Starbuck's Capm and Sources for Capital

GMCR’s warns of the potential impact of the price of coffee on the gross profit margin. To combat this, GMCR had made a number of purchase commitments to ensure an adequate supply of coffee (GMCR Annual Report, 2010). The market price for coffee is impacted by numerous factors including weather, economy, and competition. It is vital that GMCR continue to take proactive measures to secure against unforeseen spikes in coffee prices. The price of coffee does not only impact GMCR’s ability produce coffee for the Keurig brewer under its namesake but impacts their partner suppliers as well. GMCR purchases coffee from brokers, farms, estates, and cooperative groups and essentially diversifies its coffee supply, reducing some supply risk (GMCR Annual Report, 2010).

Since Starbucks entered the coffee retail business, the company has made many trade-off business decisions. The first major trade-off was made when Howard Schultz wanted to acquire present day Starbucks from three entrepreneurs Baldwin, Siegel and Bowker. Therefore, Schultz prior to the acquisition made the trade-off to open his own coffee bar in 1986 instead of staying at Starbucks as the manager of retail sales and marketing. A bold feat, Schultz was able to replicate success and was offered to buy Starbucks for $4 million. At the time of the acquisition, many investors, including the former Starbucks owners, would not expect that the American consumer would pay a premium for coffee products. Schultz, after calculating the opportunity cost, was convinced that Starbucks would become a large coffee chain not only in the United States but internationally too. Reflecting this approach, Schultz’s trade-off worked. Starbucks, according to our book has revenue exceeding $13 billion and nearly 200,000 employees. The company has also expanded to 40 countries with 17,000 stores (Hill et al., 2015).

4. If the slope of the line measuring a stock's historic returns against the market's historic

2. Beta, which is a measure of systemic risk, is a good indicator of how volatile a stock is relative to the market and it is a significant measurement to focus on when trading because the higher the beta, the greater the risk you gain in your portfolio. It is also important to make sure you allocate a lot of your money into commodities; their betas are usually low which is a good thing, especially if you are a risk-adverse investor. Conversely, higher beta stocks may be more volatile but they have the potential to generate higher returns then stocks with lower betas.

CAPM is a model that describes the relationship between risk and expected return, and the formula itself measures the expected return of the portfolio. Mathematically, when beta is higher, meaning the portfolio has more systematic risk (in comparison to the market portfolio), the formula yields a higher expected return for the portfolio (since it is multiplied by the risk premium and is added to the risk free interest rate). This makes sense because the portfolio needs to

2. Compares the returns of the asset to the market over a period of time (Beta)

Assuming that the demand and supply for premium coffees are in equilibrium, the price will be at a constant, without significant pressure from the market. If Starbucks introduced the world to premium blends, this would cause a positive shift in the demand curve. There a higher equilibrium price and higher quantity when demand increases and supply remain unchanged. As prices increase, and the market moves to a new equilibrium, we will see higher wages, more advances and investments in technology and infrastructure, and greater competition. As production become more efficient and competition becomes greater, supply will increase and cause prices to settle back down. There are several factors that will impact the long-term equilibrium, such as changes in supply. For example, if a hard freeze eliminated Brazil’s premium coffee crop, this would cause a negative shift in the supply curve. Assuming demand remains constant a negative shift in the supply curve will cause quantity to decrease and equilibrium price to increase. Research shows that in 2011 a frost occurred in Brazil's southeastern coffee growing belt. Traders worried that next year's yields could be hurt. At the same time, heavy rains during harvest forced Columbia to reduce its crop estimate for 2011. Understanding the impact of problems along the supply chain and how the changes in supply

Starbucks’ Total fixed assets increased from $3,200.5 billion in 2013 to $3,519 billion in 2014. This was a 9.95% increase. As a percentage of total assets on the balance sheet, fixed assets increased from 27.79% to 32.73% (Starbucks,

The Beta is the second consideration of the CAPM that ignites some debate. Forward looking Betas are unobservable so the debate is what kind of method to use in getting these Betas. There are a few compromises in obtaining the Beta. One of these is increasing the number of time periods you’re looking into for the historical date in which you run the risk of including stale data. Another problem is shortening the time periods increases your chances of factoring in unwanted random noise. The

The supply of coffee is affected by weather conditions, and the health of coffee trees. According to the article "Coffee Industry to Adopt New Pricing Plans," the major players in the coffee industry have seen profits decline because of over-crowding of the market. An over-crowded market will give the coffee suppliers bargaining power. As Broadway Cafe demands high quality coffee and there is no availability of substitutes for the coffee beans that Broadway Cafe use. Therefore, the bargaining power of supplier increases.

The Starbucks Company is a purveyor of gourmet coffee that was founded in 1971 at Seattle’s Pike Place Market (Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information). At that time Starbucks was a single storefront that offered premium, fresh roasted whole bean coffees. Since opening that single store Starbucks has grown to an international presence with branding that is recognizable worldwide. In addition, Starbucks has increased their product line beyond hot and cold coffee beverages to include hot and cold teas, packaged whole bean and ground coffees, high quality, fresh foods and coffee making equipment and supplies. Starbucks operates a total of 19,767 company operated and licensed stores and operates in 62 countries. In addition to the Starbucks’ brand the company also owns and operates other well-known brands such as Teavana and Seattle’s Best Coffee. (Retrieved March 10, 2015, from http://news.starbucks.com/uploads/documents/Starbucks_Fiscal_2013_Annual_Report_-_FINAL.PDF)

As Starbucks continues to expand, more profits and more risks are in store. The corporation’s brand and reputation may be put at risk as the quality of the products supplied by third parties is outside of the company’s control (―Starbucks Corporation Fiscal 2009 Annual Report‖, 20). Partnering with farmers and suppliers meant letting go of control over the quality of certain products. In order to retain customers and protect their brand, Starbucks must establish and maintain effective working relationships with reputable farmers and suppliers, which could increase costs.

Raw Materials (Coffee Beans): Coffee bean farming is not vertically integrated into Starbucks; the company purchases coffee beans from farmers. Starbucks choose to outsource farming due to the low potential hold-up problem. For its coffee, Starbucks uses only high-quality Arabica beans, instead of regular commodity and lower quality robusta beans. Since there are a lot of market participants trading Arabica beans (i.e. farmers & Arabica beans buyers), there is an established market price. Moreover, farm land has a low degree of asset specificity, and therefore farmers’ investments do not depend only on Starbucks as

Starbucks has a reputation for new product development and creativity. But new ideas can not come so often and even if they do they may not be on target. Moreover, almost the ¾ of their shops are located in the U.S. which means they are depended too much on one country. They need to spread into another group of countries in order to spread the business risk. Also organization is dependant on a main competitive advantage, the retail of coffee. This could make them slow to diversify into other sectors should the need arise.

Starbucks then reorganized their supply chain – developing new cost-effective models, relooking into suppliers and reconsidering expenditures by ingredient instead of purchase price (Cooke, 2010). The supply chain was streamlined into 4 categories: Plan, Source, Make and Deliver, adopting a simplified system where coffee beans were manufactured in the same region where they are sold (Starbucks, 2012b, November 30). This was modeled by existing