Yet while the balance sheet burden was certainly the pension liabilities, what precipitated the liquidation was the income statement, and more accurately, the cash flow statement, or specifically the lack of cash flow.
as the company tried to reinvent itself in 2009 and 2010, external currents were running against it. The Great Recession hurt many consumer brands generally, and the prices of the commodities that Hostess relied on -- corn, sugar, flour -- went up, which is the opposite of what's supposed to happen in a downturn. In addition, the bakery industry underwent more consolidation when Sara Lee sold out to Bimbo.
Those fortuities aggravated Hostess's two root problems -- a highly leveraged capital structure that had little margin of safety, and high labor costs. Neither problem was adequately addressed in the first bankruptcy, and neither existed to the same degree in major competitors like Bimbo and Flowers Food (owner of such brands as Nature's Own and Tastykake). On exiting the first bankruptcy, Hostess's total debt load was nearly $670 million. That was well above what it went into bankruptcy with in the first place -- an unusual circumstance that the company justified on expectations of "growing" into its capital structure.
But the company was dead wrong. Its debt sowed the very seeds of the next bankruptcy. Looking back on the decision to reinvest in Hostess in the first bankruptcy, one of the lenders now says, "If you look in the dictionary at the definition of throwing good money after bad, there should be a picture of Hostess beside it."
By late 2011, Hostess was getting, well, creamed. Its sales last year -- $2.5 billion -- were down about 11% from 2008 and down 28% from 2004. (Twinkies remain the best individual seller -- 323 million of them in the 52-week period ending June 29, give or take a splurt.) Overall, Hostess lost $341 million in fiscal 2011, 2½ times the loss of the prior year -- and by early 2012, primarily because of burgeoning interest obligations, its debt had grown to about $860 million.
As revenue declined, the company continued to burn cash -- in the second half of 2011, the rate was $2 million a week. The liquidity crunch forced Ripplewood in the early spring of 2011 to pump in $40 million more in return for more equity as well as debt that was subordinate to that held by Silver Point and Monarch. In August -- to save a company teetering on the edge of fiscal calamity and forced liquidation -- Silver Point, Monarch, and the group of other lenders put up an additional $30 million to see if a negotiated turnaround was possible.
They turned to the unions and demanded new concessions. But the unions, having three years earlier given up thousands of jobs and millions in benefits, flatly refused.
The company was going to pieces -- again -- and Hostess filed for Chapter 11 protection -- again -- in January of this year. This time, though, the moneymen were no longer on the same page. As the majority equity holder, Ripplewood badly wanted to keep Hostess out of bankruptcy. It pleaded with the lenders to show flexibility, but they were not so inclined. They lenders held superior fiscal hands and had less downside if Hostess failed. In the event of a bankruptcy, given all the assets Hostess owned, the lenders would still walk away with millions.
