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Friday, August 15, 2008
Cookie Maker Mrs. Fields Files for Chapter 11
FOXBusiness
The struggling privately owned Mrs. Fields Famous Brands, owner of the famous mall-based cookie stands and TCBY yogurt stores, said Friday it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Mrs. Fields is plagued with $200 million in debt, a slowing economy where consumers have cut back on discretionary purchases and record-high dairy and ingredient prices. The company also saw the resignation of its Chief Executive Officer Stephen Russo late last month.
The company, in their most recent SEC earnings filing, reported a net loss of $10.7 million last quarter, compared with a loss of $1.4 million in the same period last year. Because the company is privately held, it doesn’t report a profit or loss on a per-share basis.
Mrs. Fields was founded in the late 1970s and has around 1,200 franchisees of its famous cookie stands in malls across America. The company purchased the yogurt brand TCBY in 2000 as well.
Chapter 11 bankruptcy is the legal reorganization of a company and does not necessarily mean a company is going out of business.
Michael Ward, Mrs. Fields' executive vice president, was not immediately available for comment.
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No, it's not a dance craze. Contago is a condition of supply and demand, essentially a fancy word to say that prices for items, typically commodities, are cheaper now than they would be at some point down the line.
Anything that¿s sold in the futures market can be in a case of contango. Futures are exactly that: a contract to buy an item or asset at a price in the future. This is the case with oil, with traders buying and selling contracts to acquire a barrel of oil in months down the line. When a market is in contango, spot prices, or the price of a commodity if you were to buy it right now, are lower than forward prices.
Why is that important? Well, it usually tells you the supply of a given commodity is plentiful (since, according to Economics 101, a large supply usually leads to cheap prices).
Incidentally, if you think contango is a mouthful, its opposite condition is known by the equally tongue-tying term backwardation.
