Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. (Nasdaq: PPC) shares rose 21% in midday trading, hitting a new 52-week high, on a bid by its Brazil-based majority owner to take the chicken and pork processor private.
Brasilia-based JBS SA offered to buy the 20% of PPC it doesn’t own for $26.50 a share. Any deal needs approval “of a majority of the aggregate voting power” of that 20%, the press release from JBS said.
The per-share bid represents a 22% premium on Pilgrim Pride’s trailing 30-calendar-day average, it said.
Shares opened above JBS’ bid and stayed north of $27 Friday; a year ago, shares were $17 apiece.
JBS is the world’s largest meatpacker. It bought 64% of Pilgrim’s Pride in 2009, about a year after the latter had filed for bankruptcy, with $2 billion in debt.
The Brazilian behemoth took on the debt and added $800 million in cash — paying creditors in full and giving then-shareholders a 36% stake in the new company, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
Two years earlier, JBS had purchased Swift Foods Co., owned by Dallas-based private equity firm HM Capital Partners LLC, which had bought it from ConAgra Foods Inc. in 2002. JBS paid $1.4 billion — 85% of the price being assumption of debt — for the pork processor.
JBS focuses on beef. Owning 80% of Pilgrim’s Pride, with its pork and chicken “enabled JBS to expand its portfolio in the United States beyond beef and broaden its retail distribution network,” the Brazil firm said in its…
