Pile of Crunch, Butter Finger, Snickers, and Baby Ruth Candy Bars.
The new head of Nestle SA, Mark Schneider, is considering selling its US chocolate division due to sluggish sales and a move toward faster-growing businesses like health care and coffee.
Schneider became the CEO of the Swiss-based corporation in 2016 after working for many years in pharmaceuticals and medical products.
The US division is had revenue of about $923 million last year. Recently the food industry has come under increasing pressure to reduce costs. After Kraft Heinz made an unsuccessful bid to purchase Unilever at the beginning of 2017, even the largest companies are fearful that they could become targets of buyouts from rival companies. This is even more of a worry for candy companies as sales in the US of chocolate slow due to the American disavowal of sugar as a source of nutrition. Last year Hershey Co repelled a takeover bid by Mondelez International Inc, and just six months later, last March, Hershey announced its intention to reduce its workforce by 15%.
“This might seem small stuff, but in our view, it could be a significant step by new(ish) CEO Mark Schneider,” James Edwardes Jones, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note. “The possible disposal of the U.S. business is not everything we had hoped for, but might be the start of something bigger.”
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