Fascinating report that Innocent is mixing juices with Coca-Cola. The latter are investing £30million for between a 10% and 20% stake valuing Innocent at between £150million and £300million. I doubt that the founders of Innocent, three Cambridge University graduates, have been over generous with their option scheme so each will own around 20% of the company - you can do the maths. At the start there were four equal shareholders; the three graduates and one investor for £250k. So all has gone down very well.
You have to admire co-founder Richard Reed saying of Coca-Cola “they can help us get our products out to more people in more places. They have been in business for 120years, so there will be things we can learn from them and we may be able to influence their thinking too”. Modesty!
I wonder what business plan resource they have used to think through this massive step for Innocent? Bringing in a trade investor, let alone a brand as powerful as Coco-Cola will have a massive influence on the future of the company. It all depends on the shareholding and we will have to wait until the accounts and 363s are available to learn more of the structure. Of course, they may have followed the usual route of the high-tech companies and flipped to Delaware in which case all will be secret.
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