Pepsico tries to continue its diversification with the purchase of tortilla maker Siete Foods. The American multinational led by the Spaniard Ramón Laguarta is in advanced negotiations for the acquisition of the Texan company Siete Foods for an amount of more than 1,000 million dollars (about 900 million euros), as announced The Wall Street Journal.
With the purchase of Siete Foods, Pepsico strengthens itself in diet food, since the company to be acquired has developed cereal-free recipes. Pepsico announced in May 2018 an agreement to acquire Bare Foods, a US manufacturer of baked fruit and vegetable snacks, to expand its snack portfolio to more nutritious options, with less saturated fat, sugars and salt. At the end of 2019, it announced the purchase of BFY Foods, another brand of healthy snacks, including PopCorners, with processed snacks based on puffed corn, peas, rice and Brussels sprouts.
The sale process of Siete Foods, in which the seven members of the Garza family work, has been competitive and has sparked the interest of venture capital companies and other food companies, according to what sources familiar with the matter have told the New York newspaper.
Verónica Garza, co-founder and president of Siete Foods, account on the website that the company was born when his family helped him overcome a series of health problems, with multiple debilitating autoimmune diseases that he was diagnosed with when he was a teenager. The family (of seven) began to exercise with her to improve and Verónica adopted a diet that would not harm her.
“As a Mexican-American family from South Texas, the tacos and fajitas we used to enjoy in tortillas didn’t taste the same on a lettuce leaf. So I started making grain-free tortillas for my family, and they loved them. “I knew we had something really special when my grandmother Campos told me that my tortillas tasted better than the homemade flour tortillas she had made for decades,” she says. They decided to market them and the company has grown strongly since then, developing new products, including cookies and crisps.
Demand for Pepsico snacks and soft drinks, mainly in the United States, its largest market, has been affected by a series of price increases and competition from private labels. Pepsico was able to continue growing strongly in the midst of inflation, but consumers seem to be thinking twice before staying loyal to its products, whose prices have grown strongly.
The company led by the Spanish Ramón Laguarta increased its sales by only 0.8% in the second quarter of the year, up to 22,501 million dollars and 1.5% in the first half of the year, up to 40,751 million dollars. The figures fell short of forecasts. Pepsico has suffered from changes in consumer habits, a product recall in the United States and the war with Carrefour in France. The group slightly adjusted downwards its forecasts for the year as a whole. It expects to achieve organic revenue growth of approximately 4% (previously the target was “at least 4%”). The company achieved a net profit of 3,083 million dollars (+12%) in the first quarter and 5,125 million in the first half (+9.5%).
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