Chobani reveals surging sales as it moves closer to IPO

Dive Brief:

• Chobani increased its revenue 5.2% to $1.4 billion in 2020, while net losses tripled to $58.7 million as it invested money back into new product offerings, the company revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For the nine months ending Sept. 25, the New York-based company generated net sales of $1.2 billion while net losses improved to $24 million.
• Chobani said it is the top brand in the yogurt category with a market share of just over 20%. Yogurt generated much of its net sales in 2020 at $1.2 billion, while its other products including cream, oat milk, coffee creamers, ready-to-drink Chobani Coffee and Chobani Probiotic beverages, posted net sales of $157.7 million. 
• Chobani, which plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “CHO,” would join a number of other food and beverage makers that have gone public in 2021, including Vita Coco, Sovos Brands and Dole.

Dive Insight:

Chobani offered investors a long-awaited look at its financials as the food maker gears up for an IPO in the coming weeks. 

While Chobani’s dependence on Greek yogurt is unlikely to surprise investors, the sales growth in other products — key to transforming it into a broader food company — shows it is making meaningful progress. The filing indicates the company has likely passed on near-term profits at the expense of investing the money back into its business to build up these other platforms.

So far, it appears to be paying off with sales outpacing losses. In the nine months ending Sept. 25, Chobani posted net sales of $1.2 billion, just $200 million short of what it recorded for all of 2020. Net sales of products excluding yogurt rose for the nine months ending Sept. 25 to $167.8 million, already topping $157.7 million for all of 2020. At the same time, losses at Chobani declined sharply from $58.7 million in 2020 to $24 million for the nine months ending Sept. 25. 

“We are still a young, energetic, entrepreneurial company,” Hamdi Ulukaya, Chobani’s founder and CEO, said in a letter included in the filing. “Our goal is lofty — but achievable: we will recreate the way food is made and consumed all over the world and be a new model for how a next-generation company should operate responsibly.”

Most of Chobani’s sales come from 95,000 retail locations in the U.S., with North America generating about 90% of sales. Chobani also said it is dependent on two customers for about 10% of its net sales. 

In its filing, Chobani listed the size of the IPO offering as $100 million, but that figure is typically used as a placeholder. The company did not indicate how many shares it plans to offer during its IPO, at what price or when the listing would take place.

In its filing, Chobani described itself as an “anti-traditional consumer packaged goods company” that is challenging “the old, staid and conventional status quo represented by our legacy competitors.” 

Chobani, if it moves forward with its IPO as expected, could seek potential valuations of $7 billion to $10 billion, The Wall Street Journal said in February. It would make it one of the largest and most high-profile IPOs in the food and beverage space since Beyond Meat went public in 2019.

The past two years have seen more than a dozen food and beverage companies go public through a traditional IPO or a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. For many companies like AppHarvest, Oatly and Zevia, they are trading well below where they first came to market. A handful have bucked the trend to close above their IPO price, including coconut water company Vita Coco and Noosa yogurt-maker Sovos Brands.