Coffee Day Enterprise has postponed the announcement of results for quarter ended June 30, 2019 in the light of the sudden death of its founder VG Siddhartha.
The revised date to consider the Q1 results will be communicated expeditiously, the company said in a BSE filing.
The company was scheduled to announce the results on August 8, 2019.
"…Due to certain unavoidable circumstances, the Board of Directors shall not consider the financial results.. in the meeting of the Board of Directors of the company to be held on 8 August 2019," the company said.
The statement added that though the company had taken adequate steps to complete the quarterly review before the stipulated timeline, “due to the recent developments, which were disclosed to the Exchanges from time to time", the review and preparation of the quarterly financial results for the quarter is not expected to be completed by the stipulated time.
The postponement of results comes after the apparent suicide of Siddhartha, who went missing since July 29 evening near the Netravathi River bridge in Mangaluru. His body was found early July 31 morning.
In a letter purportedly written by Siddhartha, he said he had "failed as an entrepreneur" and indicated that he had taken the decision to end his life due to harassment from income tax officials and because of pressure from lenders and an investor.
Coffee Day Enterprises, which owns and operates India's largest coffee chain Cafe Coffee Day, is reeling under a huge debt of Rs 4,700 crore.
Siddhartha, who was a successful stock investor before he founded CCD, sold a stake he held in IT firm Mindtree for close to Rs 3000 crore, and was hoping to use to bring down the company’s debt to Rs 2,400 crore.
The company was also in talks with Coca-Cola for partnership in CCD Vending Services and Blackstone for selling its real estate property under Tanglin, its real estate arm.
During an earnings call on May 29, 2019, Siddhartha revealed that he had a personal debt was Rs 600 crore and had pledged 70 percent of his shares in the company. However, he was confident that he would bring the shares pledged to under 50 percent in the next couple of months.
Some media reports have pegged the company’s debt at Rs 6,500 crore and his personal debt at Rs 1,000 crore.
Siddhartha’s total assets are worth Rs 18,000 crore. At the board of meeting held on July 31, the board of directors said in a statement that they would deleverage some of the assets to dilute debt.
The board appointed SV Ranganath, an independent director as interim Chairman and Nitin Bagmane as the interim Chief Operating Officer.
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