Dive Brief:
- CytoSport is looking to sell itself. The parent of Muscle Milk may be worth as much as $500 million.
- The company is in the final stages of negotiations with two suitors, according to Reuters. The bidders are Post Holdings and Ireland's Glanbia PLC.
- The move comes roughly a year after CytoSport's owners, the private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, backed away from a plan to take the company public .
Dive Insight:
Muscle Milk gets rave reviews from lots of folks, and we can see why. We've tried this stuff, and it has a taste that's vastly superior to that of rival protein shakes. It tastes so good, in fact, that we can imagine it's pretty easy for most folks to just ignore the fact that there's no milk in Muscle Milk and that the ingredient list reads like a chemistry textbook.
We can also see why Post and Glanbia would be interested. Glanbia is already a big player in the space, and buying Muscle Milk would expand its product line. Post, meanwhile, recently made a well-publicized move to stake its claim to the market.