![]() confectionery unit, and has done several deals in coffee, involving Starbucks and Blue Bottle. ![]() "This in turn suggests that Schneider is being given full latitude to act in the interests of shareholder value, unbounded by the decisions of the past," he said.Įxiting skin health is something many analysts and investors had asked for, Baader Helvea's von Arx said, adding that it put Nestle "fully on track" to deliver on Schneider's promise last September to swap out as much as 10 percent of its portfolio. Last year, Nestle started restructuring the business, cutting jobs and closing a factory.ĭivesting the business represents a symbolic break with the decisions of Schneider's predecessors, Jefferies' Deboo said. When Bulcke ran Nestle, skin treatments were a major part of a push into higher growth and more profitable health products taken to counter a slowdown in its traditional food businesses.īut the unit has performed poorly, incurring one-off costs including inventory writedowns and a significant goodwill impairment this year. "Sharpening our strategic focus on Nestle's core food, beverage and nutritional health products offers the best opportunity for long-term profitable growth and is fully in line with the pursuit of our company's purpose," said Paul Bulcke, Nestle's chairman and former CEO. Nestle, the world's largest packaged food company, is under pressure from Third Point, a hedge fund run by investor Daniel Loeb, to take bold moves to improve returns.Ĭhief Executive Mark Schneider, the first externally hired CEO in nearly a century, has addressed several of Third Point's demands, including setting a margin target and speeding up acquisitions and divestitures. L'Oreal, in which Nestle is a shareholder, declined to comment. Jefferies analyst Martin Deboo said the most likely exit options were a leveraged buyout or a sale to L'Oreal, if the French cosmetics firm followed Nestle in making a strategic U-turn. Nestle Skin Health was formed in 2014 when Nestle bought L'Oreal's stake in their Galderma dermatology venture. ![]() Another analyst put the sale value at about 7 billion francs. He said it could fetch between 6 billion and 8 billion francs in a sale. Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy estimated the business was worth 6 billion to 6.5 billion francs, excluding financial debt, provisions and deferred taxes. It had sales of 2.7 billion Swiss francs ($2.8 billion) last year, accounting for about 3 percent of Nestle's total. The skin health unit makes Cetaphil and Proactiv skin care brands, Restylane wrinkle fillers and prescription dermatology treatments. Nestle agreed this week to sell its Gerber Life Insurance business for $1.55 billion, while sources told Reuters it was also bidding for GlaxoSmithKline's Horlicks drink. Nestle said it was exploring strategic options for the unit, saying "the future growth opportunities of Nestle Skin Health lie increasingly outside the group's strategic scope" and did not fit in with a sharper focus on food, drinks and nutritional health.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |