Bidders serve Coca-Cola with lukewarm Costa Coffee bids

A tiny fig of suitors person served up archetypal bids for Costa Coffee arsenic the chain’s owner, The Coca-Cola Company, prepares to clasp ownership of the brand’s ready-to-drink portfolio.

Sky News understands that Coca-Cola and its advisers acceptable a deadline past week for indicative offers for Costa.

City sources said connected Monday that Apollo Global Management, the concern elephantine which had expressed an involvement successful the business, decided not to taxable an offer.

Other reported bidders see TDR Capital, the proprietor of Asda, though banking insiders said determination had been a tiny fig of proposals than expected.

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One suggested that the worth placed connected Costa could beryllium arsenic debased arsenic £1.5bn, good nether fractional the £3.9bn paid by Coca-Cola successful 2021.

It was unclear whether Coca-Cola would beryllium prepared to offload the concern astatine that price.

The American drinks behemoth is said to person told suitors that it would clasp power of the ready-to-drink Costa scope sold successful supermarkets and different market outlets.

Sky News revealed past period that Coca-Cola was exploring a disposal of Costa, which trades from much than 2,000 stores successful the UK and good implicit 3,000 globally.

It has been reported to person a planetary workforce numbering 35,000, though Coca-Cola has not responded to immoderate questions from Sky News astir the Costa concern oregon merchantability process.

Accounts filed astatine Companies House for Costa amusement that successful 2023 the java concatenation recorded revenues of £1.22bn.

While this represented a 9% summation connected the erstwhile year, it was beneath the £1.3bn recorded successful 2018, the last twelvemonth earlier Coca-Cola took power of the business.

Coca-Cola has been grappling with the anemic show of Costa for immoderate time, with Coca-Cola brag James Quincey saying connected an net telephone successful the summer: "We're successful the mode of reflecting connected what we've learned, reasoning astir however we mightiness privation to find caller avenues to turn successful the java class portion continuing to tally the Costa concern successfully."

"It's inactive a batch of wealth we enactment down, and we wanted that wealth to enactment arsenic hard arsenic possible."

The woody was intended to supply Coca-Cola with a planetary level successful a increasing country of the beverages market.

Costa trades successful dozens of countries, including India, Japan, Mexico and Poland, and operates a web of thousands of java vending machines internationally nether the Costa Express brand.

The concatenation was founded successful 1971 by Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa.

It was sold to Whitbread for £19m successful 1995, erstwhile it traded from less than 40 stores.

Apollo declined to comment.