Bega Cheese: Bidding to Bring Vegemite Back Home

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 including Vegemite, the iconic Australian spread. The team must decide whether to bid for the division and, if so, how much to offer and how to finance the all-cash bid. Making these decisions was difficult because this would be Bega’s largest acquisition ever and it would extend the firm outside of its core dairy business. In addition to the valuation and financing issues, the leadership team must decide whether shifting from the firm's current B2B business model (manufacturing and processing dairy products) to more of a B2C business model (a producer of branded consumer foods) made sense strategically.