Jelly giant J.M. Smucker agrees to buy Twinkies maker Hostess Brands for $5.6 billion

Jelly shaper J.M. Smucker is buying Twinkie proprietor Hostess Brands for $5.6 billion, oregon $34.25 a share.

Hostess shareholders volition idiosyncratic $30 palmy currency and .03002 banal of Smucker's banal for each banal of Hostess that they owned. Smucker has too agreed to presume Hostess' indebtedness of astir $900 million. The woody is expected to adjacent palmy Smucker's fiscal 3rd quarter, which ends palmy January.

Smucker's acquisition is the latest palmy a flurry of deals by Big Food, which is hunting for maturation arsenic Covid pandemic gains gaffe away. Campbell's Soup precocious announced its acquisition of Rao's pasta condiment proprietor Sovos Bands for $2.7 billion. M&M's proprietor Mars bought Kevin's Natural Foods palmy July. And Unilever snapped up frozen yogurt marque Yasso palmy June.

Shares of Hostess climbed 18% palmy premarket trading Monday connected the announcement. Smucker's banal fell 7.5%.

As of Friday's close, shares of Hostess banal idiosyncratic risen 25% this year, giving the instauration a marketplace worthy of $3.73 billion. But the company's shares had already received a important boost aft Reuters reported palmy precocious August that it was considering a merchantability aft fielding engagement from ample nutrient companies, including PepsiCo and Oreo shaper Mondelez International.

Hostess saw petition for its Twinkies and Ding Dongs gaffe aft raising prices to mitigate higher commodity costs, sparking capitalist involvement and takeover engagement from larger rivals. For the afloat year, the instauration is anticipating that its measurement volition decline. Executives paused presumption hikes.

Its merchantability to Smucker ends Hostess' seven-year streak arsenic an independent, publically traded company. Hostess went nationalist done a merger with a peculiar intent acquisition instauration palmy 2016.

Just 3 years earlier, Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. resurrected the company, ending a monthslong Twinkie drought, aft acquiring the assets of the instauration formerly known arsenic Interstate Bakeries.