Supply Side briefs: Hostess seeks bidders, CEO change at Dollar General

Northwest ArkansasPeople & Business in the newsThe Supply Side

by The City Wire staff ([email protected]) May 28, 2015 4:40 pm 339 views 

• Post among the bidders for Hostess
Hostess is drawing a number of potential suitors including Post Foods who reportedly entered a nonbinding bid for the snack-cake maker this week. Hostess is worth an estimated $2 billion.

Post joins the ranks of Grupo Bimbo, Flowers Foods and Swiss-based Aryzta AG who owns Otis Spunkmeyer cookies as well as several private investment firms who entered bids before deadline. 
Just two years after buying the Hostess snack cake business for $410 million, owners Apollo Global Management and billionaire C. Dean Metropoulos are looking to flip the maker of Twinkies, Donettes, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs and other snack brands for a high multiple.

Apollo management has said a new owner can take the brand they bought out of liquidation and build revenue from its current $650 million level to near the $1 billion it attained before Hostess collapsed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2012.

Suitors invited into the second round will take roughly the next six weeks to study the business before making binding offers.

The new Hostess has roughly 1,000 employees and five factories, compared with 9,000 employees and 14 plants prior to its reorganization. It relies on contract drivers to deliver products to stores less frequently than the old company did.

• New CEO chosen for Dollar General
Dollar General named Todd Vasos as its new CEO to replace Rick Dreiling who will stay on at the discount retailer for the remainder of his board term through Jan. 29, 2016,  the company announced Thursday (May 28).

Dreiling said an extra slot on the board will be added for Vasos, who has been the chief operating officer at the retailer since 2013.


“On behalf of the entire board of directors, we are excited to have Todd Vasosas as our CEO and look forward to working with him in his new role. Todd is a proven leader and the right person to guide Dollar General as it enters this next chapter in the company’s history,” said Mike Calbert, Dollar General’s lead director.