Mom's Touch Selects Merrill Lynch as Sale Advisor

Mom's Touch store.

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Hyewon] Mom's Touch has selected BOA Merrill Lynch as its lead sale advisor.

According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 21st, KL&Partners, the largest shareholder of Mom's Touch, selected BOA Merrill Lynch as the lead sale advisor on the same day. KL&Partners explained that although they received proposals from various domestic and international sale advisor candidates, Merrill Lynch's proposed sale strategy received the highest score.

KL&Partners plans to complete the sale within this year, starting with sending teaser letters (investment brochures) in the third quarter, followed by preliminary and final bids after October.

The sale target is 79.18% of the shares held by Korea F&B Holdings, a special purpose company (SPC) established by KL&Partners at the time of acquiring Mom's Touch. Mom's Touch, which was a listed company, plans to complete delisting through a public tender offer in August. Afterward, it will hold 100% of the voting shares excluding treasury stock.

The desired sale price is approximately 1 trillion KRW. In 2019, KL&Partners acquired 56.8% of Mom's Touch shares from the founder and former chairman Jung Hyunsik for 193.8 billion KRW. At that time, the enterprise value was about 350 billion KRW, and the EBITDA was 27.2 billion KRW, but it jumped to about 44 billion KRW by the end of last year. Mom's Touch expects to record even higher operating profit this year by increasing sales through business expansion.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.