Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya Has a Net Worth Estimated at $2.5 Billion
Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and CEO of Chobani, has a net worth of $2.5 billion, according to a new Bloomberg story. The article figures his company’s net sales at $2.53 billion for 2023 and “a measure of earnings rose 96% to $404 million as the company cut costs and streamlined its supply chain.”
His fortune was calculated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and is based on what Bloomberg says is his near-78% ownership of the Greek yogurt company. Not specified is if they figured in his majority ownership of coffee maker La Colombe, which he purchased in December of 2023 for $900 million, and Anchor Brewing, bought this May for an undisclosed price.
Ulukaya’s is a fascinating, Horatio Alger story and his charitable work is considerable, but his private ownership of the company – and now the group of companies – makes it difficult to figure their financials. In the process of buying La Colombe, he had to convert Keurig Dr Pepper’s 33% investment in the coffee company into an undisclosed stake in Chobani, and in 2016, he gave an estimated 10% of the company’s stock to employees.
The figures Bloomberg saw were disclosed to debt investors Oct. 15 as part of a junk bond sale. The deal, which raised $650 million, will help redeem preferred equity owned by the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, reducing the plan’s stake to 7.6% from about 17%. The pension plan’s investment dates to 2018, when TPG Capital exited an earlier investment that helped the yogurt maker avoid a cash crunch.
Chobani filed for an initial public offering in July of 2021 but did not move forward with the deal.
This article is a bit dated, but we wrote an extensive profile of the company and of Ulukaya in December 2012 when Chobani was our Processor of the Year.
So how big (expansive) is Chobani, and how much of it does Ulukaya own? We haven’t gotten responses annually when we ask for our Top 100 list, and neither did Bloomberg.
