Courtesy of Benzinga.
Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) CEO Howard Schultz was interviewed Friday on CNBC by Jim Cramer regarding the company’s Q4 financial results.
Cramer along with some analysts thought the company's performance was disappointing and cited management's comments about not being satisfied with 1 percent traffic growth in the Americas.
When challenged by Cramer about how to reconcile reporting that management was not satisfied with Schultz’s positive comments on performance, Schultz broke in and exclaimed, "we are never satisfied."
Schultz commented that after 22 years as a public company "we’ve never had a better year or better fourth quarter than we announced yesterday."
To put 1 percent traffic growth in perspective, Schultz calculated that “500,000 new customers came into the Starbucks franchise each week during the [fourth] quarter."
The CEO claimed that there is much room for growth and that Starbucks will double its store count in Japan, triple in China and that it has turned around Europe's performance.
Schultz was most interested in getting across the point that we are all in the midst of a "cultural shift in the way people buy things in America" and that Starbucks is in the forefront of this movement with its digital, social and mobile strategy.
He indicated that Starbucks mobile app ordering will be as disruptive as Uber and that he welcomes Apple Pay as a means of changing behavior, but claimed that Starbucks has already accomplished changing consumer behavior through its mobile and digital payment systems.
Based on Schultz’s interview, shifting customer traffic in the Americas is to be expected in light of cultural changes and Starbucks is not only prepared but leading the way in this change.
Starbucks recently traded at $75.80, down 1.9 percent.
Posted-In: ApplePay CNBC Howard SchultzCNBC Earnings Jim Cramer Management Media Best of Benzinga
