Jim Cramer sees ‘green shoot’ in stock market reaction to this secondary stock sale

The market reaction to a $300 million secondary stock offering from drive-thru coffee chain Dutch Bros (BROS) is an encouraging sign, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday.

Dutch Bros on Thursday priced the stock sale at $26 per share, below its most recent closing price of $26.78. Shortly after Friday’s opening bell, Dutch Bros stock was trading higher by 4%, to nearly $28 per share.

“If you take a look at where this deal [was priced], if you’ve got be excited if you got in because you’re already up,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.” He added, “This is some of the things that might be positive. This is a green shoot.”

Oregon-based Dutch Bros, which went public in September 2021 and has been expanding across the U.S., intends to use proceeds from the stock sale to pay down debt and capital expenditures, according to a securities filing.

Cramer said his only issue with Dutch Bros’s secondary offering is that it didn’t happen sooner — when its stock price was higher. In theory, that would’ve allowed the company sell fewer shares to raise the same amount of money. Over the past 12 months, shares of Dutch Bros have declined nearly 23%.

Cramer’s Charitable Trust, the portfolio used by the CNBC Investing Cub, owns rival coffee chain Starbucks (SBUX).