A few weeks ago, someone was referring to DutchBros stock here and another user mentioned that DutchBros Inc. is organized in a VIE structure, so I did some research on the topic and found that most investors are unaware of the actual situation are.
Basically, DutchBros Inc., which is traded on the NYSE, consists of Class A, B, C and D common stock. Class A grants full voting rights and economic interest in DutchBros Inc. So far so good.
Now the interesting part is that DutchBros Inc is a non-operating company, it holds 100% of the voting rights, but only 40.3% of the economic interest in DutchBros OpCo, the company that operates the entire DutchBros brand. This means that if you are the owner of DutchBros Inc., you are only entitled to 40.3% of the profits generated by the DutchBros business.
Given the current valuation, I don't think most investors are aware of this, because if you break this down proportionally to sales, you're currently paying for a price-to-sales ratio of 14.5 for a coffee shop chain with estimated future net margins of 10 %. To be honest, this is beyond crazy!
