Dive Brief:
- Unilever is said to be weighing a $1.7 billion sale of its SlimFast weight-loss brand.
- No suitor has emerged, and it's unclear if Unilever has hired investment bankers to orchestrate a transaction.
- Unilever paid $2.4 billion for the business in 2000.
- Talk of a sale comes just months after rival Nestle sold its Jenny Craig brand for roughly half what it had paid seven years earlier.
Dive Insight:
No surprise here. We said back in October that we expected a widespread dumping of the weight-loss brands of old. There's simply no way those brands can compete with the 100% free, self-help, eat-healthy support groups that have filled the Web.
What is a bit surprising is that Unilever would float a price of $1.7 billion. If news reports are accurate, SlimFast has only about $300 million a year in revenue. We simply can't imagine a scenario where anyone would pay more than three times annual revenue to buy a weight-loss brand.