Pepsi looks to buy Wimm-Bill-Dann in $5.4 billion deal

MOSCOW (Reuters) - PepsiCo is to pay $3.8 billion for a 66 percent stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann from a group of shareholders, in a deal it said gave the Russian juice and dairy producer an enterprise value of $5.4 billion.

PepsiCo will offer to buy the remaining shares following completion of its controlling stake, in a deal that will move the U.S. beverage company closer to building a $30 billion nutrition business by 2020.

The price of $33 per American depositary receipt represented a 32 percent premium to the 30-day average trading price of Wimm-Bill-Dann's U.S.-listed shares.

The deal will see PepsiCo, which already owns Lebedyansky, overtake Coca-Cola Co as Russia's biggest juice maker -- the spot it lost earlier this year when its U.S. rival bought Nidan, Russia's fourth-largest juice maker.

The deal will raise PepsiCo's annual global revenues from nutritious and functional foods to nearly $13 billion from around $10 billion.

Wimm-Bill-Dann's Moscow-listed shares soared 40 percent on news of the acquisition.

"This is an unprecedentedly high price for the Russian food market as the Russian consumer market as a whole. Wimm-Bill-Dann has been valued at a multiple of 18 times 2010 EBITDA, which suggests there is an enormous interest from western strategic investors," Renaissance Capital analyst Natalya Zagvozdina said.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Additional reporting by Maria Plis; Editing by Dan Lalor)