Welp, JAB Holding Company is at it again. The German-based company best known amongst coffee circles for buying up Stumptown, Peet’s (which had just purchased a majority stake in Intelligentsia), and Keurig Green Mountain has just made another big splash by purchasing Krispy Kreme for $1.35 billion, as reported by the New York Times.
According to a statement issued today by Krispy Kreme, this price is the result of JAB purchasing shares at the rate of $21 per share (around 64.3 million shares in total, according to the calculator on my iPhone), which represents a 25% increase in the company’s stock price at the time of the New York Stock Exchange’s closing on Friday, May 6th.
Now privately owned by JAB, the almost 80 year-old Krispy Kreme will no longer be publicly traded. Like with most of JAB’s recent coffee-related acquisitions, the doughnut chain will continue to be independently operated and will remain in their current headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
But on to the important stuff: Will Stumptown be served in Krispy Kreme? Will those super-glazed breakfast-desserts find their way into Intelligentsia? Where’s my Black Cat espresso cream-filled half dozen? Where’s my cascara maple bar? Does this mean I can finally have a damn Cold Brew Caramel Frozen Latte? These are the real questions that JAB Holding Company needs to answer, whose business strategy seems to be “Breakfast, we should buy that.”
This news is hot off the wire, so stay tuned as there are sure to be more updates.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.
