Starbucks Weighs Selling Majority Stake in Japan Business at $3 Billion Valuation

Starbucks is exploring the sale of a majority stake in its Japan operations, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters. A deal could value the business at approximately $3 billion.

That would make Japan the company's second major overseas divestiture in roughly a year, following the sale of control of its China business to Boyu Capital.

The Numbers

Starbucks Japan runs 1,883 stores as of September 2025, according to Reuters and confirmed across multiple outlets including the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and BigGo Finance. That's nearly 9% of Starbucks' entire global store count, and it's the company's largest company-operated market outside the United States.

Starbucks has already brought in financial advisers to pitch options and is open to giving up majority ownership, the sources told Reuters. Nobody has settled on how big a stake gets sold or what the final price tag looks like. One source said a formal sale process could kick off in the fourth quarter of this year.

Bloomberg first reported back in June that Starbucks was weighing its options for the Japan unit, including a possible stake sale. Reuters' reporting, picked up by CNBC and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser among others, confirms the process has advanced to soliciting adviser pitches.

Déjà Vu From China

Starbucks has run this play before. In 2014, it bought out longtime partner Sazaby League for about $914 million, taking full ownership of Japan at a valuation near $1.5 billion. The store count has grown from roughly 1,050 then to 1,883 now.

Last year, Starbucks ceded control of its China business to Boyu Capital in a deal valuing that operation at $4 billion, a transaction that closed in April, according to CNBC and TradingView. TradingView reports the total value of the China deal, including Starbucks' retained stake and licensing income over at least a decade, is expected to top $13 billion. BigGo Finance notes that roughly 90% of Starbucks' overseas stores now operate under a licensed model following that shift.

Analysts at TD Securities said in June that offloading the Japan unit would make strategic sense because the market isn't central to Starbucks' brand identity and would let management focus on fixing the core U.S. business, a point echoed across the CNBC and Honolulu Star-Advertiser coverage.

Why Now

CEO Brian Niccol has spent his tenure closing stores and cutting corporate jobs across North America to restore profitability, a restructuring effort documented by CNBC, grafa.com, and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Selling off Japan would free up capital and management bandwidth while Niccol tries to turn around domestic traffic.

Japan is not a drag on operations. International comparable-store sales rose 5.7% in Starbucks' third quarter, with the company crediting Japan as a key driver, according to CNBC and TradingView. That's part of the appeal for buyers: a formal sale process is expected to draw interest from both global and Japanese private equity and buyout firms, per Reuters' sourcing.

A Starbucks spokesperson told Reuters the Japan business has "deep brand affinity and trusted presence built over 30 years in the region," and that the company "continually assesses the best structure to be most meaningful to customers and create value for shareholders." That's corporate-speak for: we're not saying no, and we're not saying yes yet either.

SBUX shares rose about 0.3% in premarket trading following the report, according to TradingView.

Closer to Home

While Niccol reshuffles Starbucks' overseas map, he's also weighing in on problems in the company's own backyard. Niccol was among 38 signatories, alongside Microsoft's Brad Smith and executives from Costco, Nordstrom, T-Mobile, Alaska Airlines and the Seattle Mariners, on a letter to Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson demanding a public safety plan with a deadline, budget and monthly progress reports, according to the Daily Signal.

The letter followed a Labor Day weekend in which three shootings in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood killed three people and wounded three more, the Daily Signal reported, and came weeks after Seattle's police chief resigned in July following a mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle festival that killed three and wounded four, including a 2-year-old. A poll commissioned by the business coalition found just 34% of Seattle voters expressed confidence the city has an effective public safety plan, while every safety proposal tested by that poll cleared 75% support. Wilson has called the Belltown shootings "tragic and unacceptable," according to the Daily Signal, though her office has not publicly detailed a formal response timeline.

The Japan stake sale and the Seattle letter are unrelated business decisions, but both land the same week and put Niccol in the position of making consequential calls on two fronts at once: restructuring a global coffee empire and pressing his hometown's mayor to act on crime near company headquarters.

No buyer, no stake size, and no price has been finalized on the Japan front. Reuters' sources say that process could formally begin sometime between October and December.