The Hershey Company to Buy One Bar for nearly $400 Million
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The Hershey Company plans to buy protein bar company One Brands for nearly $400 million (exact amount was $397 million). One Brands LLC, makes a few decent nutrition bars with sweet flavors such as blueberry cobbler, cinnamon roll and birthday cake. "Our beloved confection brands will continue to be the engine that drives our business while we broaden our better-for-you portfolio, offering more snacking choices for more consumers," Hershey's chief growth officer, Mary Beth West, said in a statement.
The move comes less than a week after Quest Nutrition LLC, which also specializes in candy bars disguised as protein bars, was acquired for about $1 billion. Hershey said it would finance the deal to buy One bar with cash, short-term debt and a lifetime supply of chocolate for Muscle Insider staff for breaking this news story! Okay, maybe not. They expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter and be "slightly accretive" to earnings in the first full year of ownership. Back in January 2017, the company behind One bar got a signficant financial investment from CAVU Venture Partners who bought into the company hired strategic partners to take the company to the next level. Now a little over a 2.5 years later and the company has sold out to HERSHEY and made off like bar bandits heading to chocolate heaven! This isn't the first company Hershey has acquired recently. They also bought Pirate Brands for $420 million in 2018, giving it rights to snack brands including Pirate’s Booty, Smart Puffs, and Original Tings. Clif Bar leads the $3.8 billion U.S. nutrition bars category, followed by Quest and RXBar.
ONE Brands was founded in 1999 by Ron McAfee who had this to say:
“We’re proud of the brand we built and look forward to continuing to build on our momentum with the strength and capabilities that Hershey can provide,” McAfee said.