Coffee Day postpones April-June earnings announcement

Coffee Day Enterprises, which lost its founding chairperson V.G. Siddhartha earlier in the week, has postponed the announcement of its quarterly earnings for the first quarter of 2019 which was scheduled to be announced on August 8.

In a statement on Friday, the company said that although adequate steps had been taken to complete the quarterly review in time, owing to "recent developments", the review and subsequent preparation of the financial results for the quarter ended June is not expected to be completed by the stipulated time.

"Due to certain unavoidable circumstances, the board of directors shall not consider the financial results on a standalone and consolidated basis along with the limited review report (collectively quarterly financial results) of the company and its subsidiaries for the quarter ended June 30, 2019, in the meeting of the board of directors of the company to be held on August 8, 2019," the statement said.

The revised date of the meeting to consider the first quarter financial results will be communicated expeditiously, it said. 

In shocking turn of events, Siddhartha's body was found in Karnataka's Netravathi river on Wednesday, nearly 36 hours after he had gone missing. Two days prior to his disappearance, the coffee baron had left behind a note to his employees which revealed that he was in deep debt. 

The mountain of debt was impairing his business as working capital requirements could not be met. It led him to sell his stake in IT firm Mindtree that gave him some room to manoeuvre.

"I have failed to create the right profitable business model despite my best efforts. I would like to say I gave it my all. I am very sorry to let down all the people that put their trust in me. I fought for a long time but today I gave up as I could not take any more pressure...," his note read.

The board of Coffee Day Enterprises on Wednesday appointed S.V. Ranganath as its interim chairman and said that in due course the board will prepare a detailed charter of authorities vested in the executive committee and approve the same. IANS