Chobani IPO rumors surface again

For the second time this year, news that Chobani is looking at an initial public offering (IPO) hit the business press. The Bloomberg financial news service reported on June 14 that Chobani has tapped the Bank of America and the Goldman Sachs Group to work on putting an IPO together for later this year.

Bloomberg reported that the information came from an undisclosed unofficial source at Chobani. The source said that nothing has been finalized yet and the projected IPO date may change.

This is not the first time a rumor of an IPO has surfaced for the yogurt and health food company. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published Chobani’s consideration of a possible IPO on Feb 4, quoting a statement by Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya that: “An IPO is definitely one exciting direction but whether or not we’re public, we’ll keep disrupting and making things better.” The company has been expanding into iced coffee and oatmilk-based products recently and an IPO could help fund that effort. The WSJ estimated that Chobani could be worth up to $10 billion in an IPO.

Unimpressed with American yogurt offerings, Ulukaya started Chobani in an vacated Kraft Foods plant in upstate New York in 2005. Chobani’s thick Greek-style yogurt now dominates the American yogurt market. Besides plants in New York and Australia, Chobani makes yogurt outside of Twin Falls in the world’s largest yogurt plant. The company built the one-million-square-foot facility for $750 million in 2012, and then expanded it by 70,000 square feet in 2017. The plant employs 900.

Chobani did not respond to an Idaho Business Review inquiry on the prospective IPO.

It’s not the first time Ulukaya has hinted at the company going public; he also did so in 2018.