Hershey
Assume that you are a member of the Hershey Trust board. To whom (or what) do you owe your fiduciary responsibility? How does the legacy of Milton S. Hershey affect your thinking as a member of the board? Discuss the unique
challenges presented by the ownership structure of Hershey.
Based on your valuation of HFC, do you believe the company was fairly valued by the market before the announcement of the sale? Calculate the WACC for HFC using the data provided in the exhibits; assume a Market Risk Premium of 5.5%. Estimate the stand-alone value of HFC using the free-cash-flow projections provided in case Exhibit 10.
Discus the non-price considerations of the offers. Which, if any, bid would you vote to accept for the purchase of Hershey Foods Corporation? Is your decision primarily based on the economics of the bids or the desire to honor the legacy of Milton S. Hershey?
If you decided to reject both bids and not sell HFC, what will you do to achieve the diversification objective? If you decided to accept one of the bids, what (if anything) would you want to communicate to the constituents who opposed the sale?
Hershey Foods Corporation: Bitter Times in a Sweet Place UVA-F-1409 Rev. Feb. 4, 2011 -2- UVA-F-1409 This case was prepared by Sean Carr (MBA ’03) and Gustavo Rodriguez (MBA ’03), under the supervision of Professors Kenneth M. Eades, Chris Muscarella (Penn State University), and Samuel C. Weaver (Lehigh University). It was written as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright 2004 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to
[email protected]. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School Foundation. HERSHEY FOODS CORPORATION: BITTER TIMES IN A SWEET PLACE Hershey’s chocolate. Like baseball and apple pie, it was an American icon. So when Hershey’s largest shareholder proposed selling the company in early 2002, the residents of Hershey, Pennsylvania, the state attorney general, legislators, and current and former Hershey employees reacted with alarm. For them, the idea of selling the “Great American Chocolate Bar” was an insult to a beloved American institution and a threat to the principles on which Milton Hershey had built his company. Unlike most large corporations, Hershey Foods’ majority shareholder was not a corporate raider, institutional investor, or multinational, but rather the Hershey Trust Company, which owned 77% of its voting stock. The trust had been endowed by a gift, in 1918, by Milton Hershey himself, with the objective of supporting the Milton Hershey School, an institution for orphans in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, in March 2002, the Hershey Trust’s board of trustees decided that the school would be better served if its holdings were less concentrated in Hershey stock. Therefore, the Hershey Trust announced its decision to sell its entire stake in Hershey Foods, which effectively put the corporation up for sale. Six months after making its decision to explore a potential sale, the board of the Hershey Trust Company was examining two serious offers: a joint bid from Cadbury Schweppes PLC and Nestlé S.A. and an independent bid from the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. The primary question for the board’s 17 members was whether the bidders had accurately valued Hershey and, if so, whether the economic value created through the deal was consistent with the board’s obligation to safeguard Hershey’s legacy of community involvement. The Confectionary Industry In 2001, the U.S. confectionary industry was worth $24 billion. Chocolate products accounted for 55% of that market; gum, 12%; and nonchocolate candy, 32%. The consumption of all confectionery had stagnated in the United States during the past four years, and the consumption of chocolate, in particular, had declined during the previous year. Despite the disappointing trend in the U.S. market, several factors had helped a few key industry players grow during this period: · Developing innovative products with high consumer appeal and price per pound · Identifying and acquiring target companies to execute expansion strategies · Developing operations and/or distribution systems in new countries With a market share of 30%, Hershey led the U.S. market for candy and gum in 2001, followed by M&M Mars, Inc. (Masterfoods Corp.) at 17.1%, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. at 6.6%, and Nestlé at 6.5%. The other players sharing the remaining 40% of the market included Cadbury Schweppes, World’s Finest Chocolate, Inc., and Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc. With its aggressive introduction of new products, Wrigley posted a 12.3% growth in revenues over the previous year. Wrigley, the largest producer of chewing gum in the world, had recently introduced Wrigley Eclipse Flash Strips, which accounted for some of the company’s impressive performance and moved it from fourth to third place in U.S. rankings. Nestlé showed 6.5% sales growth, and Mars and Hershey each showed 1.4% growth. Milton Snavely Hershey: Entrepreneur Milton Snavely Hershey was born to a German-Mennonite family in south-central Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1857, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War. In his youth, Hershey was a poor student, and after transferring among seven different schools, he dropped out before reaching the fourth grade. As a young adult, Hershey developed an interest in becoming a confectioner, and in 1886, he opened the Lancaster Caramel Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which specialized in caramels made with fresh milk. Because he believed there would be great demand for affordable, mass-produced chocolate, Hershey sold his caramel business for $1 million in 1900, but retained the firm’s chocolate-making machines. Attracted by central Pennsylvania’s ample supplies of water, dairy farms, and hard-working immigrants, Hershey used the proceeds from the sale to purchase 1,200 acres of farmland and to break ground for the Hershey factory on March 2, 1903. Upon its completion, in December 1904, Hershey had built the largest chocolate factory in the world, and the Hershey Chocolate Company was born. Hershey, Pennsylvania: From Factory to Company to Town Hershey enjoyed making money, but he “wanted it used for a purpose of enduring good.” (A sign on his office wall read “Business Is a Matter of Human Service.”) Influenced by utopian “manufacturing communities” of the time, Milton Hershey decided to surround his business enterprise with a model town. In the pastures surrounding his new factory, Hershey mapped out a village, with tree-lined streets whose names evoked the exotic lands of the cocoa bean, including Trinidad, Caracas, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Milton Hershey created the Hershey Improvement Company, a division of Hershey Chocolate, which built a complete infrastructure, including roads, sewers, utilities, houses, and public buildings. In 1906, the village of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, was renamed Hershey. The development of Hershey, Pennsylvania, followed the ebb and flow of the company’s fortunes. Following financial difficulties in 1920, Milton Hershey reorganized and refinanced his company, creating three new entities: · Hershey Chocolate Corporation, which acquired all the chocolate properties; · Hershey Corporation, which acquired the company’s 65,000 acres of sugar-cane fields and eight sugar-processing plants in Cuba; · Hershey Estates, which continued the work of the Hershey Improvement Company. Through Hershey Estates, the Hershey Chocolate Company played an ever-larger role in the lives of Hershey’s citizens. By 1927, Hershey Estates had a hand in more than 30 nonchocolate interests, including the telephone company, a department store, the hospital, and the cemetery. See Exhibit 1 for a list of Hershey Estates’ enterprises. Milton Hershey’s dedication to his employees and the residents of the town was steadfast. During the Great Depression, despite a 50% drop in sales, Hershey refused to lay off any local employees. Instead, between 1929 and 1939, he launched a series of massive building projects that resulted in the construction of most of Hershey’s major buildings, including the Hershey Community Center, the lavish Hotel Hershey, the high school, the Hershey Sports Arena, Hershey Stadium, and the Hershey Chocolate Corporation headquarters, at 19 East Chocolate Avenue. Hershey Estates served the town well but operated at a financial loss. During Milton Hershey’s lifetime, profit for the Estates division was never a primary consideration. In fact, after 1927, Milton Hershey relied on profits from the company’s Cuban sugar operations to provide the capital for his many construction projects. Following Hershey’s death, in 1945, pressure grew to reduce Hershey Chocolate’s involvement in the town. In the 1960s, owing to increased regulation, competition for financing, and a poor business climate, Hershey Estates divested its electric, water, sewer, and telephone utilities. The lumberyard and creamery were also sold, the ballroom torn down, the pool filled in, and the community center turned over to Hershey Foods for office space. In 1970, after years of benign neglect, Hershey Estates began to focus on Hersheypark, an amusement park, as a revenue generator, and approved a five-year plan to revitalize it. Later, Hershey Estates was renamed Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company (HERCO), and committed itself to managing Hershey’s entertainment properties. See Exhibit 2 for a description of HERCO’s businesses. Milton Hershey’s Commitment: The Milton Hershey School In 1909, at the suggestion of his wife, Kitty, the unschooled Milton Hershey created a residence and school for homeless boys. In 1918, three years after his wife’s death, the childless Milton Hershey bequeathed his entire personal fortune to the Milton Hershey School, including thousands of acres of land and all his stock in the Hershey Chocolate Company. The Hersheys designated the newly created Hershey Trust Company as the sole trustee for the school. According to the deed of trust, the trustee was responsible for managing the trust’s considerable endowment and for reporting to the school’s managers. Ever since the bequest, the Hershey Trust Company had had a controlling interest in every major Hershey entity. Moreover, the school’s managers and the trust’s board comprised the same 17 individuals. Hershey Foods’ board, however, was, for the most part, an independent entity with only one of its nine members also serving on the trust’s board. See Exhibit 3 for an organizational chart. By 2002, the Milton Hershey School (MHS) admitted both boys and girls without regard to race and provided instruction from kindergarten through the 12th grade. MHS enrolled 1,300 students, who lived on the school’s 1,400-acre campus. Annual spending per student was $96,000, which included housing, food, clothing, and medical care. MHS’s endowment, administered by the Hershey Trust Company, had grown from its initial bequest of $60 million to approximately $5.4 billion, making it one of the largest educational endowments in the United States. See Exhibit 4 for a comparison of private educational endowments. Hershey Foods Corporation Milton Hershey learned that the secret of mass production for his chocolate lay in the manufacture of huge quantities of one item, standardized in design, and with a continuity of streamlined output that held down costs. The plain milk-chocolate bar and the milk-chocolate bar with almonds were the bread and butter of the Hershey Chocolate Company. With this recipe, Hershey had generated sales of $5 million by 1911, more than eight times the company’s first-year revenues. By 1921, Hershey’s sales had soared to $20 million. In 1937, the quartermaster of the United States Army asked the Hershey Chocolate Corporation to develop a military-ration bar that could meet the needs of soldiers in the field. The requirements for the bar were that it should weigh about four ounces, be able to withstand high temperatures, and taste “just a little better than a boiled potato.” The result was the Field Ration D. By the end of World War II, Hershey was producing 24 million units of Field Ration D per week. And so, while other confectioners were forced to limit or even cease production during the war, the Hershey Chocolate Corporation was winning millions of loyal consumers, as well as a place in American history. Between 1940 and 1945, more than three billion units of Field Ration D bars were made and distributed to soldiers around the world. Shortly after the end of World War II, Milton S. Hershey died at age 88, on October 13, 1945. Hershey’s passing, however, did not diminish the strength of his business. By 1951, sales had grown to $154 million, and by 1962, sales had reached $183 million. In 1963, the Hershey Chocolate Corporation undertook its first major acquisition when it purchased the H. B. Reese Candy Company, Inc., makers of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. This move began a string of acquisitions by Hershey that would continue for the next 25 years. During the 1960s, Hershey diversified by acquiring several major pasta manufacturers, including San Giorgio Macaroni, Inc., and Delmonico Foods, Inc. By the 1980s, the company had become the largest pasta manufacturer in the United States. This diversification away from chocolate products led to a change in the company’s name to Hershey Foods Corporation in 1984. By 1999, however, the company had changed its strategy again and sold its U.S. pasta business, the Hershey Pasta Group, to New World Pasta, LLC, for $450 million plus equity. By 2002, Hershey remained the number-one candy maker in the United States, with sales comprising roughly 80% chocolate and 20% nonchocolate foods. Its largest customer was Wal-Mart, which represented 17% of the company’s total sales. Other major Hershey customers included Kmart, Target, Albertsons, and CVS. Sales outside the United States accounted for 10% of total revenues. According to Money magazine, Hershey Foods’ stock ranked as the 28th-best performer of the last 30 years, with annualized returns of 17.4%. The Hershey Trust Company Considers a Sale Over the years, both the composition and the size of Hershey Trust’s board of directors had changed (see Exhibits 5 and 6). In particular, the trust’s board had expanded from 10 members, in 1990, to 17 members, in 2002, and the composition of the board had shifted toward education professionals, Hershey School alumni, and various public-sector leaders. The board’s mandate, however, remained that of serving the interests of the Milton Hershey School