Baffle ’em with Bulls**t – Forget Kraft


"If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance – Baffle 'em with Bulls**t" – W. C. Fields

Just 18 months ago Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld was working very hard to convince investors she needed to grow Kraft with a $19B acquisition of Cadbury.  This was after her expensive acquisition of Lu Biscuits from Danone. Part of her justification for the massive expenditure was an out-of-date industrial manufacturing adage, "Scale is a source of great competitive advantage. " How these acquisitions provided scale advantage was never explained.

Now she wants to convince investors Kraft needs to be split into two companies, saying the acquisition trail has left her with "different portfolios."  (Quotes from the Wall Street Journal, "Activists Pressed for Kraft Spinoff") For some reason, scale is now less important than portfolio focus.  And the scale advantages that justified the acquisition premiums are now – unimportant?

If Ms. Rosenfeld was a politician, she might be accused of being a "flip-flopper." Remember John Kerry?

Ms. Rosenfeld would like to break Kraft into 2 parts.  Some brands would be in a new "grocery," or "domestic" business (Oscar Mayer, Cool Whip, Maxwell House, Jell-O, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Kool Aid, Miracle Whip is a partial list.)  The rest of the company would be a "snack" or "international" business.  Although the latter would still include the North American snacks and confectionary brands.  (More detail in the Wall Street Journal "Kraft: Breaking Down the Breakup.")

We will ignore the obvious questions about why the acquisitions if your strategy was to split up the company.  Instead, looking forward, the critical questions to have answered would be "How will this break-up help Kraft grow? And what is the benefit for investors, employees and shareholders of this massive, and costly, change?" 

Kraft was split off from Altria at the end of 2006, with Ms. Rosenfeld at the helm.  At its rebirth, Kraft became a Dow Jones Industrial member.  Rich in revenues and resources, at the time, Kraft was valued at about $35/share.  Now, 5 years and all the M&A machinations later, Kraft is valued (with optimism about the breakup value) at about $35/share!  Between the two dates the company's value was almost always lower.  So investors have gained nothing for their 5 years of waiting for Ms. Rosenfeld to "transform" Kraft.

The big winners at Kraft have been their investment bankers.  They received enormous multi-million dollar fees for helping Ms. Rosenfeld buy and sell businesses.  And they will receive massive additional fees if the company is split in two.  In fact, given her focus on M&A as opposed to actually growing Kraft, one could well assess Ms. Rosenfeld's tenure as more investment banker than Chief Executive Officer.  She didn't really do anything to improve Kraft.  She just moved around the pieces, and swapped some.

Kraft has had no growth, other than from the expensive purchased acquisition revenues.  Despite its massive $50B revenue stream, what new innovation – what exciting new product – can you recall Kraft introducing?  Go ahead, take your time.  We can wait. 

What's that – you can't think of any.  Nor can anybody else. 

In Kraft's historical businesses, volume declined 1.5% over the last couple of years.  The company has been shrinking.  According to Crain's Chicago Business in "Kraft's Rosenfeld's About Face Spurred by Dwindling Options," the only reason revenues grew in the base business was due to rising commodity prices, which were passed along, with a premium added, in retail price increases to consumers!  A business doesn't have a sparkling future when it keeps selling less, and raising prices, on products that consumers largely could care less about. 

When was the last time you asked for a Velveeta sandwich?  Interestly, Tang now seems to have outlived even NASA and the American space program.  Have you enjoyed that sugar-laden breakfast delight lately?  Or when did you last look for that special opportunity to use artificial ice-cream (Cool Whip) in your desert?

BusinessInsider.com tried valiantly to make the case "The Kraft Foods Split is the Grand Finale of an Epic Transformation." But as the author takes readers through the myriad re-organizations, in the end we realize that all these changes did nothing to actually improve the business – and managed to tick off Kraft's largest investor, Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, who has been selling shares!

The argument that Kraft has 2 portfolios as a justification for splitting the company makes no sense.  Every investor is taught to have a wide portfolio in order to maximize returns at lowest risk.  That Kraft has multiple product lines is a benefit to investors, not a negative! 

Unless the leaders have no idea how to use the resources from these businesses to innovate, and bring out new products building on market trends and creating growth!  And that's the one thing most lacking at Kraft.  It's not a portfolio issue – it's a complete lack of innovation issue! As Burt Flickingerof Strategic Resources Group pointed out, Kraft has been losing .5% to 1% market share every year for the last decade in its "core" business, and he understatedly commente that Kraft has "very little innovation."

Markets have shifted dramatically the last 5 years, and food is no exception.  People want fewer carbs, and fewer fats.  They want easily prepared foods, but without additives like sugar (or high fructose corn syrup,) salt and oil that have negative long-term health implications for blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.  Also, they don't want hidden calories that make ease of preparation a trade-off with their wastelines!  Further, most families have changed from the traditional 3 times per day standard meals to more grazing habits, and from large portions to smaller portions with greater variety. 

But Kraft addressed none of these shifts with new products.  Instead, it kept pouring advertising dollars into the traditional foodstuffs, even as these were finding less and less fit with 2011 dietary needs – or consumer interest! When the most exciting thing anyone can say about a Kraft launch the last 5 years was the re-orientation of the Triscuit line (did you catch that, or did you somehow miss it?) then it's pretty clear innovation has been on the back burner.  Or maybe stuck in the shelf with the Cheez Whiz.

It is clear that Ms. Rosenfeld offered no brilliance as Kraft's leader.  Uninspiring to consumers, investors and employees.  She made very expensive acquisitions to create the illusion of revenue growth; financial machinations that hid declines in the traditional business which suffered from no innovation investment. After all that money was thrown around, and facing very little prospect of any growth, it was time for the biggest baffling bulls**t of all – split the company up so nobody can trace the value destruction!

Andrew Lazar at Barclay's Capital Plc gave a pretty good insight in another Crain's Chicago Business article ("Kraft Jettisons U. S. Brands so Global Snack Biz Can Fly Higher.")  He said Kraft (aka Ms. Rosenfeld) is "Taking action before it ever has to potentially disappoint investors in a struggle to reach overly optimistic sales growth targets."

Yes, I think Mr. Fields had it pretty right when it comes to describing the leadership of Ms. Rosenfeld and her team at Kraft.  They have been unable to dazzle us with any brilliance.  The question is whether we'll be foolish enough to let them baffle us with their ongoing bulls**t.   What Kraft needs is not a break-up.  What Kraft needs is new leadership that understands how to move beyond the past, tie investments to market needs, and start Kraft growing again!! 

This week most people don't really care about Kraft.  After the U.S. debt ceiling "crisis," followed by the Friday night announcement of the U.S. debt downgrade, the news has been dominated by mostly economic, rather than company, items.  The collapse of the DJIA has been a lot more important than a non-value-adding split-up of a single component.  And that is unfortunate, because the leadership of Kraft have been playing chess games with company pieces, rather than actually doing what it takes to help a company grow.  With the right leadership, Kraft could be creating the jobs everyone so desperately wants.