Still Climbing Green Mountain

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) may be a great corporate citizen, and it has many interesting plans, but investors might want to watch its progress while it continues to integrate its recent acquisition of Keurig.

Fourth-quarter earnings at Green Mountain dropped 37% to $1.5 million, or $0.19 per share. However, sales skyrocketed 83.7% to $66.9 million, which included $21.6 million in sales from Keurig. (For the full rundown on the numbers, see our Fool by Numbers feature. And note that while Green Mountain did include many tables and charts for investors to mull over, it did not include a cash flow statement in its press release.)

For the year, Green Mountain reported earnings of $8.4 million, or $1.07 per share, which did beat its own forecast in August. (At that time, it forecast earnings of $0.97 to $1.02 per share, although analysts were expecting $1.19 per share. They since ratcheted down their expectations to $1 per share.)

Green Mountain may be known for its coffee (and its focus on social responsibility is a differentiator, as well), but it doesn't quite directly compete with, say, coffeehouse names like Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) or Caribou (Nasdaq: CBOU). Green Mountain, which distributes through others, may have a bit more in common with Peet's (Nasdaq: PEET) in that respect, although even Peet's does have 100 retail locations.

Of course, Green Mountain's distribution agreements are interesting in their own right. The company said that it grew shipments of its Newman's Own, Fair Trade, and Certified Organics lines of beans by 69%, including expansion into 650 McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) locations. And of course, some people have had concerns that McDonald's could give Starbucks more of a run for its money with the right type of gourmet coffee offerings for the breakfast crowd, and Green Mountain has a hand in that.

Green Mountain's got plenty of interesting strategies. Its acquisition of Keurig, which makes single-cup brewers for home and office and obviously capitalizes on the gourmet coffee trend, does seem to be spurring impressive growth (and Green Mountain's stand-alone results seemed solid, too). And Green Mountain believes that Keurig will help the company expand its presence as a strong national brand. However, the acquisition is still being integrated, and in the accounting sense, it's still a complex transaction. In fact, in its conference call, Green Mountain CFO Fran Rathke said, "The combination of the accounting rules and our acquisition of Keurig leads to a somewhat mind-numbing level of complexity in understanding the full extent of our growth." And I'd say that's true -- there are a lot of moving parts.

Last quarter, I felt that while there was momentum and promise with Green Mountain and Keurig, a lot remained to be seen, and I haven't really changed my mind now. There's nothing wrong with grabbing a cup of decaf and waiting to see how things pan out for Green Mountain's aggressive plans.

Check out the following related Foolish stories:

• See our Fool by Numbers on Green Mountain's most recent quarter.
• Starbucks recently reported an "interesting" quarter.
• Revisit Green Mountain's previous quarterly announcement.

Starbucks is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation. To find out more about David and Tom Gardner's most recent recommendations, take a free 30-day trial today.

Alyce Lomax owns shares of Starbucks. The Fool has a disclosure policy.