Dive Brief:
- The owners of Hostess Brands LLC, the maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, and more, is expected to go on sale early next year, according to news reports.
- The sale would be a considerable victory for Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos, which took control of Hostess Brands for $410 million last year after it emerged from bankruptcy for a second time.
- Flowers Foods and Mexico's Grupo Bimbo are the most-likely buyers, both of which took control of other parts of the Hostess empire during the bankruptcy proceedings.
Dive Insight:
Flipping a business this quickly and for such an extraordinary profit would be quite an accomplishment for the private equity buyers who took control of Hostess. It would also be a quite a blow to organized labor - the collapse of the old company was blamed on the high costs and rigid work rules imposed by unions. Once bankruptcy freed the company of its labor obligations, things turned around, and much faster than anyone would have guessed.