Jones Soda
The troubled premium pop bottler posted horrendous third-quarter results last night. Net revenue fell 26% to $8.7 million. The company's loss widened to $0.20 a share, marking the fifth consecutive quarter in which Jones Soda has posted a steeper loss than Wall Street was expecting.
There may have been some hope at the beginning of last year's slide. Net revenue was taking a hit as a result of costly stocking fees to get the company's eclectic flavors into new retailers. However, now it's the actual viability of Jones Soda as a brand that's at stake, since even gross revenue took a sharp 25% hit during the period.
Sorry, Jones. The market just isn't that into you anymore. When you see a 45% plunge in concentrate sales to distributor National Beverage
Jones Soda is responding to its waning street cred by retreating further into its shell. It is scaling back promotional allowances to retailers and whacking away at its workforce. Naturally having fewer bodies around and dealing with less motivated outlets is only going to make sales deteriorate even more. The hope here is that the company will be able to shave enough overhead to give it time for another crack at winning back soda sippers it lost to mainstream bottlers like Coca-Cola
Either way, the company isn't done defacing itself just yet. I guess it's hard to appeal to the emo kids when you have no more "mo."
Other ways to keep up -- or down -- with the Joneses: