Hotel Chocolat has bought another company - while paying less than the price of a box of a chocolates to do so.
The upmarket confectioner said it paid £4 to acquire Rabot 1745, which lost around £400,000 last year and has been trading for five years.
The cheapest box of chocolates on Hotel Chocolat’s website is £5.
Hotel Chocolat helped set up Rabot 1745 in 2016 alongside its chairman, Andrew Gerrie, and owned nearly half its shares.
The idea was to create a range of beauty products inspired by the company’s cacao farm in Saint Lucia.
Mr Gerrie will get around £3 in return for his 40 per cent stake in the business, with the remaining investors sharing about £1 between them.
However, the chairman can expect much more out of the deal.
After it buys his stake, Hotel Chocolat will pay off the loan that Mr Gerrie provided to Rabot.
The amount of more than £744,000 will be paid off with some 200,000 shares in Hotel Chocolat, increasing his stake by around 40 per cent.
The company said it is well placed to leverage the value of Rabot’s inventory and develop its beauty products.
Wayne Brown, an analyst at Liberum, said: “The move to full ownership will: (i) allow the group to continue to develop its successful, award-winning beauty range, which is particularly popular across its UK channels, St Lucia and Japan; (ii) support an ongoing brand-enhancing, point of differentiation versus other chocolate players; and (iii) allow the integration of operations to bring synergies that should see Rabot begin to turn a profit versus the current slight loss.”
.png?w=600)
