Packaged food giant General Mills Inc plans to buy Annie’s, the maker of rabbit-shaped macaroni and cheese, for US$820 million, adding more natural and organic packaged offerings as consumers’ tastes change.
General Mills, the company behind classic food brands such as Pillsbury dough, Progresso soups, Yoplait yogurts and Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereals, has been trying to cut cost and has tweaked its recipes as sales stagnate.
Sales have suffered as Greek yogurt and breakfast sandwiches became morning popular options.
FIBER COOKIES?
General Mills was slow to realize the growing demand for Greek yogurt, which has more protein than regular yogurt, but it has been adding some other options that it hopes consumers will consider healthier. Those include new Fiber One cookies with 5 grams of fiber and 120 calories per serving.
Annie’s sales, on the other hand, grew 20 percent in its latest fiscal year. General Mills said on Monday that Annie’s “convenient meals” and snacks businesses were particularly attractive. Annie’s also makes other pastas, frozen pizzas and snacks like crackers and fruit snacks.
The Minneapolis-based conglomerate is paying US$46 per share for Annie’s Inc, which is based in Berkeley, California.
SHARE SURGE
Annie’s board endorsed the offer, which is expected to close later this year. The company went public in March 2012 at US$19 per share.
Annie’s stock jumped 37 percent in US aftermarket trading to US$45.97. Its shares have dropped 25 percent over the past 12 months. It has dealt with rising costs for organic wheat and noted “material weaknesses” in its financial reporting. Its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said in June that it would resign.
General Mills stock rose US$0.99, or 1.9 percent, to US$54.50 in after-hours trading. Its shares have gained 8.8 percent in the past 12 months.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS