Dutch coffee company Jacobs Douwe Egberts BV offered S$1.45 billion (US$1 billion) to buy Singapore’s Super Group Ltd, extending the caffeine empire of Europe’s billionaire Reimann family into Asia.
The all-cash offer of S$1.3 a share by the closely held company is 34 percent more than Super’s share price on Monday, before it was halted from trading.
Shareholders of Super who hold about 60 percent of its total issued share capital have made an irrevocable pledge to tender all their stock, the Singapore-based company said in a statement yesterday.
Super is the latest in a string of coffee and food brands to be amassed by the Reimann family’s JAB Holding Co, whose investments include Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Keurig Green Mountain and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc.
The planned takeover marks the acquirers’ first foray into Asia, Maybank Kim Eng Holdings Ltd analyst Gregory Yap said.
It would add the Super and Owl brands of instant coffee, as well as NutreMill cereal mix sold primarily in Southeast Asia.
The acquirer “has been buying up coffee businesses all over the world and it looks like they are covering the whole chain, from cafes to brewers and now instant coffee,” Yap said by telephone.
“This seems to be the Asian piece of the portfolio for them,” he added.
Super has about 1.6 percent of global instant-coffee market share, compared with Nestle SA’s 41.9 percent, data from Euromonitor show.
The Singapore company would provide an “immediate foothold” in Asia and that explains why a relatively high premium is being offered for Super, said Jonathan Seow, an analyst at CIMB Securities Pte in Singapore.
“Super is a strong number two in this sector in the region,” Seow said. “Number one is Nestle, and JAB can’t possibly buy Nestle.”
Both Yap and Seow said the takeover would benefit Super as well.
The analysts said Super being part of a larger global group would help it reduce procurement costs and enter other markets.
Jacobs Douwe Egberts is majority owned by an indirect subsidiary of JAB. Mondelez International Inc, the US maker of Oreo cookies, is a minority shareholder of Jacobs Douwe Egberts.
Four of the Reimanns each have a net worth of about US$3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
JAB also has invested the Reimann fortune in a variety of consumer-goods companies, such as cosmetics giant Coty Inc and Durex condom maker Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC.
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