Bega Cheese: Bidding to Bring Vegemite Back Home

Benjamin C. Esty; Lauren G. Pickle

Supplement | HBS Case Collection | December 2017

Bega Cheese: Bidding to Bring Vegemite Back Home

by Benjamin C. Esty and Lauren G. Pickle

Abstract

In January 2017, the leadership team of Bega Cheese—the Australian dairy company—was considering a bid for Mondelēz International’s Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) grocery business which included several leading consumer brands (Vegemite—the iconic Australian spread, ZoOsh, and Bonox as well as licenses to produce various Kraft products). The team must decide whether to bid for the division and, if so, how much to offer and how to finance the acquisition. Making these decisions was difficult because this would be Bega’s largest acquisition ever (the target’s sales were 25% of Bega’s total sales) and it was outside of Bega’s core dairy business. The leadership team has to decide whether a shift from the current B2B business model (manufacturing and processing dairy products) to more of a B2C business model (a producer of branded consumer goods) made sense strategically.

Keywords: Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; valuation; value drivers; value creation; discounted cash flow (DCF); dairy industry; corporate scope; diversification; consumer goods; iconic brands; Australia; corporate finance; capital structure; bidding strategy; cross border; Mergers and Acquisitions; Valuation; Value Creation; Business Divisions; Capital Structure; Food; Bids and Bidding; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Australia; United States;

Language: English

Format: Electronic

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Citation:

Esty, Benjamin C., and Lauren G. Pickle. "Bega Cheese: Bidding to Bring Vegemite Back Home." Harvard Business School Spreadsheet Supplement 218-701, December 2017.

In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams form related businesses (e.g., a share of ticket and concession revenues from theaters, advertising revenue from movie studios; and revenue from ride-sharing companies). Within two days, Moviepass had gotten 150k new subscribers; within six months, they had more than 2 million. But as of February 2018, the company faced three challenges: theaters were resisting the concept, investors were shorting the stock in record numbers, and competitors were beginning to appear. Could CEO Lowe convince investors that they did, indeed, have a viable business model and could monetize their growing subscriber base? At the same time, Lowe had to decide whether to raise subscription prices to cover the growing losses or keep prices low to attract subscribers as quickly as possible.

After losing market share to low-priced competitors such as Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club for several years, Gillette decided to fight back by cutting prices on its razors and blades in April 2017. Bonnie Herzog, an equity analyst at Wells Fargo, must assess how the recently announced price cuts are likely to affect Gillette’s earnings and its parent company’s earnings (Procter & Gamble owns Gillette). As part of her analysis, Herzog must estimate the price elasticity of demand for Gillette’s razors and blades. The case contains scanner data which allows students to calculate both price elasticities for a sample of Gillette products.

Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2019

Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020

Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney

A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called “the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades.” According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by January 1, 2020. Senior leaders at Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, were evaluating three ways their ships could comply with the new regulation: use low-sulfur fuel, use high-sulfur fuel but install scrubbers to clean the exhaust, or convert ships to use liquid natural gas (LNG) as fuel. Each of the options had its advantages and disadvantages, and the most attractive option depended on not only the values of key parameters (e.g., future fuel prices and equipment costs), but also the strategies adopted by the owners of the other 60,000 ocean-going ships subject to the regulation. For the industry as a whole, annual compliance could cost as much as $60 billion; for Hapag-Lloyd, annual compliance might cost as much as $1 billion or more. For a company with net income of $34 million (€28 million) in the prior year, and losses in two of the past four years, getting this decision right was of the utmost importance. Senior executives at Hapag-Lloyd had created a proposed compliance plan and were scheduled to present it to the firm’s supervisory board for approval in June 2018. Whether the team had the right plan and whether the board would approve it are the key questions in the case.

Keywords: Valuation; Ship Transportation; Strategic Planning; Game Theory; Pollution and Pollutants; Supply Chain; Corporate Accountability; Capital Budgeting; Environmental Sustainability; Shipping Industry; Transportation Industry; Germany;

Citation:

Esty, Benjamin C., Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej, and Emer Moloney. "Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020." Harvard Business School Case 220-003, November 2019. View Details

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Bega Cheese: Bidding to Bring Vegemite Back Home

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