Follow Up: Toys R Us Comeback / Mergers Roundup

In a follow up to a recent post, bankrupt Toys R Us may make a comeback under a new plan outlined by a former CEO of their company, Jerry Storch, who is working to revive the brand.

Mr. Storch, according to CNBC, has been in talks with Credit Suisse and Fairfax (the group which successfully bid for the Toys R Us Canada division) to put together financing and a strategic plan to bring back a “few hundred” Toys R Us stores. The chain had 800 locations in the U.S. that are all in the final stages of shutting down at this time.

The plan being formulated by Mr. Storch would include former executives from the company in a new leadership team. It would, according to reports, place Toys R Us and Babies R Us in the same physical retail space under one large floorplan. The original way that the company operated was with two separate physical retail locations for each of those brands.

This would streamline operations, shipping, and receiving. It would also streamline hiring and provide other cost controls which were lacking in the original version of the brand.

The former Toys R Us corporation will be holding the final piece of business before it fully dissolves: an auction for their intellectual property. That auction will be held next week, and Mr. Storch plans to win the auction so that he can utilize that intellectual property in the “reboot” of the brand.

This situation merits watching as the entire toy industry would benefit from some sort of presence from Toys R Us in the future. The impact of the revival of Babies R Us would be helpful to parents, particularly new parents, and toddlers throughout our country.

Mergers Roundup

In other mergers and acquisitions news, the rumor that Kraft Heinz was looking to purchase Campbell Soup sent the share price of Campbell up significantly on Tuesday. The analysts on Wall Street, for the most part, feel that this merger does not make sense for Kraft Heinz or Campbell to do at this point.

The view of “the Street” is that Kraft Heinz needs to grow internationally and should focus their next acquisition on expanding their global business presence. The expense needed to purchase and recalibrate Campbell would be better used on a different purchase in the view of many analysts.

My own perspective is very different, in my experience in the food industry and having worked for a supplier to both those major companies, Kraft Heinz has some definite synergies with Campbell that would help both parties to grow. The expertise of Kraft and their distribution system could absolutely take Campbell in a whole new direction and create some great new product innovations for the consumer.

Furthermore, I think that Kraft Heinz can do both: they could purchase Campbell and still obtain a Mondelez or another company with a large international footprint.

The other aspect to watch here is that there are powers within Campbell that may not want to sell off the entire company, it may sell a piece to Kraft instead. This rumor is worth paying attention to because then the whole other area involved is what do you call the company? Do they part ways with the Campbell name that has been around since just after the Civil War?

Campbell is in disarray and has no CEO, the company is in need of a major overhaul and Kraft Heinz could be the right fit for them to ensure their survival.

ConAgra and Pinnacle Foods merged today in a deal worth somewhere between $8 and $10 billion depending on what report you access. That proposal came up quickly to the public (no doubt the behind the scenes channels have been at work here for a while) and it became finalized relatively fast.

This merger represents an aggressive push from ConAgra to keep expanding into the frozen foods area. They have made other smaller consolidation moves to support this new strategic growth area, but this Pinnacle move is a major gain by ConAgra.

I have watched ConAgra closely the last several months as they look to recalibrate their brand portfolio. They are chasing Nestle in the frozen food space, and this supports demographic trend data that reflects that millennial consumers are more likely to purchase frozen products.

Pinnacle has some other brands that make this move interesting from shelf stable products, and gluten free options because they purchased Boulder Foods recently who is a big producer of bread for those seeking gluten free alternatives.

The final merger rumor in the roundup today is the news of CBS and Amazon potentially joining forces. The news comes as a surprise to some, as no surprise to others, and as a “long shot” to still others with knowledge of that situation.

The “face value” of the proposal makes sense, Amazon needs more video content it is losing out to competitors for that reason. CBS has some of the most watched TV content in the mainstream broadcast categories, and would be the most cost effective merger target. CBS wants to merge with someone in “new media” to survive in the new TV landscape.

The acquisition of CBS would be the largest deal Amazon would have done to this point, if it does indeed ever come to fruition. The roadblock is the court activity surrounding the lawsuit between CBS and their parent company, National Amusements, (which I have covered previously on Frank’s Forum) over the Viacom merger.

The general industry sentiment is that CBS is going to have a hard time winning that suit to get out from under National Amusements in order to negotiate their own deal for acquisition.

The alternative way this could go is that the situation gets so acrimonious between CBS and their parent company (we are basically there now) that National Amusements may choose to sell off CBS. They would then take that money and invest it either into Viacom and their other holdings or make a series of other smaller moves to restructure their holdings.

The CBS – Amazon potential, in my view, has some merit to it. I still maintain though as I have for a while now that CBS is still more likely to become part of Verizon. That could be a very good merger for both parties involved.

These and other mergers will be covered as the summer rolls on. I can express one sentiment most will agree with me on: I am rooting for Toys R Us to come back for the next generation of kids.

Mergers & Acquisitions Roundup

In recent months on this blog I have updated and followed up on a variety of mergers and acquisitions in a variety of different industries. The past week has seen some movement on some of those proposed mergers or attempted hostile bids or whatever the case may be; the best way to update them is to provide a summary of each situation.

The M&A market is expected to gain traction in the coming months after a slower than normal start to the year, especially in certain industry types.

CVS – Aetna
This proposed mega-deal made the news on Wednesday because the $40 billion debt deal that CVS is undertaking as part of the nearly $70 billion dollar merger is going to lower their credit rating.

It is no secret that certain lending institutions would consider CVS a credit risk with taking on such a significant amount of debt at one time. It was a component of the deal that nobody discussed when it was initially announced.

Then, on top of that debt load issue, are the rather legitimate conflict of interest and consumer protections aspects of this deal which are still being reviewed. The general consensus is that a foundational problem with this merger is the combination of a major health insurer with a major retail pharmacy chain which has a parent company involved in healthcare services.

It will be interesting to watch this merger, if approved, it could be a situation where CVS Caremark wins the battle but loses the war.
Broadcom vs. Qualcomm
This attempted hostile takeover by Broadcom of their U.S. based competitor, Qualcomm has been a very strange scenario from the beginning.

The whole backstory is very complicated, and some great reporters and financial news services have provided insightful reporting on this convoluted mess. Broadcom is a tech company based in Singapore and they have attempted to buy Qualcomm multiple times at different valuations.

The problem for Qualcomm is that they do not have another willing investor or potential suitor that they could join forces with in a more amicable way to stave off Broadcom.

Then, to top it all off, the U.S. government got involved in the past week to temporarily halt the potential merger over concerns that a foreign held company was acquiring a U.S. based company with certain proprietary technologies in telecommunications. They have certain regulatory concerns over the deal.

Broadcom has now pledged to the U.S. government on Wednesday that they will invest in the training of American engineers and others in the workforce to keep high-paying, “good” jobs in the United States.

The whole situation is a disaster and it has been from the beginning. I am not sure if the federal government is going to sign off on this proposal. That creates uncertainty for the future of Qualcomm as well.

Smuckers & ConAgra

What struck me about this proposed deal (which is now dead) is that in my time in the food industry ConAgra was always usually in the role of the buyer. In this case, they were looking to sell their Wesson brand cooking oil business to JM Smucker Company.

The federal government shutdown the deal over anti-trust concerns citing that Smucker would then control about 70% of the entire cooking oil market. The government felt that this would be unfair to the consumers and could create price hikes that would limit consumer choice.

The Smucker side of the story is, in short, that the government used inflated numbers and did not take into account the impact of private label brands and smaller regional brands in the cooking oil market. I must add in the defense of the government, that not too many smaller brand labels of cooking oil jump to my mind.

I could understand the rationale behind Smucker (who generally make smart decisions in M&A activity) would want the Wesson brand. I can only predict that ConAgra wanted to sell the brand because they are moving away from holdings in that segment of the industry and they would have used the cash from the deal to invest into more core strategic areas of new business development.

Comcast versus Disney/FOX Over Sky TV

The latest bidding war is just heating up between Comcast and Disney/FOX over the rights to SKY. A major investment bank downgraded Comcast stock after they put that offer on the table for SKY.

I understand Comcast trying to bolster their core business in this play for SKY, but it does make you wonder if the deal is done whether or not they will have overextended.

Bayer & Monsanto
A major mega-merger which I have covered since it was announced. The European Union issued a statement saying they will have a vote on the proposal soon after multiple postponements in recent months.

This merger proposal will have an impact on the farmers, the consumers, and the price of food supplies. The introduction of more potential GMO containing seeds is another concerning aspect of this deal that merits the attention of the public.

Rite Aid and Albertson’s

The debacle that was the failed attempt of Walgreens and Rite Aid to merge, left Rite Aid in a precarious situation when stacked against larger competitors.

The list of suitors for Rite Aid within the retail pharmacy landscape was slim to none, so they went outside the box a bit and found a partner in Albertson’s to bail them out.

Albertson’s is a large retail grocery chain for those who do not know, and they used to own pharmacies that were operated within their grocery stores primarily. So they understand the aspects of the retail business and some of the dynamics of the retail pharmacy channel.

This merger actually makes some sense and will allow Rite Aid to stay alive in an increasingly competitive market.

That is the roundup on mergers for now. I am sure that one or all of these proposals will have some developments as we move forward in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.