Reports confirm that consumer and commercial product maker Newell Brands, Inc. is selling its Jostens and Pure Fishing businesses for a total of $2.5 billion. The decision follows a sequence of asset sales by the company which is attempting to increase its focus towards more profitable consumer products.
Apparently, the sale of Jostens to Platinum Equity and Pure Fishing to Sycamore Partners comes after the organization agreed to sell Waddington Group, its cookware maker, to the Carlyle Group in an approx. $2.3 billion deal earlier this year. Newell had apparently been unloading few of its businesses after its acquisition of Jarden Corp in 2016, which more than doubled the size of Newell.
Pure Fishing provides rods, reels, tackle and lures for fishing, while Jostens is a U.S. manufacturer of memorabilia such as yearbooks and class rings. Newell had previously announced in May that it would sell these businesses as part of a turnaround plan.
In April, Newell Brands Inc. also ended a proxy fight with New York based privately owned hedge fund Starboard Value LP, with activist investors Carl Icahn and Starboard placing their nominees on the board of the company. As part of an agreement with Icahn, the company said in March that its divestitures would bring in about $10 billion, considerably higher in comparison with its previous estimates of $6 billion.
The Yankee Candles maker also said that the gross proceeds from Sycamore Partners and Platinum Equity are anticipated to be around $1.3 billion each. Both transactions are likely to close in the fourth quarter.
Jefferies LLC was the financial adviser to Newell on the Jostens deal, while J.P. Morgan Securities LLC was the financial adviser on the Pure Fishing transaction. For the record, shares of the company surged around 4 per cent in premarket trading on the day of the announcement.
