Stock Price

Stock price is on the rise at $6.22 today, RMCF still has increasing stock price over the last months when their competitors are still in the negative.

End of the Week

Stocks closed at $6.12 down from $6.40. The news this week in the confectionary industry has been pretty dull, not much going on. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/in?s=RMCF I did find something interesting on yahoo finance that Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is number one among its competitors in Dividend Yield and is second in ROE behind Hershey, so their shareholder should be happy with the company overall.

Stock Price

Stock price closed yesterday at $6.30 it is moving up. I hope it gets to $7.00 before we closed the semester.http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rmcf

New Chocolate Packaging

First thing is that the stock price soared yesterday, just as NYSE soared. All of the stock prices come from Yahoo Finance http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rmcf RMCF closed at $6.14.

Nestle' a competitor is developing Kansei design for their chocolate. Basically it is a design feature used for cars and Nestle is using it for Chocolate it is supposed to tap into consumers emotions Nestle says is will increase sales, profits and target specific markets. Toyota has been doing this for years and it must be working for them because their sales and profits have definitely increased. I am going to add a picture of the packaging that Nestle is using, I do like it it looks nice and appealing. If Nestle gets ahead of the competition with this idea, it should bring in more market share from their competitors. http://www.dexigner.com/product/news-g17348.html The picture is at the above web address.

Turning Chocolate shells in to "GREEN" fuel

Lindts is not a leader in the confectionary industry yet, but Lindt USA corporat strategy is to horizontally integrate backward. They plan to import cocoa beans directly from the source, produce its own product and they sell them. They are trying a new technology that burn the shell of the cocoa bean to produce a fuel source that will lower their carbon foot print. If Lindt can accomplish this it would be a great innovation, that they can then market especially to "green" consumers. I am going to follow this story to see if Lindt can pull it off.
http://www.confectionerynews.com/The-Big-Picture/Lindt-trials-chocolate-powered-fuel?nocount

Stock Price compared to competitors

RMCF ended the week at $5.74 for their stock price, it is coming up, but they are the only confectionary that is consistently above the industry average and their other competitors. It could be because they have a low price on their stock and they do not have as much stock out as the other companies, but it is amazing that they have had an overall positive stock price compared to the competition. I am adding a chart that shows RMCF compared to their competitors over the last three days.
http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1237592374750&chddm=1173&cmpto=NYSE:HSY;NYSE:TR;NASDAQ:JBSS;NASDAQ:LNCE;NYSE:CBY&cmptzos=-18000;-18000;-18000;-18000;-18000&q=NASDAQ:RMCF&ntsp=0

Hershey CEO gets "BIG" Bonus

I am watching the morning news and they are talking about the bonuses paid out by AIG and online there is a story that the CEO of Hershey just received a huge bonus. He received a bonus of $6.2 million after stopping Hershey's two year slide. David West was the COO, but he was promoted and to turn the loss of market share around for Hershey, he poured money into marketing, which is a good tactic to get customers aware of your brand. I had noticed more and more commercials on tv about Hershey "Kisses" these are the first ads I have seen for a long time.

Another bit of information in this article was that Hershey had lost their 1st place in candy sales in the US, in October Mars bought Wrigley Jr and became the #1 candy maker in the US, you do not here much on Mars because they are a private company, but Hershey is still the leader as a chocolate producer.

I still think that CEO's compensation should be tied to their performance and the profits of the company. If the company increases profits then top management should receive a small percent like the rest of the workers and they can receive a bonus like a profit bonus, that is only a small part of the profits. I do not believe that CEO's are the backbone of the company and that they are the only reason that the business increased profits. All workers should earn a part of the profits. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090316/hershey_executive_compensation.html?.v=1

business strategy/stock

I just checked yahoo finance and their stock price ended on March 13th at $5.40 it is increasing a little bit.

Classes before spring break were talking about business strategy and corporate strategy. RMCF is pretty easy, they use a differentiation strategy. The stores are premium chocolate stores. They make most of their chocolate on site, use premium chocolate, and this allows them to charge premium prices for goods. Last time I bought a Chocolate covered strawberry from RMCF in NM it was $4.00 up from $3.00, but I pay it because they are some of the best strawberries.

The corporate structure is a backward integration they have retail, that is their core business but they also produce the final product that they sell.

Co-branding with ice cream

I found this article and it was in Nov. 08. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Cold Stone Creamery are going to hae a test license agreement, that has 7 co-branded stores. They want to give people a reason to patronize both brands all year long.

This is strategically thinking, because they have a long term strategy to hopefully even out the seasonality of their businesses. I think that it will work better for the chocolate industry than it would for ice cream, especially if they put any of the stores in areas that get cold in the winter months.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ezproxy.waterfield.murraystate.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=26&hid=a44c3671-cd91-4ea7-8ba7-3bvf6a659555e%40SRCSM

Stocks currently at $4.84

Barry Callebaut selling consumer division

Barry Callebaut is a major player in the chocolate business. They are the global leader in bulk chocolate, which means that they supply most of the chocolate manufacturers. A few minutes ago they announced that they are selling their consumer division to Natra a Spanish company. If the deal goes through they will focus solely on B2B transactions.

When this deal was announced both companies stock prices increased Barry by 4.6% and Natra by 7.6%. http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200903030704DOWJONESDJONLINE000282_FORTUNE5.htm

Callebaut is focusing on supplying the chocolate to all manufacturers. with the economy the way it is many companies will be refocusing their core business. This is a good idea.

Increase in cost of chocolate supplies

I'll start out with the stock price down $.50 to $5.27. I did not think it would go to $4 but it may.

Found an article on Trinidad & Tobago that their food prices have gone down except for sugar, jam and confectionary. They have respectively increased by 18.3%, 30.6%, and 17%. All other food was declining, but not these items and fish, this is interesting that people even in the bad economy want to have sweets and confectionary products. http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161445926

Peanut Butter Recall Affects Chocolate

I just got a recall that Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is recalling four of their products that contain peanut butter and chocolate. This is mainly granola bars. It deals with stores in Nevada, California, and Arizona. You may not know off the top of your head, but I actually eat one of their recalled products and it is the Sweat & Salty Granola Bars, I love these things. This peanut butter recall is a Threat to the whole confectionary industry. Even though it is peanuts a lot of chocolate candy is made with some kind of peanuts or peanut butter creme. When I was at the grocery store yesterday, I noticed a company was trying to combat the peanut butter scare, they put a flyer around the store saying that none of their products were made with the recalled peanut butter. This is one threat that even if your company does not use the recalled product it will be hurt, just by using peanut butter. http://pr-canada.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82112&Itemid=65

By the way stock closed friday at $5.77 down just a few cents.