It's not an idle question. Procter & Gamble recently calculated the value of its Pringles potato chip brand and offered it for sale. The buyer, according to the story in today's Financial Times, is Diamond Foods. The snack king ponied up $1.5 billion in its own stock, and assumed an additional $850 million in Pringles debt.
I'm not a fan of Pringles as a product. The flavor just doesn't grab me. I don't like purchasing potato chips in a container that held tennis balls or pets. Pringles seemed like polite potato chips, thus taking all the jazz out of enjoying the chips.
The billion-point-five sale price leads one to wonder about the state of affairs in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Who knew a potato chip manufacturer could be worth more all but a handful of Silicon Valley enterprises? What would the late Ross Perot think about all of this? Perot, in case you don't follow domestic politics, once famously claimed that the United States could only afford to make potato chips instead of computer chips.
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