Losses & profits. It happens that we find medicines in a domestic refrigerator, but this is not their primary destination. The mayonnaise jar is rarely found near the ibuprofen box. However, it is the dream of one of the world’s largest grocers, the British Unilever. He is trying to buy the consumer pharmaceuticals division of another British company, the GSK laboratory.
There are Sensodyne toothpastes or Advil tablets. Unilever, which had torn the hearts of Her Majesty’s subjects by selling its Lipton teas in the fall of 2021, keeps Knorr soups, Omo and Skip washing powders, Dove soaps, Maille mustard or Hellmann’s mayonnaise in its cupboards, without talk about Miko or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. He is ready to pay dearly to enter the medicine box. It offers 60 billion euros, 80% in cash and the rest in shares.
It would be one of the biggest deals in City history. But this is not enough for the seller. GSK, which earns a lot of money from this activity, believes that the company is worth more and intends to continue the process of listing this activity on the stock market. Investors are urging GSK to sell this consumer division to refocus on advanced pharmacy, but they understand, on the other hand, that we can sell tablets against headaches and product to unclog toilets. (Domestos). It’s all about return on investment.
Anger growls
And precisely, as far as Unilever is concerned, anger is brewing. For a year, the company has been on the stock market. It lost almost 10%, when its competitors Nestlé and Procter & Gamble rose by 20%. Terry Smith, a long-term British investor, is rolling out a rustic strategy, but which has the merit of simplicity: choose good companies, buy cheap and get out of it.
Among the first ten shareholders of Unilever, he however this time pushed a rant, as the FinancialTimes. “Unilever’s management is obsessed with making public pledges about the environmental and social sustainability of their business, rather than focusing on the fundamentals of their business. »
To focus too much on the purpose of their mayonnaise, they would forget to make money. Good feelings do not necessarily make good business.