{"id":24650,"date":"2017-03-20T06:24:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T06:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=24650"},"modified":"2017-03-20T06:24:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T06:24:21","slug":"albertsons-held-preliminary-merger-talks-with-sprouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/albertsons-held-preliminary-merger-talks-with-sprouts.html","title":{"rendered":"Albertsons held preliminary merger talks with Sprouts"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"font-size:22px;\"><strong><span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Albertsons held preliminary merger talks with Sprouts<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Albertsons held preliminary merger talks with Sprouts:- Grocery business Albertsons Cos held preliminary talks to merge with Sprouts Farmers Market Inc (SFM.O), Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the situation.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Bloomberg said the early stage discussions took place in recent weeks and involved a plan to take Sprouts private. Doing so would add the natural and organic foods-focused business to the Albertsons suite of supermarket brands, which includes Safeway, Vons and Shaw&#39;s.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Albertsons is backed by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Representatives for Albertsons and Sprouts did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while a spokeswoman for Cerberus declined to comment..<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">SUPERMARKET CONSOLIDATION<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">An acquisition of Sprouts would underscore the consolidation sweeping the U.S. grocery industry, as regional chains struggle to compete against online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), big box stores such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), and discount chains such as ALDI Inc.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Albertsons is one of the two most active industry acquirers along with The Kroger Co. (KR.N). A planned initial public offering for Albertsons&#39; has been delayed since October 2015. At the same time, Krogers stock is up more than 140 percent over the last five years despite falling 23 percent over the previous 12 months.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Sprouts is among the niche retailers such as Fresh Market Inc and Whole Foods Market Inc (WFM.O) facing pressure from Albertsons and Kroger, who now sell some of the same specialty and organic products at lower prices.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\t<span style=\"color:#000000;\"><span style=\"font-size:18px;\"><span style=\"font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;\">Fresh Market was acquired by another private equity firm, Apollo Global Management LLC (APO.N), for about $1.36 billion in cash in 2016.<\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n\t&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n\tSource:-&nbsp;http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-albertsons-cos-sprouts-idUSKBN16Q0XG<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/albertsons-held-preliminary-merger-talks-with-sprouts.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Albertsons held preliminary merger talks with Sprouts Albertsons held preliminary merger talks with Sprouts:- Grocery business Albertsons Cos held preliminary talks to merge with Sprouts Farmers Market Inc (SFM.O), Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the situation. Bloomberg said the early stage discussions took place in recent weeks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15345,15344,15346,15348,15347,3299,547],"class_list":["post-24650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-albertsons","tag-albertsons-held-preliminary-merger-talks-with-sprouts","tag-cos","tag-food-and-drug-retailing","tag-sprouts","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}