Panera Bread May Be Considering an IPO

Wall Street has been paying attention to reports that an IPO for Panera Bread may be happening for the company.

Panera Bread CEO Niren Chaudhary however has said that no final decision about returning to the public markets has been made for the company as of yet.

“You can imagine we are always thinking about the various options, but at this point in time we have not really made a specific decision on when that might happen or if it’s going to happen,” said Chaudhary on Yahoo Finance Live.

It was last week that Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bagels, all purchased over the last decade by food conglomerate JAB Holdings, said they would combine to form Panera Brands.

This structure will see the combination of 4,000 locations and 110,000 employees across 10 countries and Chaudhary would lead the newly formed company. The CEO says there won’t be cross-selling between the brands, but the entity will share back-end insights.

“We can be stronger together and grow faster. The real reason is to leverage the competencies we have in an omni-channel network, a supply chain, innovation strength and the capability of franchisees that we have at Panera Bread,” said the CEO.

The potential IPO of Panera Brands comes amid JAB slowly unwinding its vast portfolio of food brands.

In other news, the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which is a division of the Department of Agriculture, reports that Panera Bread is recalling some of its Panera Bread at Home Chicken Tortilla Soup.

The move comes after the company received “several consumer complaints” that led the agency to discover the soup “may be contaminated with extraneous material, specifically pieces of gray nitrile glove.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.