Kraft Heinz Growth Depends on Mayochup or M&A

As of Monday, credit analysts at Moody’s Investors Service were just beginning to feel optimistic about the packaged-food giant. Since the 2015 merger that brought together Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz, the company’s private equity managers have extracted more cost savings than expected and retired some debt. Now, with the merger integration largely complete, Moody’s changed its outlook to positive from stable, saying it expects Kraft Heinz’s debt-to-Ebitda ratio to fall “sustainably below” 4 this year, down from 5.2 when the deal first closed.