Mars Agrees to Buy Chewing Gum Maker Wrigley for $23 Billion

Mars Agrees to Buy Chewing Gum Maker Wrigley for $23 Billion


April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Mars Inc. agreed to purchase Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. for $23 billion, with financing from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., to combine the world's biggest maker of chewing gum with the producer of M&Ms chocolate.

Mars will pay $80 a share in cash for the maker of Doublemint gum, the companies said in a statement today on PR Newswire. That is 28 percent more than Wrigley's closing share price on April 25, when it last traded.

Uniting Mars, which also makes Snickers, and the 117-year- old Wrigley creates a company to compete with chocolate maker Hershey Co. and Cadbury Schweppes Plc, the world's largest candy maker. U.S. confectionary companies are exploring combinations as competition intensifies and milk and sugar prices rise. Gum has higher margins than chocolate and is growing faster, Mirabaud Securities analyst Julian Lakin said.

Gum is the ``fastest-growing sector,'' said Lakin, who is based in London and recommends investors ``hold'' Cadbury stock. ``The consumer finds it attractive because it's mostly calorie free. This could give Cadbury a tough time.''

Chicago-based Wrigley last closed at $62.45 on April 25. Hackettstown, New Jersey-based Mars is closely held.

Sales at Wrigley may rise 9 percent this year, the slowest pace since 2000, according to the average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Competition from London-based Cadbury's Trident and Dentyne gums in the U.S. has eroded its market share. Cadbury, the maker of Dairy Milk chocolate, bought Pfizer Inc.'s Adams candy unit for $4.2 billion in 2003 to become the world's second-largest maker of chewing gum.

Market Share

Since November 2006, Mars has been winning market share in the U.S., while Hershey's has dropped, Alexia Howard, a Sanford C. Bernstein analyst who recommends investors sell Hershey, wrote in an April 11 note to investors.

In 2006, Wrigley named former Nike Inc. Chief Executive Officer William Perez president and CEO, the first person outside the Wrigley family to head the company.

William Wrigley Jr. began selling soap in Chicago in 1891 and eventually turned to chewing gum, an item he was giving away for free with each sale, according to Wrigley's corporate Web site. He introduced Juicy Fruit and Wrigley's Spearmint in 1893, two brands the company still sells today.

Mars, founded in 1911 by Frank C. Mars, is still family owned. The company has about $25 billion in annual sales, 45 percent from chocolates and other snacks. Its biggest division is pet food, which sells Whiskas cat food and Pedigree for dogs, and accounts for 46 percent of sales, according to the company's Web site.

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