Keurig Green Mountain stock was down and then up Wednesday, dropping in anticipation of the company’s quarterly earnings report, then moving sharply up after the market closed on word that earnings surpassed analysts’ expectations.
But overall the company’s 2015 revenue picture is marked by declines in sales and revenues.
The past few earnings reports reflect a new reality for Keurig that is in sharp contrast to the phenomenal success of earlier days.
Investors have responded and by this week the company’s stock price had fallen more than 70 percent compared to the start of the year.
For fiscal 2015, tepid sales of the newest generation 2.0 hot beverage systems have been a drag on revenues, including sales of K-Cups.
“When you’re an innovation company, not everything works perfectly. You try some and you quickly get out of them. We’ve done a couple of those. There’s no question we could have executed and should have executed 2.0 better. We learned; we moved forward,” said CEO Brian Kelley in a quarterly earnings webcast Wednesday.
Kelley says the company has cut costs and improved its products in the past year. He said higher coffee prices have also reduced profits.
Keurig’s fiscal 2015 net income was down compared to the previous year and while revenue from K-Cup sales held relatively steady, brewer and accessory sales fell 23 percent.
In August, the Waterbury-based company cut 330 jobs, mostly in Vermont. This fall the company began the roll out of the Keurig Kold beverage system, which it hopes will be key to its growth in the long term.
