Snack food giant Mondelez InternationalMDLZ +1.1% announced a deal to buy the snack bar brand for $2.9 billion, marking a handsome 2,300% premium to the bid from Quaker that Clif Bar rebuffed back in 2000. In the years since, the company has remained private and grown its business to a reported $1 billion in annual sales without the benefit of any significant outside funding. It hasn’t raised capital since 2002, according to PitchBook.

Erickson stepped down as co-CEO in 2020. He remains on the company’s board.

 

Mondelez is the latest packaged foods powerhouse to expand into the snack bar segment through M&A. Most notably, candy giant Mars agreed in late 2020 to pay a reported $5 billion Kind North America, a maker of health-conscious snack bars. A year before that, Hershey agreed to buy protein bar specialist One Brands for $397 million, and in 2017, KelloggK +1.1% acquired RXBar for $600 million.

Mondelez has also done an earlier deal in the space of its own: In 2019, it bought Perfect Bar, reportedly for around $280 million. The company is best known for its portfolio of chocolate, cracker, cookie and candy brands, including Cadbury, Chips Ahoy, Honey Maid, Oreo, Ritz and Trident.

This is not the company’s first recent foray into big-ticket M&A under CEO Dirk Van de Put. In April, Mondelez agreed to buy Italian confectionery business Ricolino for about $1 billion, and in January, it closed a takeover of croissant and snack brand Chipita worth around $2 billion. Overall, Mondelez has lined up a half-dozen acquisitions worth more than $250 million apiece since the start of 2021, per PitchBook.

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