A small number of contenders served the initial offers for Costa Coffee as owner of the channel, Coca-Cola, is preparing to keep the property of the ready-to-drink portfolio.
Sky News understands that Coca-Cola and his advisers established a deadline last week for indicative offers for Costa.
City sources said on Monday that Apollo Global Management, the investment giant who had expressed interest in the company, had decided not to submit an offer.
The other declared tenderers include TDR Capital, the owner of Asda, although the banking initiates said that there had been a small number of proposals that were planned.
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One suggested that the value placed on Costa could be as low as 1.5 billion pounds sterling, much less than half of the 3.9 billion sterling pounds paid by Coca-Cola in 2021.
It was not clear if Coca-Cola would be ready to unload the company at this price.
The American drinks giant would have told the contenders that he would keep control of the Costa range ready to drink sold in supermarkets and other grocery stores.
Sky News revealed last month that Coca-Cola was Explore elimination de Costa, which is negotiated by more than 2,000 stores in the United Kingdom and much more than 3,000 worldwide.
It was reported that he had a global workforce with 35,000, although Coca-Cola did not answer any questions from Sky News on the Costa’s trade or sales process.
The accounts deposited at Companies House for Costa show that in 2023, the coffee chain recorded revenues of 1.22 billion pounds sterling.
Pic: Istock
Although this represents an increase of 9% compared to the previous year, it was less than 1.3 billion pounds sterling recorded in 2018, the last year before Coca-Cola took control of the company.
Coca-Cola has been struggling with the low performance of Costa for some time, with the boss of Coca-Cola, James Quincey, saying during a call of results in summer: “We are in the method of thinking about what we have learned, reflecting on the way we could want to find new avenues to develop in the coffee category while continuing to manage Costa successfully.
“It is still a lot of money that we relax, and we wanted this money to work as hard as possible.”
The agreement was aimed at providing Coca-Cola with a global platform in an increasing field of the drinks market.
Costa is negotiated in dozens of countries, including India, Japan, Mexico and Poland, and operates a network of thousands of automatic coffee distributors internationally under the Costa Express brand.
The chain was founded in 1971 by the Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa.
He was sold in Whitbread for 19 million pounds sterling in 1995, when he exchanged in less than 40 stores.
Apollo refused to comment.