By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Utz Brands stock (NYSE:UTZ) was up nearly 3% Monday after it said its subsidiaries are acquiring assets belonging to two distributors of its salty snacks.
The distributors are Clem Snacks and J&D Snacks. The two have been distributing Utz snacks for last 25 years.
Clem is a family-owned and operated direct store delivery distributor based in Brooklyn with approximately one hundred DSD routes in New York City and Long Island. J&D has been serving the Bronx, New York, since 1996 with around twenty five DSD routes, Utz said in a release.
Utz believes the deals will expand its geographical reach and accelerate share gains in the salty snack category by helping it service more retailers with increasing frequency.
The company expects to use a mix of its own cash and its revolving credit facility with its bankers to fund the purchase. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. Utz didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deals.
For its third quarter ended Oct. 3, the maker of Kettle crab chips reported a 26% jump in net sales, to $313 million. That also helped the company swing to a net profit of $31 million from a loss of $25 million in the same period a year ago.