Yowie Group’s sales downgrade prompts stock price drop

Company’s North American chief, Mark Schuessler, takes over as global ceo.

Upon revelation of a significant sales forecast revision — a drop from 55 percent to 17 percent for the 2018 financial year — Perth, Australia-based Yowie Group saw its stocks plunge 33 percent on the Australian Stock Exchange, a report from ABC Online revealed.

The sales downgrade stemmed from a decline in North American sales, which dropped 11.7 percent from the previous year.

A delay in launching its line in Canada, which was expected to have a “full year of shelf activity” but did not actually surface until last October, coupled with less-than-stellar sales of Yowie’s Discovery World products in the United States, affected sales performance in North America.

As a result, CEO Bert Alfonso resigned yesterday, with Mark Schuessler taking over as the company’s new global chief executive officer.

Schuessler joined Yowie in mid-2016, coming over from Doumak, where he was credited with doubling the marshmallow manufacturer’s revenues in less than five years. He took over Yowie Group’s North American business in August 2017.

The novelty chocolate maker owns 100 percent of the global rights to the Yowie brand – an international award winning consumer brand targeted at a diverse range of ages, genders and cultures. Its line of chocolate-toy confectionery products debuted in the United States in 2015 with a national rollout in Walmart stores.

With more than 30 years experience in B-to-B reporting, writing and editing — the bulk of which was dedicated to covering the bakery, confectionery and snack industries — Pacyniak has chronicled changes within the food industry since the early 1980s. A Boston University journalism degree graduate, he worked for a variety of publications before joining BNP Media in 1994 as editor of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery magazine. In 2001, he took over as editor-in-chief of Candy Industry until 2018.