In 1976, Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of Beatrice Foods of Chicago, Illinois. The headquarters for Krispy Kreme remained in Winston-Salem. A group of franchisees purchased the corporation back from Beatrice Foods in 1982. In May 2016, JAB Beech, a German investment firm, announced it made an offer to purchase the company for $1.35 billion over the following two months that would make the company privately owned. The transaction closed on July 27, 2016. In December 2017, Krispy Kreme moved corporate operations to Charlotte, North Carolina; while Winston-Salem will remain the World Headquarters and maintain the Krispy Kreme Support Center. Krispy Kreme began another phase of rapid expansion in the 1990s, opening stores outside the southeastern United States where most of their stores were located. Then, in December 2001, Krispy Kreme opened its first store outside the U.S. in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. On April 5, 2000, the corporation went public on the NASDAQ at $21 using the ticker symbol KREM. On May 17, 2001, Krispy Kreme switched to the New York Stock Exchange, with the ticker symbol KKD, which it carried until its private acquisition. The stock reached what would be its all-time high of $50 on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2003, a gain of 135 percent from its IPO price. For the fiscal year ending in February 2004, the company reported sales of $665.6 million and operating profits of $94.7 million from almost 400 stores (including international locations). The market initially considered the company as having "solid fundamentals, adding stores at a rapid clip and showing steadily increasing sales and earnings." In May 2004, the company missed quarterly estimates for the first time and suffered its first loss as a public company. Chairman and CEO Scott Livengood attributed the poor results to the low-carbohydrate diet craze. This explanation was viewed with skepticism by analysts, as "blaming the Atkins diet for disappointing earnings carried a whiff of desperation", and as rival donut chain, Dunkin' Donuts has not suffered from the low-carb trend over the same compared period. Analysts suggested that Livengood had expanded the chain too rapidly after the IPO, which concentrated certain markets with too many stores. While this approach initially grew revenues and profits at the parent-company level, due to royalty payments from new franchisees, which also increased sales, this reduced the profitability of individual franchisees in the long run as they were forced to compete with one another.