After no larger bids have arisen, Hostess is going through with the sale of its Twinkies brand for $410 million, according to the New York Daily News.
The offer came from investing firms Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo Global Management, and since theirs was the most competent bid received, they’ve walked away with the prize. The lack of competitive bids means that there will be no auction for the brand, and that those two joint bidders are indeed the winners.
Georgia-based Flowers Foods has made an offer of up to $390 million for six other Hostess brands, including Wonder Bread, and Tennessee’s McKee Foods has placed a $27.5 million bid on Hostess’ Drake’s Cakes line. United States Bakery has bid $28.9 million for Sweetheart, Eddy’s Standish Farms and Grandma Emilie’s bread brands.
These are all “stalking horse bids,” meaning they await a higher bidder and that a judge must approve the sales. A bankruptcy court hearing is set for March 19, and the purchase will tentatively be approved then. Hostess stopped making its much-beloved snack cakes in November when the company announced its bankruptcy, resulting in around 18,000 lost jobs, and the situation had become dire for snackers everywhere until the news that the cakes will be returning surfaced.