Sitrick & Company and Rubenstein Associates are advising the private equity-backed deal to take Twinkie maker Hostess Brands public on the Nasdaq exchange.
The deal would value Hostess at around $2.3B and leave a 42% combined ownership stake with Apollo Global Management and current Hostess owner C. Dean Metropoulos.
The transaction will see a publicly traded unit of investment firm The Gores Group take a majority stake for around $725M.
Rubenstein reps Apollo in the deal, while Sitrick advises Gores Group. Sitrick repped the previous incarnation of Hostess Brands, Inc. through its 2012 bankruptcy filing. The new Apollo/Metropoulos owned Hostess Brands, LLC was launched in June, 2013. Metropoulos and Company is represented by New York-based LAK PR. LAK is also public relations agency of record for Hostess.
Hostess sales for fiscal 2015 were around $650M.
The New York Times noted Apollo and Metropoulos stand to collect about $1B on an initial investment of about $185M.
For public relations agency owners planning to sell, preparation and investment across several key areas will yield the highest valuations and exit terms in 2026.
Kekst CNC represents the DallasNews Corp. as it gets acquired by Hearst Corp. for about $75M. The 140-year-old Dallas Morning News will join Hearst's 28 dailies.
M&A transactions in the PR and marketing communications sectors were up 10 percent in 2024, according to Davis+Gilbert’s newly released M&A Activity Tracker.
