According to a report just out last night from TheWall Street Journal, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) giant Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) has offered to purchase razor blade and battery magnate Gillette (NYSE:G) in an all-stock deal valuing Gillette's shares at 0.975 shares of P&G each. At that price, and based on P&G's and Gillette's respective share prices at close of market on Thursday, the acquirer is valuing the acquiree's shares at a nearly 18% premium, or about $54 per share of Gillette stock.
Combined, the new consumer products titan (let's call it P&2G) would have a market cap of $193.6 billion (3.5 billion shares times $55.32 per share), making it the largest FMCG company in the world, larger than current FMCG king Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), and nearly as large as the largest retailer of all these FMCG companies' products, Wal-Mart. P&2G would also dwarf its second-tier rivals, Unilever (NYSE:UL), Kimberly-Clark (NYSE:KMB), and Motley Fool Inside Value pick Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL), each of which has a market cap roughly one-third the size of that sported by the two industry leaders.
P&2G would only just barely edge out J&J as "world's biggest" by market cap -- and that's something that will fluctuate on a day-by-day basis. If we look at the deal from a more stable perspective, say revenues, P&2G would outstrip J&J by a wide margin; the merged company would have combined annual sales of about $63 billion, or 37% more than J&J. Based on trailing 12 months' profit numbers, P&2G would earn more than $8.2 billion next year, for about a 13% net profit margin, as Gillette's higher-margin battery and razor-blade sales lent their earnings power to P&2G's combined results. That would still fall far short of J&J's enviable 20% margins, however.
The most urgent implications for the deal, however -- if it goes through -- seem likely to fall upon a much smaller player: Energizer Holdings (NYSE:ENR). With less than a $4 billion market cap and sales of under $3 billion, that company currently plays second fiddle to Gillette in both the battery (Energizer and Eveready) and razor-blade (Schick) markets. If Gillette teams up its market-dominating product lines with P&G's shelf-space-grabbing muscle, Energizer could find itself in for a very bad day indeed, one that replays over and over, Groundhog Day-style, until it finds a corporate big brother of its own to help it compete. J&J, can you spare a dime?
Read more about on the major FMCG players in:
- J&J: Dialing for Dollars
- Panasonic's Power Play
- Gillette's Clean Cut for Women
- Procter & Gamble's Rising Tide
Fool contributor Rich Smith holds no position in any of the companies mentioned in this article.
