AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Ecotone brands4/29/2023 ![]() ![]() “The whole strategy when we relaunched Ecotone out of the stock-exchange market was really to take a deep breath, take some time, relaunch the business, work on the fundamentals, on the long term.” Ecotone is seeing a business growing, on a like-for-like basis, at 10-12% compared to two years ago, he adds. Since going private, alongside upping investment in marketing, the Ecotone CEO and his team have sought to focus resources, undertaking a review of the company’s brand portfolio and “centring initiatives on the core brands only”, Barnouin says. That’s basically what drove the take-out.” Ecotone’s recent growth “The access to debt is much cheaper than access to equity. Normally you get to the capital market to access capital, not to get famous in your paper and get stabbed by the analysts every quarter,” he quips. ![]() I was a small company to be on the stock exchange. You don’t get a return in a quarter, or even three quarters, so even with good trust and good judgment of the analysts, my model didn’t stack up at the stock exchange. To give you an example, I think we have increased by nearly 50% the marketing money since we left. I had no financial means to really freely invest the way that I have been investing. “At the time that our environment changed. That’s what matters to me,” Barnouin says. My goal is to have a better business, with brands consumers prefer and a contribution to biodiversity at a good profit. “The stock exchange is not a goal in itself. That adjustment included being able to invest more in areas such as marketing to try to support the company’s stable of brands, which also includes Allos breakfast cereals, Bonneterre pasta and Abbot Kinney’s plant-based yogurt. “We tried and we lost share dramatically and I think the analysis we made with the board at the time was we needed a few years to adjust to the new market circumstances and then, maybe one day, we would see whether we’ll come back or not to the stock exchange.” I was not equipped for that,” he tells Just Food via video call. I had Mondelez on chocolate, coming my way in organic chocolate. On plant-based drinks, I had Alpro acquired by Danone. On organic tea, I had Pukka acquired by Unilever. Larger companies were investing more in the then Wessanen’s core areas. The company, he argues, was in a market where the “competitive intensity” for the business was increasing. He’s still at the helm now and insists the takeover was the right move for the business, which has since been renamed Ecotone. Christophe Barnouin was CEO at the time, having been promoted in 2013 from a role as MD of the company’s French and Italian operations. It’s coming up to two years since Wessanen was delisted from the Euronext stock exchange. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |