Starbucks to exit Russia after nearly 15 years

STORY: Starbucks will exit Russia after nearly 15 years, the company announced on Monday, joining a wave of American companies pulling out of that country in response to the war in Ukraine.

Seattle-based Starbucks has 130 stores in Russia, with nearly 2,000 employees in the country.

In March, Starbucks shuttered its stores and suspended all business activity in Russia, including the shipment of its products to the country.

Monday's decision makes that suspension permanent.

Christian Ledoux, the director of investment research at Captrust in San Antonio says with the move unlikely to significantly impact Starbucks' bottom line, the company had no choice.

"A company in America cannot afford to have a good chunk of its customer base either rebelling or protesting against the company simply because it has less than one percent of its revenues in a country that is going against American values."

Starbucks' move comes a week after an even more iconic American company, McDonalds, pulled the plug on its Russian restaurants.

On Monday, its trademarked Golden Arches were removed from a store near Moscow.

That exit was a far more significant business decision.

"McDonalds had a much longer history in Russia. Starbucks had only been there for fifteen years, and McDonalds was there basically at the falling of the Berlin Wall. So this is a much bigger investment that McDonalds has made. McDonalds owned the stores in Russia, as well. It was a much more difficult extraction. And it was a much larger percentage of sales. I think it was somewhere in the nine percent range of sales came from Russia. So this is a bigger deal for McDonalds than it was for Starbucks."

Starbucks did not provide details on the financial impact of the exit. McDonald's had said it would take a primarily non-cash charge of up to $1.4 billion.