After Betaville's Ben Harrington said earlier this week that Mead Johnson (MJN) is working with Lazard after receiving takeover interest, Susquehanna said it believes a merger deal between Mead and Danone (DANOY) would make sense. The firm cited complementary skills and the ability to increase market share due to lack of overlap, while noting that the debt ratio would be lowered for Danone with the combination. Susquehanna maintained its Neutral rating and $77 price target on Mead Johnson shares.

In Q1 2024, consolidated sales stood at EUR 6.8B, up +4.1% on a like-for-like basis, led by an increase of +1.2% from volume/mix and +2.9% from price. On a reported basis, sales decreased by -2.5%, mainly penalized by the strong negative impact from scope, resulting from the deconsolidation of EDP Russia starting from July 2023, and the negative impact from forex of -3.2%. Besides, hyperinflation contributed positively to reported sales. CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique commented, "We have delivered a good start to the year, with yet another quarter of quality growth and consistent delivery on our Renew Danone agenda: net sales were up +4.1% on a like-for-like basis and volume/mix up +1.2%, with all categories positively contributing. In what remains a challenging environment, we continued making good progress on our transformation agenda, strengthening our category fundamentals, intentionally driving our winning mixes and geographies while delivering on portfolio rotation with the successful closing of the disposals of our milk and dairy activity Horizon Organic and Wallaby in the US and Michel & Augustin. We are confident that 2024 will be another year where we deliver on our value creation model. With that in mind, we look forward to talking more about the next chapter of Renew Danone at our Capital Market Event in Amsterdam in June."