We're sensing friction... Remember when the maker of Schick razors was going to buy trendy subscription shave-startup Harry's Razors months ago? Probably not happening now. The Federal Trade Commission just sued to block the $1.4B acquisition of Harry's by Edgewell Personal Care.
- Anti-Competitive: The FTC claims the deal would eliminate a major competitive force in an industry that's mainly being controlled by 2 companies.
- Duopoly: Procter & Gamble and Edgewell dominate the shave market — P&G is #1 with Gillete men's razors and Venus women's razors making up around 50% of the market. Schick is #2 with 10%.
- Newbies' Edge: Startups like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club pushed shaving giants to lower their prices and offer more options.
- But: Now that Dollar Shave was acquired by Unilever for $1B and Harry's was (nearly) scooped, the FTC's concerned that Big Shave brands are buying up startup rivals so they can resume their price-increasing, anti-competitive ways.
Investors feel smooth and relieved... Edgewell shares actually jumped 13% on news of the FTC's deal-blocking lawsuit. Turns out, investors weren't so crazy about a company with a $1.6B market cap dropping $1.4B on a fast-growing (but money-losing) startup. That's why shares plunged 16% when the deal was announced back in May. Still, Edgewell wants fast-scaling Harry's to grow its older slowing razor biz.
If razors are getting such sharp scrutiny... maybe the Justice Dep't and FTC will finally go after the real giants of American biz. Right now, there are multiple ongoing government-led investigations into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. Could Instagram be forced to split from Facebook? Or AWS broken off from Amazon? YouTube from Google?