Lindt & Spruengli is seeking more acquisitions after buying Russell Stover Candies, and the Swiss maker of premium chocolates is taking advantage of plummeting currencies to expand in Brazil and Russia.
Future deals will be smaller than the 1.5 billion Swiss-franc ($1.6 billion) Russell Stover acquisition last year, Chief Executive Officer Ernst Tanner said in an interview. He declined to name targets or specify where Lindt is looking, though Tanner said the Kilchberg, Switzerland-based company sees Brazil, Russia and Japan as attractive markets.
“We still have firepower for a deal,” Tanner said. “We know every premium chocolate company in the world and we know which ones we would buy and which ones we would want to walk away from.”
Buying Russell Stover of the US catapulted Lindt past Nestle SA to third place in North America’s chocolate market, behind Hershey Co. and Mars Inc. Now, with emerging-market economies and currencies slumping, the company considers it has an opportunity to invest for the long term.
Lindt shares rose 1.1 percent to 65,725 francs as of 11:47 a.m. in Zurich yesterday, giving the company a market value of 14.3 billion francs.
At least half of the company’s store openings this year will be in Brazil, where the economy is contracting, the real has plunged and a corruption scandal threatens to unseat President Dilma Rousseff.
News from Bloomberg, edited by ESM
