Ketchup maker and packaged food giant Kraft Heinz has withdrawn a $143 billion offer to buy Unilever, backing away after the mayonnaise, tea and seasonings maker rejected the bid as too low.
The companies announced the decision Sunday in a joint press release, saying that Kraft Heinz has "amicably" abandoned the offer.
The deal would have combined Kraft Heinz brands such as Oscar Mayer, Jell-O and Velveeta with Unilever's Hellman's, Lipton and Knorr. The merged company would have rivaled Nestle as the world's biggest packaged food maker by sales.
Analysts say Kraft Heinz, co-headquartered in Chicago and Pittsburgh, is still in the market for acquisitions. The fact that it bid for all of Unilever and not just its food business indicates that Kraft Heinz is potentially open to acquiring other packaged consumer goods, one analyst said.
Unilever, which has a head office in London, also has a stable of personal care brands such as Dove soap. Unilever rejected the offer on Friday, but despite that, Kraft Heinz said at the time that it was still interested in the deal.
Such acquisitions might not lead to big changes that customers would notice on supermarket shelves, but shifting tastes are partly driving deal-making in the food industry.
Part of the challenge is the proliferation of smaller food makers marketing products that seem more wholesome, which makes it harder for the established companies to drive up sales simply by selling more of well-known products or by raising prices, as they have in the past.
"That obviously has its limits," said David Garfield, head of the consumer products unit at consulting firm AlixPartners, said last week.
Instead, major packaged food companies are being forced to dig deeper to find cost efficiencies or tap into new markets, Garfield said. That can include mergers that result in consolidated manufacturing systems, or that give companies access to distribution networks in regions of the world where they don't have a big presence.
Sony reports healthy profits on strong sales of sensors and games
Sony's profit rose 69% in July-September from a year earlier on the back of strong sales of its image sensors, games, music and network services, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said on Friday.
Quarterly profit was 338.5 billion yen ($2.2 billion), up from 200 billion yen in the year-earlier period, while consolidated quarterly sales edged up 3% year-on-year to 2.9 trillion yen ($19 billion).
Tokyo-based Sony's latest quarterly results were boosted by healthy demand around the world for image sensors used in mobile products.
Sales also held up in its video games division. During the latest quarter, 3.8 million PlayStation 5 game consoles were sold globally, compared with 4.9 million units sold the same period a year ago.
Demand remained strong for PS5 game software, according to Sony.
The top-selling music releases from Sony for the quarter included "SOS" by SZA, David Gilmour's "Luck and Strange" and Kenshi Yonezu's "Lost Corner."
One area where Sony's business suffered was its pictures division, including TV shows and movies, which was impacted by production delays caused by the strikes in Hollywood.
Among the recent hit films from Sony was "It Ends With Us," a romantic drama based on a novel.
Sony, which also makes digital cameras and TVs, maintained its 980-billion yen ($6.4 billion) profit forecast for the fiscal year through March 2025, up 1% from the previous fiscal year.
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