Starbucks Corp projects profits to grow between 15% to 20% per share over the next three years, a significant increase from previous guidance.
The coffee giant based its forecast on spending plans of $2.5 billion to $3 billion (€2.5 billion to €3.01 billion) over the same period on technology, new stores and renovations.
The company is introducing technology to speed up production of its increasingly popular cold beverages and send digital orders away from busy locations as it seeks to prevent U.S. cafes from being overwhelmed by orders and improve working conditions for employees, it announced during its Investor Day event.
Share Buybacks
The Seattle-based company expects to return $20 billion to investors via share buybacks and dividends from fiscal 2023 to 2025. Wall Street analysts had largely expected earnings updates to be in line with previous guidance of 10 to 12% growth.
A surge in digital orders, which now make up nearly a quarter of all orders, has helped the coffee chain gain market share during the COVID-19 pandemic but has also led to barista burnout and strained the physical capacity at older stores.
The company is exploring "load balancing" technology that can send orders to stores that have capacity to actually fulfill them – instead of to stores already being slammed by drive-thru customers, for instance, chief technology officer Deb Hall Lefevre said in an interview with Reuters.
'Reinvention' Of Starbucks
The pandemic changed customer behavior, leading to a deluge of mobile, delivery and drive-thru orders, as well as an increase in cold beverages and customised coffee drinks.
Calling it a "reinvention," the company laid out a sweeping plan spearheaded by interim chief executive Howard Schultz, who will be replaced by Laxman Narasimhan in April.
The plan includes new equipment to heat food faster with less plastic waste, new store designs with larger shelves for orders and additional employee benefits.
Store Rollout
Starbucks is on pace to reach 45,000 stores by the end of fiscal 2025 - or nearly eight new stores per day - it said. That includes a net new 2,000 new U.S. stores and some delivery-only locations.
In China, it plans to nearly double the number of stores to 9,000 - or one new store nearly every nine hours.
Union Backdrop
Employees at 236 stores voted to join a union over the past year, out of Starbucks' nearly 9,000 corporate-owned U.S. locations. Conversely, 52 stores voted against unionising, according to National Labor Relations Board data.
Frank Britt, brought in by Schultz to lead the company's transformation strategy, said workers know how to solve the company's problems because they are on the front line.
"A lot of the concerns the partners have, whether they're affiliated with the union or not, are valid concerns. We agree, there's a trust deficit," he said in an interview.
Union members have been holding protests this week to bring attention to their demands. Billie Adeosun, a Starbucks employee since 2015 who works at a unionised location in Olympia, said on Monday higher wages were a top priority.
The company has lifted pay to an average of nearly $17 across non-unionised U.S. locations. Starbucks says the law prohibits it from offering increased benefits to unionised workers without bargaining over them.
News by Reuters, edited by ESM – your source for the latest A-Brands news. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
