Former Starbucks CEO Attacks Management

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 6, 6:35AM EDT

Former Starbucks CEO Attacks Management — © starbucks spill (CC BY 2.0) by Eric

Howard Schultz was Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX | SBUX Price Prediction) chief executive officer from 1987 until 2000. Then he was CEO from 2008 to 2017. He came back in 2022 until 2023 as interim CEO. Schultz has been around for a long time, and some people believe he is the founder. He is certainly the man the board calls on when Starbucks has a problem. Schultz says Starbucks has a new problem, which insults current CEO Laxman Narasimhan.

Recently, Schultz said on LinkedIn, “The stores require a maniacal focus on the customer experience, through the eyes of a merchant.” This assumes that current management does not know enough about the workers in Starbucks stores and how they handle customers.

Schultz’s strongest weapon is recent earnings and share price at Starbucks. The stock was down 32% last year, while the S&P 500 was 23% higher. Comparable sales dropped 4% worldwide and 3% in the United States. U.S. customers paid slightly more per visit but made fewer visits. Other coffee shops are among the fastest-growing brands in each state this year.

Starbucks used to be a growth stock. It is not one anymore. Revenue in the most recent quarter fell 3% to $8.6 billion year over year. Earnings dropped from $0.79 per share to $0.68. Management did not give much of a reason. Narasimhan said, “In a highly challenged environment, this quarter’s results do not reflect the power of our brand, our capabilities or the opportunities ahead.”

Narasimhan better be careful and post stronger results, or Schultz will be back again.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.