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.