Helen of Troy Limited sold its mass market personal care business to HRB Brands LLC. The $44.7 million cash deal includes brands such as Brut, Pert Plus, Sure, Infusium and Vitalis. As reported in Happi, Helen of Troy has sought to divest its personal care brands for more than a year.
The deal does not include the Latin America and Caribbean regions. The transaction includes an option that provides HRB Brands LLC the right to purchase the Latin America and Caribbean personal care businesses no later than the end of fiscal year 2022.
Helen of Troy CEO Julien R. Mininberg, said HRB is well-positioned to take the personal care business to its next phase of growth and advances Helen of Troy’s strategy to focus its resources on its growing portfolio of eight leadership brands. These brands include OXO, Hydro Flask, Vicks, Braun, PUR, Honeywell, Drybar and HOT Tools.
"Our leadership brands are among our highest volume and highest margin brands, which together comprised over 80% of global sales in fiscal year 2021," explained Mininberg. "In our beauty segment, we continue to be focused on accelerating the growth of our global appliance and prestige liquids businesses under the Revlon, Drybar, and HOT Tools brand names. We expect this divestiture to help us accelerate our top and bottom-line growth rates and allow us to redeploy the capital in line with Helen of Troy’s capital allocation strategy.”
Helen of Troy will use the proceeds to create further shareholder value in line with its capital allocation strategy, including paying down debt, making accretive acquisitions of additional leadership brands that are a better fit with the long-term growth strategies for the company’s portfolio or engaging in opportunistic share repurchases. HRB Brands CEO Jim Daniels said the acquisition extends HRB's trusted brand lineup.
"We are extremely pleased to add these respected, well-known brands with enduring equity competing primarily in the hair care, deodorant, and fragrance categories," said Daniels. "We believe this combination, together with our distinctive entrepreneurial culture, lean operating structure, and efficient business model, will enable HRB Brands LLC to continue to bring innovative and category leading innovations to market.”