€17mil bill for Kerry’s DuPont bid
BASED on its latest financial returns, it has been estimated that Kerry Group spent in the region of €17.6m on its failed bid to takeover the nutritional arm of US giant DuPont.
While the Tralee-based food and ingredients giant has never confirmed making a bid for its $24 billion US rival, Kerry Group’s annual results published last week include a note of €17.6m spent by Kerry in relation to “a material transaction process that the group participated in”.
That bill included “deal preparation, integration planning and due diligence”. Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs advised Kerry on the DuPont bid.
Though it does not specifically refer to DuPont or the failed takeover bid, analysts believe that the note does refer to the bid.
The takeover deal had the potential to transform the Kerry-based company, but Kerry Group ultimately lost out in December to US rival International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF).
Announcing Kerry Group’s 2019 results in Dublin last week, CEO Edmund Scanlon said he and the group remain committed to its mergers and acquisitions strategy.
“There is an ambition and a capability within the organisation that if an acquisition regardless of scale hits a certain set of criteria – the number one being creating value for our shareholders – we would move forward,” Mr Scanlon said.
He added that Kerry Group has “a long track record of financial discipline, which will not change”.
“Because of our scale and business model and the strength of our balance sheet, we will always be linked with anything that comes up. That doesn’t mean we are going to do it,” Mr Scanlon said.
Kerry reported record profits of €903m for 2019.
Its growth increasingly comes from Asia, but Kerry is predicting a 30-percent fall in its Chinese revenue in the first three months of 2020, as a result of coronavirus disrupting businesses there.