Battered Luckin Coffee Emerges From Bankruptcy Proceedings

Battered Luckin Coffee Emerges From Bankruptcy Proceedings

(Reuters) – Luckin Coffee Inc, said on Monday it had emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, two years after an accounting fraud derailed the coffee chain’s business.

Founded in 2017, Xiamen-based Luckin had positioned itself as a homegrown challenger to U.S. coffee giant Starbucks Corp, but the much-hyped company almost collapsed in 2020 after findings that about 2.2 billion yuan ($337.31 million) in 2019 sales was fabricated.

Top management changes and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines later, Luckin said it had restructured its financial indebtedness in the United States and was now positioned for sustainable growth and profitability.

In March, Luckin reported a near 81% jump in quarterly revenue and operating losses of about 120.8 million renminbi ($19.0 million).

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)