Recently, the arbitrator ruled that Starbucks must pay $2.23bn in damages plus $527m in interest and legal costs to Kraft foods. Kraft foods is a company selling bags of Starbucks branded coffee in 1998 under a deal that was due to run until March 2014, getting revenue of around $500 million annually. However, According to the testimony of Kraft foods, Starbucks took its business back early than expire day, which broke the distribution deal and caused Kraft foods a huge loss. This is actually totally different from that in Starbucks. Starbucks insists that it was Kraft foods that could not efficiently spread out its brand, which caused a loss in Starbucks’ business.

Such long-running legal battle failed to keep providing investors an opportunity to invest in coffee industry. However, the recent final sentence seems to bring it back. According to the sentence, Starbucks is supposed to pay at least $1 billion in addition to any legal fees to Kraft for damages. To pay such large sum of money and continue its on-going operations, Starbucks has a huge possibility to tap into debt options, which will finally affect its all-time high shares to take a dip after the lawsuit.