And from Agrimoney:
Starbucks holds off dive into weak coffee market
Starbucks Corporation revealed it had been in no hurry to jump into the weak arabica coffee market, even as ABN Amro forecast further drops to come in values of the bean, to levels not seen since 2009.Starbucks, flagging lower coffee costs as a major driver of a 26% rise to $390.4m in earnings for the January-to-March period, revealed that its forward purchases of beans had slowed to a crawl in 2013.The group, the world's biggest coffee chain operator - which late last year said that it brought ahead about half its needs for the 2014 fiscal year, which starts in October - revealed that its purchases since had been limited to "incremental buying"."So we have a little bit more than half of our needs locked up for 2014," Troy Alstead, the Starbucks finance director, told investors."We're not meaningfully priced at all in fiscal 2015 yet," he added.'Commodity tail wind'The strategy reflected comfort over the direction of arabica prices, which have fallen by more than half from their peak two years ago, during a rally which raised Starbucks coffee costs by some $200m in both fiscal 2010 and 2011.Starbucks believes the retreat in coffee prices will boost its profits by $100m this year, and signalled a potential for a further boost next year too....MORE
