At a factory in the Bronx, making a Krispy Kreme doughnut involves precision timing.

First, flour, yeast, water and other ingredients are mixed for 14 minutes. After the dough is pushed through a machine that forms doughnut rings, the rings rise for 35 minutes. Then it’s 110 seconds in an oil fryer and a trip through a 55-degree cooling tunnel.

But because no one wants a stale doughnut, time is also the enemy. Last week’s limited-edition “Harry Potter”-themed sweets, which were decorated by hand as they rolled off the conveyor belt at 2 p.m., were packed in boxes and picked up within 12 hours for early-morning deliveries to retailers like Costco and Walmart. This is the pace the company needs to keep so the doughnuts don’t go stale. Everything is a race.

The clock is also ticking for Krispy Kreme executives. They’re under pressure to convince Wall Street analysts and investors that their latest plan will turn the company’s fortunes around. It’s a tall order.

The company is making a concentrated push to get its doughnuts into even more big-box retailers, as well as convenience and grocery stores, around the country. “In the U.S., just to give an example, we’re in less than a third of the footprint of Walmart, and so, you know, there are thousands of locations for us to go after,” said the chief executive of Krispy Kreme, Josh Charlesworth.

The past three decades have been a roller-coaster ride for the Charlotte, N.C., company, aiming to keep investors on a sugar high as it works out how to expand while remaining true to its heritage of serving fresh doughnuts.

Yet its shares have plunged 66 percent in the past year and currently trade around $3.60, a little more than the cost of a chocolate-iced, cream-filled doughnut in New York City. The company’s stock is one of the largest shorts in the market, meaning many investors are betting it could fall even farther.

Revenue for the quarter ending in June slipped 13.4 percent. The company said it had lost $441 million, compared with a loss of $5 million in the same quarter last year. The drop was largely due to an accounting charge of $407 million, reflecting the falling value of the chain.

Krispy Kreme’s stock has been a “major disappointment” since its initial public offering in 2021, J.P. Morgan analysts said in a note to investors in May. While the analysts said they expected the company to survive, they added that it was “difficult to suggest that investors should buy now.”

Krispy Kreme is trying to regain its traction at a tricky time. Competitors are everywhere, from large players like Dunkin’ and Canada’s Tim Hortons to regional chains with fervent fans like Duck Donuts from North Carolina, Randy’s in California and Doughnut Plant in New York. Even Japan’s cult favorite I’m Donut? opened its first store in Times Square this year.

But those pastry manufacturers are battling over a shrinking market. After two years of food inflation, consumers are cutting back on purchases. And Krispy Kreme doughnuts can be a pricey sweet. At an Acme Markets in New Jersey, a box of a dozen original glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts costs $15.99. A dozen mixed-variety doughnuts purchased at the company’s Times Square location were $27.99.

Consumers are also increasingly embracing wellness trends while others are on GLP-1s or medications that curb their desire to snack on sweet or salty foods. This year, J.M. Smucker has taken $2 billion in write-downs on its $5.6 billion acquisition in 2023 of Hostess Brands — which makes baked snacks like Twinkies, Donettes and Ding Dongs — because of falling sales.

Mr. Charlesworth said there had been a drop in consumer spending, but maintained that obesity drugs and wellness trends had not affected the business.

“This is still a growth story,” he said. “We’ve faced some challenges and made interventions, but this is a growth story.”

Mr. Charlesworth was a longtime Mars executive who joined the company in 2017 and was tapped as chief executive and president in January 2024. The previous chief executive of Krispy Kreme, Michael Tattersfield, now heads up the salad chain Salad and Go.

From a simple storefront in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1937, Krispy Kreme became a recognized Southern brand, even before it established a presence in other places. Customers would stand in line, sometimes for hours, lured by the 1950s-diner style and signs reading “Hot Donuts Now.” Once inside, they could watch the doughnut-making process and, at the end, snag a piping-hot cloud of sugar and yeast that had just rolled off a conveyor belt.

“There was this whole theatrical staging of the doughnut production,” said Bonnie Miller, a professor who teaches a food history class at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “It wasn’t just seeing the doughnuts being made, it was smelling them. The sensation that they were fresh, warm off the production line. That was key to Krispy Kreme as a brand.”

In the 1990s, the company went on a national expansion plan as its popularity soared, referred to in shows like “Sex and the City.” In the midst of the booming tech bubble of 2000, Krispy Kreme was one of the hottest public offerings of the year, and its stock continued to rise over the next three years. In 2003, a Fortune magazine cover declared Krispy Kreme “The Hottest Brand in America.”

Just two years later, however, the brand was ice cold. A sharp decline in sales pushed some franchisees into bankruptcy. A regulatory investigation forced Krispy Kreme to restate 2004 earnings because of accounting irregularities. Top executives were ousted. Amid growing losses and lawsuits, the company’s stock plunged from a high of nearly $50 in 2003 to below $5 by the fall of 2005.

In 2016, the company was acquired and taken private by JAB Holding, a European investment firm, for $1.35 billion. After a few years were spent putting the company on firmer footing, Krispy Kreme went public again in 2021.

But the stock’s performance has been less than dazzling, losing 81 percent of its value over the last four years.

Earlier this year, the company pinned its hopes on a partnership with McDonald’s. A program put the doughnuts in 2,400 McDonald’s restaurants, and Krispy Kreme’s executives told Wall Street analysts and investors in February that its doughnuts would be in 6,000 McDonald’s restaurants by the end of this year.

Instead, the partnership ended in June.

“For Krispy Kreme, the volumes fell off more quickly or meaningfully than they had expected, and part of the reason was that some of the marketing they had initially, some of the support from McDonald’s, seemed to peter out a little bit,” said Sara Senatore, an analyst at Bank of America. “They invested heavily ahead of the McDonald’s arrangement, and now they have to unwind that.”

For Krispy Kreme, the cost of unwinding that relationship was high. In early August, the company took about $30 million in various impairment and termination costs related to the McDonald’s partnership. On top of that, it said after completing an impairment test that the fair value of the chain itself had fallen more than $356 million.

Once again, Krispy Kreme executives are trying to regain the company’s momentum.

To reduce expenses and lower debt levels, the company plans to sell its international businesses in Britain, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere to franchisees. The company, which had been managing its own fleet of trucks to deliver its doughnuts, is transitioning to third-party logistics firms to oversee deliveries.

“It’s one thing to manage three or four trucks,” Mr. Charlesworth said. But as the fleet expanded, it became too complex. After all, “we’re the doughnut people,” Mr. Charlesworth added.

These days, Krispy Kreme is focusing largely on getting more of its doughnuts on store shelves of retailers like Costco, Kroger and Walmart. While there is concern among some Wall Street analysts that the brand is diluting itself by making its doughnuts too readily available in stores in the U.S. and international markets, Mr. Charlesworth said there were plenty of locations where customers could not obtain a doughnut.

“When we ask consumers who have not purchased a Krispy Kreme, the top response on the list is, ‘I can’t get them,’” Mr. Charlesworth said. “The availability has long been the No. 1 barrier to purchase.”