US Wall Street-listed ConAgra Brands group is about to open the auction to sell its Italian subsidiary Gelit, one of the Italian leaders in the frozen ready meals sector. The US group has given a mandate for this purpose to Bnl Bnp Paribas (see the press release here).
In June 2012, Ralcorp Holdings, a St. Louis company listed on NYSE, had taken over the entire capital of Gelit from Italy’s Consilium Private Equity fund, which then controlled Gelit with a 78.6% stake, from Italy’s IGI Private Equity fund (15%) and from two private investors. In November of the same year, ConAgra bought Ralcorp.
Founded in 1977 in Cisterna di Latina and producing of frozen crêpes, the company has expanded its activity to the production of other types of ready meals since the early 90s . Today Gelit is a group mainly exposed in the United States and is in particular supplier of the US grocery chain Trader Joe’s, on which it concentrates about 40% of its turnover. Gelit reached 41.2 million euros in net revenues in 2017, 8.5 million in ebitda and had 13.9 million euros in net cash (see here the analysis of Leanus, after registering for free),
Among the private equity firms potentially interested in the deal there are obviously those with experience in the food sector and in particular in the frozen food sector. For example, there may be Mandarin Capital, which a few months ago announced the launch of Italian Frozen Foods Holdings, a group specializing in the production of frozen food (see here a previous post by BeBeez). But new names also circulate, such the one of Peak Rock Capital. Among the potential investors there are also industrial subjects like Rolli, Orogel, Surgital or Lanterna Alimentari Genova (Vandermoortele group).
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