Thai Union Frozen Products (TUF) may be able to buy Bumble Bee Foods, but that’s unlikely since it might have to sell off its own tuna brand, Chicken of the Sea, in order to get it, according to one financial analyst.
“In case that TUF can successfully acquire Bumble Bee, it may have to sell Chicken of the Sea, so we believe that the acquisition of Bumble Bee may be delayed or cancelled,” read a note from brokerage firm SCB Securities and quoted by The Nation.
Because of this, the firm said it was excluding Bumble Bee from its earnings forecast in 2015-2016.
The firm also announced it was revising upward TUF’s earnings forecast by 0.2 percent for 2015, and cutting its projection by 37.3 percent in 2016, in part due to excluding Bumble Bee’s earnings.
TUF has been facing some high-profile legal problems of late, first with an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into its proposed acquisition of Bumble Bee from London-based Lion Capital. The attention prompted TUF to put the acquisition process on hold. Then, a New York-based distributor group sued all three major U.S. canned tuna companies, the third being StarKist, accusing them of price fixing. The SCB note referenced these cases, but did not discuss them in detail other than to note they were not related to each other.
