SAHR-0310 schreef op 31 januari 2015 22:50:
Wessanen: Health Food Business Appearing More Delicious
Jan. 29, 2015 4:41 PM ET | by Timberwolf Equity Research | about: kjwnf | includes: gis, hain, post, spls, wwav
Summary
Former underachiever has shed most of its non-core assets to focus solely on health foods.
Only American Beverage Company remains as a business outside this core focus: to be sold in 2015?
Health foods business estimated to grow mid-single digits going forward.
Margin recovery and health food presence make the company an attractive business but the price is dear.
At some point I expect the company to be acquired: its European health foods presence is very attractive to strategic buyer.
Wessanen (OTC:KJWNF) is a former mini-conglomerate small cap food company that once possessed businesses as divergent as branded health foods, savory snacks, a cocktails and fruit-juice beverage company, several health and regular food distribution companies and even in a more distant past an alcoholic beverage company. Its weird collection of businesses, unsurprisingly, meant that the company for years was taken to the cleaners by a very wide range of competitors in all the activities it engaged in. For more than a decade the company suffered from revenue declines, accounting frauds, unfulfilled management promises and evaporating profit margins. Both board and management displayed a stunning level of inactivity and inaptitude while investors suffered tremendous value erosion. In more recent years and with the involvement of a large outside investor the company has slowly taken a turn for the better. It has sold off a lot of the companies that for years diverted management's attention from its most promising asset: the branded health foods business. Now that its underperforming CEO and inapt Chairman are both gone the company is hopefully on track towards a better future. Given the enormous investor interest that health foods companies in the United States have enjoyed in recent years I thought it was about time to take a look at Wessanen. The company has been named as a potential take-over candidate for many years and its separation from many of its ill-performing legacy businesses may just improve the likelihood of such a scenario unfolding.