Starbucks CFO says high end of '07 view "very challenging"
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Starbucks Corp.'s  chief financial officer said on Thursday the high end of the coffee shop chain's 2007 earnings forecast will be "very challenging" due to current market conditions, including higher dairy costs.
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(InfoWorld) - Troubled systems management and security software vendor CA aims to get back on track in its current fiscal year after a series of unforeseen setbacks last year, its chief executive officer pledged to shareholders. "2006 was clearly a year of transformation," John Swainson told shareholders at the company's annual meeting in New York Monday, which was also webcast. "We didn't fully deliver on our expectations for 2006. Execution is the theme for CA in 2007." CA had to delay final filing fourth-quarter and full fiscal 2006 financial results twice due to internal stock options investigations and the impact of a new sales-commission plan. "It didn't reflect well on us a company," Swainson said. "Hopefully, it's all behind us." Focusing on the convergence of systems and storage management and on security management software as outlined in the company's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) strategy, Swainson hopes to grow CA from a US$4 billion company to $6 billion by 2009, he said. The watchwords for CA going forward are "unification and simplification," he added. CA spent over $1 billion on nine acquisitions during fiscal 2006, a practice Swainson doesn't see CA repeating in the near future. Instead, the vendor will make "much smaller" purchases in fiscal 2007 and work on integrating into its existing software the technologies it has already acquired, he said. CA continues to be a company haunted by its past. One unidentified shareholder asked why in all of CA's recent ups and downs, the vendor hasn't mentioned Charles Wang, the company's charismatic co-founder and former chairman and CEO and his remuneration from the firm. "Mr. Wang doesn't have an operational role at company," Swainson said. "I've never met with him in my nearly two-year tenure" at CA. Wang is a stockholder, but Swainson said he's unaware of any other involvement the former company head has with CA. Wang's successor at CA, Sanjay Kumar, resigned from the company in 2004 following questions about his role in an accounting fraud in which the vendor recorded revenue before contracts were finalized to beef up quarterly financial results. Kumar was indicted and pleaded guilty to financial fraud charges in April, along with codefendant Stephen Richards, previously head of worldwide sales at CA. The two men are due to be sentenced in October. CA reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government in September 2004, requiring the company to pay $225 million to a restitution fund to compensate victims of the fraud. Another shareholder asked about the status of that arrangement. Last week, CA announced an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to extend the term of Lee Richards as an independent examiner overseeing CA's financial reporting until May 1, 2007. Richards' term had been due to expire last Saturday. "The company has largely met the agreements, but material weaknesses still exist," said CA Chairman Lewis Ranieri. "We're working on those areas and hopefully will end Richards' term even before May." CA has paid into the fund and its distribution is being finalized, he added. Ranieri directed CA shareholders to a special Web site -- http://www.computerassociatesrestitutionfund.com/ -- as the official source for information. At the meeting, CA shareholders elected all 11 members of the board to 1-year terms and defeated a stockholder proposal to put in place a poison pill designed to prevent a hostile takeover of the company. Â
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British sweets-to-DVDs retailer Woolworths  said trading over the key Christmas period had been "very challenging" but it expected its retail business to return to profitability this year.
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(InfoWorld) - Software vendor CA expects to continue restructuring its operations, which is likely to result in further reductions in its headcount, according to the company's CFO. "We do anticipate some additional restructuring in fiscal 2008," CA CFO Nancy Cooper said during a Wednesday conference call with analysts to discuss the company'sÂ financial results for the fourth quarter. During the quarter, which ended March 31, 2007, CA completed the cutting of 1,700 jobsÂ first outlined in August. On its Web site, CA puts its total workforce as of March 31, 2006, at around 16,000. Cooper wouldn't be drawn on specifics except to note that CA believes there are still more areas in its business where the vendor could make "additional efficiencies." The company is hoping to begin fiscal 2009 having realized some $200 million in annualized savings, she said, which would come from further restructuring. "We're really systematically trying to go through our business to see if we can run it more efficiently," Cooper said. For instance, CA has been working to move its European operations away from being run on an individual per-country basis in favor of a more regional organization. That kind of thinking could also be applied to other areas of CA's business so they run in a more global fashion, she added. CA plans to work in general terms on improving its international business, according to John Swainson, the company's president and CEO. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007, while total North American revenue rose 6 percent, revenue from CA's international operations fell by around 2 percent. The company has already made significant management changes in Europe, its largest business outside of the U.S., Swainson said on the conference call, and he expects those changes to bear fruit shortly in terms of improvements in revenue. Swainson reiterated his oft-repeated belief that transformation at CA is "a multiyear process," but he added that the company has made progress on several fronts over the past two years, notably in boosting the productivity of its salesforce to win more software and services business. "There's clear evidence that customers and partners are seeing CA as a different company and someone they want to partner with," he said. Swainson expects the vendor's business service optimization and enterprise systems management software operations to continue to perform strongly and for both its security and storage software businesses to rebound and begin to grow again.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Starbucks Corp  replaced  CEO Jim Donald with founder and Chairman Howard Schultz and  said it would slow an aggressive U.S. expansion in a shake-up  that sent its battered shares up nearly 9 percent.
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A memo from Starbucks Corp.'s  founder and chairman warning of threats to the brand has created misplaced growth fears, analysts said on Tuesday, arguing that the memo was a rallying cry for managers rather than a call to slow down.
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Think there are too many Starbucks in the world? The coffee retailer apparently doesn&#39;t think there are enough. Starbucks yesterday expanded its estimate of outlets that it eventually plans to open worldwide to 30,000, up from 25,000.
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Starbucks Corp. , the world's largest coffee shop chain, on Wednesday reported higher quarterly earnings due to a larger number of stores and increased customer traffic at established outlets.
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Facing continued top-line weakness, the company may have to cut costs.
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The most highly paid executives in the Washington area oversaw companies with dramatically different track records last year.
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Starbucks Corp.'s  chief financial officer on Thursday said meeting the high end of the coffee shop chain's 2007 earnings forecast will be "very challenging" due to rising dairy costs and slowing growth in its U.S. business, sending shares to a 20-month low.
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Coca-Cola, the world's largest maker of soft drinks, issues a profit warning blaming "challenging operating conditions in key markets".
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Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, discusses his companyâs global expansion, relationships with suppliers and health care reform.
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Starbucks' CEO Orin Smith will retire in March. Don't panic.
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Its latest results might be a surprise because of the challenges the company has faced this year.
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The specialty retailer's uncertainty about the fourth quarter is unsettling.
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Starbucks Corp. on Thursday raised its  long-term goal for how much larger it wants to get by 20  percent, citing opportunities to put more of its coffee shops  in smaller U.S. markets.