The investment giant which owns Wagamama restaurants is among the potential suitors circling Costa, Britain’s biggest high street coffee chain.
Sky News has learnt that Apollo Global Management, which owns Wagamama’s parent company, The Restaurant Group, is one of a small number of suitors to have held initial talks with advisers to The Coca-Cola Company, Costa’s owner.
Sources close to the process said it remained at a very early stage, with indicative bids not due for several weeks.
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Apollo might not decide to pursue a formal offer for Costa, the sources said.
KKR, another US-based private equity giant, has also spoken to Lazard, Coca-Cola’s adviser, but was unlikely to table a firm bid for Costa, they added.
News of Apollo’s early interest comes days after Sky News revealed that Coca-Cola was exploring a disposal of Costa less than seven years after acquiring it in a bid to reduce its reliance on carbonated soft drinks.
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Costa trades from more than 2,000 stores in the UK, and well over 3,000 globally, according to the latest available figures.
It has been reported to have a global workforce numbering 35,000, although Coca-Cola has not responded to questions from Sky News about Costa’s current number of outlets or employees.
Analysts believe a sale could crystallise a multibillion pound loss on the £3.9bn sum Coca-Cola agreed to pay to buy Costa from Whitbread, the London-listed owner of the Premier Inn hotel chain, in 2018.
One suggested that Costa might now command a price tag of just £2bn in a sale process.
Accounts filed at Companies House for Costa show that in 2023 – the last year for which standalone results are available – the coffee chain recorded revenues of £1.22bn.
While this represented a 9% increase on the previous year, it was below the £1.3bn recorded in 2018, the final year before Coca-Cola took control of the business.
Coca-Cola has been grappling with the weak performance of Costa for some time, with Mr Quincey saying on an earnings call last month: “We’re in the mode of reflecting on what we’ve learned, thinking about how we might want to find new avenues to grow in the coffee category while continuing to run the Costa business successfully.”
“It’s still a lot of money we put down, and we wanted that money to work as hard as possible.”
The deal was intended to provide Coca-Cola with a global platform in a growing area of the beverages market.
Costa trades in dozens of countries, including India, Japan, Mexico and Poland, and operates a network of thousands of coffee vending machines internationally under the Costa Express brand.
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The chain was founded in 1971 by Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa.
It was sold to Whitbread for £19m in 1995, when it traded from fewer than 40 stores.
The business is now one of Britain’s biggest private sector employers, and has become a ubiquitous presence on high streets across the country.
Its main rivals include Starbucks, Caffe Nero and Pret a Manger – the last of which is being prepared for a stake sale and possible public market flotation.
It has also faced growing competition from more upmarket chains such as Gail’s, the bakeries group, which has also been exploring a sale.
Apollo and KKR both declined to comment.
