This is awkward... Edgewell Personal Care just paid $1.37B for Harry's, the direct-to-consumer guy-and-gal shave company. Investors hated it. Shares of Edgewell fell 16% Monday for a couple other reasons, too:
- Edgewell also reported earnings, and sales fell 10% in the 1st quarter. Edgewell owns your parents' bathroom cabinet: Schick razors, Playtex, Banana Boat, and Wet Ones, among other brands.
- Edgewell's value by market capitalization is just $2.1B. So its acquisition of Harry's was wildly huge considering its size. It'll take on debt and issue new shares to pay for the "combination."
The disrupted just ate the disrupters... Gillette and Schick owned a comfortable, high-profit razor duopoly. Now they kind of do again after acquiring up the companies that disrupted their coziness:
- Procter & Gamble owns Gillette, and then bought Walker & Company's razors for people of color.
- Unilever snatched up Dollar Shave Club last year.
- Edgewell has Schick and Wilkinson Sword (razors with British accents), and now Harry's.
Time to subscript-ify. Everything... The Harry's co-founders impressively convinced a generation to buy a razor and sign up for regular blade/cream refills. It makes sense (most facial hair grows kinda consistently). Edgewell has other products ready for subscript-ify: Body wash, tampons, napkins. Time to Harry-ify them all.
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