Three restructurings in twelve months: what the Starbucks closure filing actually says

Sources: Starbucks Corporation, Form 8-K filed 24 September 2026, accession 0000829224-26-000145, Items 2.05 and 7.01; Form 8-K filed 15 May 2026, accession 0000829224-26-000088, Item 2.05; Form 8-K filed 25 September 2025, accession 0000829224-25-000067, Items 2.05, 7.01 and 9.01; Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 28 September 2025, accession 0000829224-25-000114, Note 18; Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 28 June 2026, accession 0000829224-26-000130, Note 17; and Exhibit 99.1 to the Form 8-K filed 29 July 2026, accession 0000829224-26-000129. All read directly from sec.gov. Percentages and totals marked as computed are arithmetic performed here on filed inputs, with the basis of each numerator and denominator stated beside it.

The short answer

Every dollar of the approximately $1.7 billion announced across the three plans is excluded from the adjusted earnings the company guides on, under a published rationale describing those costs as "anticipated to be completed within a finite period of time". The interesting question is not whether 250 stores is a lot. It is what an adjusted earnings figure is measuring by the third plan.

1. What the filing says, and what the rule required it to say

The 8-K runs to two substantive paragraphs under Item 2.05 and one under Item 7.01. It reports that on 22 September 2026 the board approved further actions under the "Back to Starbucks" strategy; that the company "will close approximately 1% of its more than 18,000 North America coffeehouses that do not deliver the coffeehouse experience and financial performance expected of the brand"; that it expects "the majority of the coffeehouse closures will be completed by the end of fiscal year 2026 with a significant portion of the associated cash and non-cash charges incurred in fiscal year 2026"; and that of "approximately $300 million of restructuring charges to be incurred", about $200 million will be cash charges "primarily related to lease exit costs and employee separation benefits", with the remaining $100 million non-cash "due to disposal and impairment of company-operated coffeehouse assets".

Item 2.05 of Form 8-K is triggered when a board "commits the registrant to an exit or disposal plan, or otherwise disposes of a long-lived asset or terminates employees under a plan of termination described in FASB ASC paragraph 420-10-25-4 (Exit or Disposal Cost Obligations Topic), under which material charges will be incurred". It asks for four things: the date of the commitment and a description of the course of action including the expected completion date; an estimate for each major type of cost; an estimate of the total; and an estimate of how much of the charge will result in future cash expenditures. Where a registrant cannot in good faith make one of those estimates at the time of filing, the rule says no disclosure of that estimate is required, and requires an amended 8-K within four business days of the estimate being made.

Reading the three filings side by side, the September 2025 filing gave per-type estimates: approximately $150 million of employee separation benefits, approximately $400 million of disposal and impairment of company-operated store assets, and approximately $450 million primarily associated with accelerated amortisation of right-of-use lease assets and other lease costs. The September 2026 filing gives the total and the cash split, and names the cost types without attaching an amount to each. That is a difference between two filings by the same registrant on the same item, and the rule's good-faith carve-out expressly contemplates it. Nothing here suggests that any disclosure was inadequate.

2. Three plans, one strategy, twelve months

The "Back to Starbucks" strategy was announced in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, per Note 18 of the fiscal 2025 Form 10-K. Since then the board has approved and filed three separate exit or disposal plans under Item 2.05. Each was correctly described as "further actions under its previously announced" strategy. The dates matter, because two of the three board approvals sit five days before a fiscal year end.

Each row is the estimate in that Form 8-K, on the basis that filing states. The total row is arithmetic on three separate estimates made at three different dates and is labelled as computed wherever it appears in this file. It is not a figure any document reports.

The Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 28 June 2026 also discloses a fourth plan that did not carry its own Item 2.05 filing: in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, "management approved a fiscal 2026 restructuring plan to relocate certain functions of our support organization to an additional office in Nashville, Tennessee". Item 2.05 applies where material charges will be incurred, and the rule has a materiality threshold built into it. The plan is disclosed in the periodic report. Again, nothing here suggests that any disclosure was inadequate. It is noted because a reader counting plans from 8-K filings alone will count three, and the notes describe four.

The other thing the periodic reports carry is a completion date that moved. The fiscal 2025 Form 10-K, filed 14 November 2025, said: "We anticipate completion of the plan and store closures within fiscal year 2026." The Form 10-Q filed 29 July 2026 said: "We anticipate completion of both the fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 restructuring plans and remaining store closures by the first half of fiscal 2027." Eight weeks after that second statement, the board approved a third plan. Forward statements of this kind are estimates about the plans that exist when they are written, and they are labelled as forward-looking in both documents. They are not statements about the strategy.

3. Announced against recorded

Announced estimates and recorded charges are two different measurements and this file keeps them apart. Recorded is what appears on the face of the consolidated statement of earnings in the line "restructuring and impairments". Fiscal 2025 carried $892.0 million of it. The first three quarters of fiscal 2026 carried $415.8 million, against $137.0 million in the same three quarters a year earlier, a rise of 203.5 per cent on the company's own comparative. The fiscal 2023 comparative in the fiscal 2025 segment table is $21.8 million, and the fiscal 2024 column of that table carries no restructuring and impairments line.

Recorded through 28 June 2026 is therefore $1,307.8 million, computed as $892.0 million plus $415.8 million, both on a recorded basis and both from the restructuring notes. That is 60.0 times the $21.8 million of fiscal 2023, computed on the same line item. Fiscal 2025 restructuring was 2.40 per cent of fiscal 2025 total net revenues of $37,184.4 million, and the nine-month fiscal 2026 charge was 1.45 per cent of nine-month net revenues of $28,769.3 million, each period measured against its own revenue.

The store count moves with it. The restructuring notes report 627 stores closed in fiscal 2025 and 247 in the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, which is 874 closed under the fiscal 2025 plans through 28 June 2026. Approximately 250 more were announced on 24 September under a separate plan. Neither note states the regional split of the 874, so the 250, which is stated as North America, is kept as a separate line here rather than folded into a single total.

Two of the three plans are not finished. The Form 10-Q estimates approximately $120 million more on the fiscal 2025 plans and approximately $110 million more on the fiscal 2026 plans across the remainder of fiscal 2026 and the first half of fiscal 2027. The 24 September plan adds approximately $300 million on top of those, on its own estimate. Those three numbers are not one number: the first two are remaining amounts on existing plans measured at 28 June 2026, the third is a total estimate for a plan approved three months later. They are shown here as three lines and are added only once, with that caveat attached.

4. The mix inverts, and that changes what the charge is

The three plans do not have the same shape. Plan one was 60 per cent cash. Plan two was 70 per cent non-cash, $280 million of the $400 million. Plan three is 67 per cent cash. Those are not stylistic differences. A non-cash impairment writes down money the company already spent, in an earlier year, on assets it still owns. A cash charge is money that has not yet left and is going to.

On the announced estimates, the three plans together are approximately $920 million of cash charges and approximately $780 million of non-cash charges, which is 54.1 per cent cash. Against that, the cash that has actually moved on the fiscal 2025 plans is visible in the liability roll-forwards: $141.4 million of cash payments in fiscal 2025 and $278.6 million in the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, which is $420.0 million paid out on that plan alone, both figures taken from the same roll-forward line in successive filings.

5. Approximately 250 of approximately what

The 8-K expresses the closures two ways in two items. Item 2.05 says approximately 1 per cent of "more than 18,000 North America coffeehouses". Item 7.01 says "approximately 250 closures in North America". The store data in the most recent earnings release gives the base precisely: at 28 June 2026 North America had 18,371 coffeehouses, of which 11,149 were company-operated and 7,222 were licensed.

Against all 18,371 North America coffeehouses, 250 is 1.36 per cent. Against the 11,149 that are company-operated, it is 2.24 per cent. The charges the filing describes are disposal and impairment of company-operated coffeehouse assets and lease exit costs, which are costs a company incurs on stores it operates and leases itself. The filing does not state how many of the 250 are company-operated, so this file prints both percentages and asserts neither as the rate. That is the whole of the point: a closure percentage is meaningless without the base, and a store estate that is 39.3 per cent licensed has two bases.

6. The guidance arithmetic does not close on the closures

Item 7.01 of the same 8-K revises the fiscal 2026 store opening guidance: "full fiscal year 2026 net new global company-operated and licensed coffeehouse openings will be approximately 440, compared with its prior guidance of 600 to 650 net new openings". The prior figure comes from the earnings release of 29 July 2026, which guided to "Approximately 600 to 650 net new coffeehouses globally across company-operated and licensed businesses". The two figures are on the same basis, which is what makes the comparison usable.

The reduction is 160 at the bottom of the prior range and 210 at the top. The closures are approximately 250. The 8-K accounts for the difference in words: the revised figure "is based on approximately 250 closures in North America as part of today's announcement, partially offset by higher net new coffeehouse openings across the Company's International markets". It does not size that offset. On the filing's own numbers the offset is 40 to 90 net new openings above what the July guidance assumed. That is computed, it is a range because the prior guidance was a range, and it is the only unstated number in the paragraph.

There is a second piece of arithmetic in the same disclosure. Net new store openings for the first three quarters of fiscal 2026 were 314, per the Store Data table at 28 June 2026. Full-year guidance of approximately 440 leaves approximately 126 net additions for the fourth quarter. If the whole of the approximately 250 closures falls inside fiscal 2026, the fourth quarter has to produce about 376 net additions before those closures, against 314 across the three quarters that preceded it. The 8-K says the "majority" of closures complete by the end of fiscal 2026 rather than all of them, so 376 is the arithmetic at one end of the stated range rather than a forecast. Both figures are computed and the inputs are printed beside them.

7. The charge was already in the guidance, and then it was not enough

This is the finding with the largest number attached to it, and it comes out of a reconciliation table rather than a headline. The 29 July 2026 earnings release published a projected fiscal 2026 bridge from GAAP to non-GAAP diluted earnings per share: GAAP of $2.14 to $2.24, plus $0.48 of restructuring and impairments, plus $0.07 of transaction costs, plus $0.04 of transformation costs, less $0.47 for the net gain on divestiture, plus $0.24 for the income tax impact from changes in indefinite reinvestment assertions, plus $0.05 of tax effect on the non-GAAP adjustments, giving non-GAAP of $2.55 to $2.65. The bridge foots at both ends of the range.

That $0.48 is a whole-year restructuring assumption, published on 29 July 2026, before the September plan existed. On the nine-month weighted average diluted share count of 1,143.0 million it implies about $548.6 million of fiscal 2026 restructuring. Charges recorded in the first three quarters were $415.8 million. The residual for the fourth quarter inside that same bridge is about $132.8 million. The plan announced on 24 September estimates approximately $300 million, with a significant portion of the charges expected in fiscal 2026.

Two things have to be said about that $0.48 before it is leaned on. It is a rounded per-share figure, so half a cent of rounding is about $5.7 million on 1,143.0 million shares, and the full-year share count will differ slightly from the nine-month average used here. And the September plan says "a significant portion" of its charges fall in fiscal 2026, not all of them, so the two bars are not a like-for-like subtraction. What survives both caveats is the direction and the order of magnitude: a plan estimated at about $300 million arrived after a bridge that had room for about $133 million.

The rationale the company publishes for excluding restructuring from non-GAAP is stated in the same release: "Management excludes restructuring and impairment costs relating to the write-down of certain company-operated assets and employee severance costs for the reasons discussed above. These expenses are anticipated to be completed within a finite period of time." That sentence is the commitment, and it is the one a reader should hold each new plan against.

8. The adjustment that cut the other way

A file about the distance between reported and adjusted earnings reads as insinuation without this section, so it is here in its own right. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026 the non-GAAP presentation produced a lower earnings per share than GAAP, not a higher one. GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.91. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.85. The bridge adds $0.26 of restructuring, $0.04 of transaction costs and $0.02 of transformation costs, then removes $0.47 for the net gain on divestiture of certain operations and adds back $0.09 of tax effect. The divestiture gain, $536.3 million on the face of the statement, is excluded from the adjusted figure even though it flatters the reported one.

At the operating line the direction is the other way, and the size is worth stating plainly. Reported operating margin for the quarter was 10.5 per cent and non-GAAP operating margin was 14.4 per cent, a gap of 390 basis points, of which restructuring alone is 320 basis points. Both statements are true at once: the quarter's adjusted operating margin is materially above the reported one, and the quarter's adjusted earnings per share is below the reported one. Anyone quoting only the first has told half of it.

9. Where the liability actually sits

There is no line on the balance sheet called restructuring liability. The Form 10-Q says so directly: "the majority of the remaining accrued employee separation costs are reflected in accrued payroll and benefits and the remaining accrued lease-related costs are reflected in the operating lease liability on the consolidated balance sheet". The note gives the roll-forwards anyway, which is the useful disclosure.

Every figure in this table is as filed in Note 17 of the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 28 June 2026. Each column and the roll-forward foot to the filed totals without adjustment. The fiscal 2026 plans line is shown as one row; its own roll-forward begins at nil, incurs $82.5m, pays $14.0m of cash and includes $4.3m of other movements.

Two disclosures around that table are worth reading slowly. The note reports the operating lease liability balances for total stores under the fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 plans as $183.1 million and $6.9 million at 28 June 2026, against $272.8 million for restructuring store closures at 28 September 2025. Those sit alongside the restructuring table rather than inside it, and the filing does not state how they intersect with the $151.0 million of lease exit costs in the table, so this file neither adds nor divides the two. And the $(4.5) million divestiture line exists because Starbucks divested its retail operations in China in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, converting 7,991 company-operated stores to licensed stores. A restructuring reserve can shrink because the business it related to left the group.

10. Where the charge lands, and where it does not

Restructuring and impairments is reported by segment. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2026 the $415.8 million split as North America $219.6 million, International $93.4 million, Channel Development nil and Corporate and Other $102.8 million. Corporate and Other is not a reportable operating segment; it is where costs that are not allocated to the operating segments are reported. On those figures 24.7 per cent of the nine-month charge sits outside the three operating segments altogether, against 17.3 per cent of the $892.0 million in fiscal 2025. Segment operating income does not carry that portion.

The cost-type split says where the programme has and has not spent. Of the $299.9 million recorded on the fiscal 2026 plans, disposal and impairment of store and non-retail facility assets was $217.4 million, employee severance and separation $79.9 million, and amortisation of right-of-use lease assets and other lease exit costs $2.6 million. The plan approved in September names lease exit costs first among its cash charges, and the filings do not split the approximately $200 million between lease exit and severance. On the recorded line, lease exit costs under the fiscal 2026 plans stand at $2.6 million so far.

11. Two figures in the coverage, tested against the filings

Quartz, updated 24 September 2026, headlined the story "Starbucks is closing hundreds of cafes and slashing 900 jobs in $1 billion overhaul". The $1 billion is a real filed figure: it is plan one's estimate, restated in Note 18 of the fiscal 2025 Form 10-K as "approximately $1.0 billion in total pre-tax restructuring charges related to the 'Back to Starbucks' restructuring plan announced in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, in addition to the $137 million incurred resulting from restructuring activities in the second and third quarters of fiscal 2025". It belongs to September 2025, not to the announcement of 24 September 2026, which is approximately $300 million. Across all three Item 2.05 filings the figure is approximately $1,700 million.

The 900 job figure does not appear in the Form 8-K, which quantifies dollars and stores and gives no headcount. Item 2.05 does not ask for one, and severance per head is not disclosed, so it cannot be derived from the charge either.

12. What this file does not compute

What to watch

Three things to take back to a smaller company

Sources

No analyst estimate, price target, valuation model, social media post or unnamed source was used. Every figure marked as filed is traced to the document named beside it and was confirmed by literal string against the raw document text fetched from sec.gov. Every figure marked as computed is arithmetic performed here on filed inputs, with the basis and the date of each numerator and denominator stated. Where the filings do not support a number, none is estimated, and the omissions are listed above.

Questions this file answers

Is $300 million the size of the programme?

It is the size of this plan. Three Item 2.05 filings have been made under the same named strategy in twelve months: approximately $1,000 million approved 23 September 2025, approximately $400 million approved 13 May 2026, and approximately $300 million approved 22 September 2026. Added together that is approximately $1,700 million. No single filing states that total; it is arithmetic on three.

How much has actually been recorded so far?

$892.0 million in fiscal 2025, per Note 18 of the Form 10-K, and $415.8 million in the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, per Note 17 of the Form 10-Q. That is $1,307.8 million recorded through 28 June 2026. The fiscal 2023 comparative in the same segment table is $21.8 million, and the fiscal 2024 column carries no restructuring and impairments line at all.

Is 250 closures one per cent of the estate?

It depends which estate. North America had 18,371 coffeehouses at 28 June 2026, of which 11,149 were company-operated and 7,222 licensed. Approximately 250 is 1.36% of the total and 2.24% of the company-operated base. The charges described in the 8-K relate to company-operated coffeehouse assets and to lease exit costs. The filing does not state how many of the 250 are company-operated, so both percentages are shown here and neither is presented as the answer.

Why does the guidance cut not match the closure count?

Fiscal 2026 net new coffeehouse guidance fell from 600 to 650 down to approximately 440, a reduction of 160 to 210. The announced closures are approximately 250. The 8-K says the closures are "partially offset by higher net new coffeehouse openings across the Company's International markets" without sizing that offset. On the filing's own figures the offset is 40 to 90 net new openings. Both guidance figures are stated on the same basis, global company-operated and licensed.

Where does a restructuring liability sit on the balance sheet?

Not in a caption of its own. The Form 10-Q states that the majority of the remaining accrued employee separation costs are reflected in accrued payroll and benefits and the remaining accrued lease-related costs are reflected in the operating lease liability. The restructuring liability table shows a total of $234.8 million at 28 June 2026, $83.8 million of employee severance and $151.0 million of lease exit and other related costs.