Chobani, the privately owned Chenango County-based Greek yogurt company, has started the process of filing for an initial public offering that could be valued as high as $10 billion.
It could also generate a huge windfall for the company’s employees, who have been promised a share of the company if or when it is sold or becomes public.
Chobani this week filed paperwork with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission for a stock market listing, MarketWatch and other financial news services reported. That filing would be a first step to an IPO that would make Chobani a publicly traded company.
Chobani has been considering an IPO for some time, and that prospect heated up earlier this year as the company moved into the hot plant-based food sector. It recently launched its latest innovation, Chobani Zero Sugar.
Hamdi Ulukaya, an immigrant from Turkey, founded Chobani in 2005 in a former Kraft Foods yogurt plant in South Edmeston. It sold its first cup of Greek yogurt, which is thicker and tangier than standard yogurts, in 2007.
By 2011, Chobani had become the leading U.S. maker of Greek yogurt, a booming food category that had barely existed in the American market a few years before. The company recently reported its sales are increasing at triple the rate of the rest of the Greek yogurt category.
In 2016, Ulukaya announced that he would give full-time employees shares worth nearly 10% of the value of the company’s growth between then and the time he might sell the company or take it public.
At that time, the company’s value was estimated at between $3 billion and $5 billion. That means the IPO could create $4 billion to $5 billion in growth, if the current projections are correct. Chobani’s 2,200 or so employees would then stand to earn 10% of the increased value, or $400 million to $500 million.
Details of how that would be shared are not known.
Chobani’s employees are split between its original operations in and around Norwich (headquarters) and South Edmeston (yogurt plant) and its second plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. The Idaho plant is the world’s largest yogurt making facility.
Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.