore increasing shareholder value. d. To correct inaccurate entries in the financial statements of KKD and to present a clean and unbiased reports. e. To extend further reach to consumers strategically to achieve significant growth in the next five years. f. To implement extensive marketing measures for its brand and products and investment strategy for both on and off premise operations. IV. AREAS OF CONSIDERATION • Fortune magazine had dubbed Krispy Kreme Doughnut, Inc. “the hottest brand in America.” With ambitious plans to open 500 doughnut shops over the first half of the decade. • The company generated revenues through four primary sources: on-premise retail sales at company owned stores (27% of revenues), off-premises sales to grocery and convenience stores (40%); manufacturing and distribution of product mix and machinery (29%); and franchise royalties and fees (4%). • Roughly 60% of sales at a Krispy Kreme store were derived from...
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...Case Study: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. Case Study: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. Problem The problem in this case deals with the loss in value of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts’ stock. Was the main reason for the fall in stock price due to article posted in the Wall Street Journal about the SEC investigation? Were there deeper issues within the company that caused the loss in earnings per share? Analysis In April of 2000, the CEO of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts took the company public and had one of the largest IPO’s in recent years. After Krispy Kreme went public, they stated that they were planning to expand from 144 to 500 stores over the next five years. The company grew rapidly for the next few years, and stock prices rose well above the S&P 500. On May 7, 2004 the company reported adverse results and told investors to expect earnings to be 10% lower than originally anticipated. Krispy Kreme’s reasoning for the decrease in expected earning was the growing trend in America toward a low-carbohydrate diet. On May 25, 2004 the Wall Street Journal published an article on the aggressive accounting treatment used by Krispy Kreme during a franchise acquisition. A franchisee owning seven stores in Michigan owed the company several millions of dollars. They asked him to close two underperforming stores and pay Krispy Kreme accrued interest on past-due loans. In return, the franchisor promised to raise the purchase price of the franchise. Krispy Kreme accountants recorded the interest...
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...Krispy Kreme Case Study Summarize In early 2004, Krispy Kreme’s prospects appeared bright. With 357 Krispy Kreme stores in 45 states, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and Mexico, the company was riding the crest of customer enthusiasm for its light, warm, melt-in-your-mouth doughnuts. In 1933, Vernon Rudolph bought a doughnut shop in Paducah, Kentucky, from Lou LeBeau. His purchase included the company’s assists and goodwill, the Krispy Kreme name, and rights to a secret yeast-raised doughnut recipe that LeBeau had created in New Orleans years earlier. Several years after, Rudolph and his partner, were looking for a larger market, and moved their operations to Nashville, Tennessee. In the early 1990s, with interest rates falling and much of the buyout debt paid down, the company began experimenting cautiously with expanding under Scott Livengood, the company’s newly pointed president and COO. Livengood, 48, joined Krispy Kreme’s human relations department in 1978. By the mid-1990s, with fewer than 100 franchised and company-owned stores and corporate sales stuck in the $110-$120 million range for six years, company executives determined that it was time for a new strategy and aggressive expansion outside the Southeast. Beginning in 1996, Krispy Kreme began implementing a new strategy to reposition the company, shifting focus from a wholesale bakery strategy to a specialty retail strategy that promoted sales at the company’s own retail outlets and emphasized the “hot...
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...of Krispy Kreme Donuts MBA 6154 - Dr. Plath By: Jon Plyler Luke Sagur Introduction Since its IPO in April 2000, Krispy Kreme grew to be a top pick of Wall Street Analysts. The company’s growth seemed unstoppable and Krispy Kreme was able to beat Wall Street’s expectations. Krispy Kreme continued to outperform until 2004 when some accounting woes were brought to light and analysts starting noticing other anomalies that indicated that things were not quite as good as they seemed. The firm’s stock price quickly plummeted from its peak and lost more than 80 percent of its value in only 16 months. This case study focuses on the use of financial statement analysis, and other factors that an equity analyst would use to gauge the health of a firm, to help identify symptoms that demonstrate things where not as good as they seemed at Krispy Kreme. The report starts by introducing Krispy Kreme, their history, structure and strategy. We will then discuss Krispy Kreme's financials and other tell tales that were available to predict the demise of the firm. To wrap up the report we will conclude by summarizing all the signs that demonstrated things were amiss and answer the question: "Can financial statement analysis predict the future?" Krispy Kreme History Krispy Kreme began as a small business in Winston Salem, North Carolina in 1937 shortly after the company’s founder, Vernon Rudolph, purchased a doughnut recipe from a French chef from New Orleans. Krispy Kreme...
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...Executive Summary: I. Introduction Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc., began as a family-owned business back in 1937, as an expansion of a pre-existing business, when Vernon Rudolph purchased a doughnut shop along with the now-famous secret recipe for making yeast-raised doughnuts. His doughnuts, which he delivered to grocery stores in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area, quickly became immensely popular with customers. So popular in fact, that he cut a hole in the wall of his shop so that he could sell hot doughnuts to potential customers passing by on the street. (Peter and Donnelly, 2009, Page 690). Who knows, but this may have been one of the first “drive-thru/walk-up” windows in the restaurant business! And that is just one example of Mr. Rudolph’s and his early partner, Mike Harding’s, forward-thinking marketing ideas for that era. The ideas of making all of the shops look the same, so that they would be recognized by patrons wherever they traveled, as well as the viewing windows for watching the doughnuts being made, were good examples of marketing promotional strategies. These strategies are still considered by Krispy Kreme to be “Brand Elements” as reported in current, annual financial reports. By keeping control of the recipe and the doughnut-making process, they also maintained product standards and reduced, while not completely eliminating, the competition through the uniqueness of their product. In fact, attempts to change the recipe, or even the look of the shops...
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...Journal of Business Case Studies – April 2008 Volume 4, Number 4 Lessons From Krispy Kreme J. Richard Anderson, Stonehill College ABSTRACT The recent decline of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. raises a natural question: shouldn’t investors (and auditors) have been more wary of this Wall Street darling? Weren’t there tipoffs that would have allowed investors to avoid another franchisor “crash and burn” situtation like Boston Chicken or TCBY frozen yogurt? This paper traces the meteoric rise and fall of Krispy Kreme and discusses a number of advance indicators of future problems: insider share-dumping, conflicts of interest within the Board of Directors and senior management, turnover in the CFO position, the use of synthetic leases, repurchased franchises, disappointing join venture results, and the problems of earnings management in the quarterly reports of a fairly small publicly-owned business. Keywords: Corporate Financial Reporting, Investor Awareness, Reading Financial Reports INTRODUCTION S hould we be surprised when a Wall Street darling like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts crashes and burns? Shouldn’t there be warning signals when a company ranked as the best IPO of the 2000-02 period with a 711% stock price runup in three years loses all of that appreciation over the next 18 months? What causes a company to go from a market capitalization of just under $3 billion to little more than $300 million in such a short period? This paper argues that there...
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...Financial Analysis: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. operates as a branded retailer and wholesaler of doughnuts and coffee. It engages in the ownership and franchising of Krispy Kreme doughnut stores, which make and sell approximately 20 varieties of doughnuts. These stores also offer a wide variety of coffees and other beverages. As of January 31, 2010, there were 224 Krispy Kreme stores operated domestically in 37 U.S. states and in the District of Columbia and 358 shops in other countries internationally. Of the 582 total stores, 268 were factory stores and 314 were satellites stores. Krispy Kreme stores are classified as either a factory store or a satellite store. The traditional factory store has the capacity to produce from 4,000 dozen to over 10,000 dozen doughnuts daily. Commissaries, which are production facilities used principally to serve off-premises customers domestically and to supplement factory stores focused on on-premises sales internationally, have the highest production capabilities of Krispy Kreme factory stores. As of January 29, 2006, there were 11 commissaries system wide, five of which were owned by Krispy Kreme. Satellite stores consist primarily of the fresh shop, kiosk and tunnel oven store formats. Tunnel oven stores contain doughnut heating technology that allows customers to have a hot doughnut experience throughout the day. The fresh shops and the free-standing kiosk locations do not contain doughnut heating technology. In each of these formats...
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...CASE STUDY OF KRISPY KREME Just like their Donoughts the Krispy Kreme stock seemed irresistible when they went public in 2000. It was even named as IPO of the year and the Forbes named it as the company to look out for. But now it is just a firm with a market capitalization over 300 million. So what did Krispy Kreme did wrong to be in a situation like this. The decline of Krispy Kreme Donoughts Inc. with a market capitalization of over 3 billion to just over 300 million was due to the use of synthetic leases, repurchased franchises, disappointing joint venture results and due to the problems of earnings management. This paper argues that there were numerous warning signals in the doughnut franchisor’s accounting and managerial decisions that investors refused to take seriously as they bid the stock from its IPO price of $6 to its eventual peak of $50 on NYSE. There are lots of lessons that can be learned from this autopsy of the Krispy Kreme and might well make investors and auditors more wary about jumping on the next IPO bandwagon. They bought out a struggling Michigan franchisee and agreed to raise the purchase price from $26 million to $32 million so that the franchisee could afford to close two stores and to settle its overdue debts owed to Krispy Kreme, thus avoiding a bad debt loss. Why would so many large franchisees of a supposedly-successful chain want to get out of their investment when operations seemed to be going so well? As we see in the exhibit...
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...Krispy Kreme Dougnuts: Empty Calories or Empty Profits? Case Study of the Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley Act ("SOX") Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (KKD), a once high flying growth stock has been hampered as of late with shareholder lawsuits. When sales growth and earnings began to drop significantly in 2003, the company blamed its problems on the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets like Atkins and South Beach at the time. But the SEC began probing Krispy Kreme's accounting for franchise buybacks and is now facing shareholder lawsuits for inflating profits. Senior management officials allegedly knew of the problems, but continued to pad sales figures by doubling doughnut shipments to wholesale customers at the end of fiscal quarters, according to lawsuits. Inflated Sales: The suit alleges that between January 2003 and last May, when Krispy Kreme issued a profit warning, "the company issued false and misleading statements, including false financial results" and "repeatedly ratcheted upward its public quarterly and fiscal year revenue and earning projections ... all in the face of slowing sales and market saturation." In addition, the lawsuit claims,CEO Scott Livengood, former COO officer John W. Tate and former CFO Randy S. Casstevens - "unloaded more than 475,000 shares of Krispy Kreme stock for proceeds of $19.8 million", while fully aware sales were declining since January 2003. The charges, leveled by two unidentified "confidential witnesses" who are former employees of the...
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