Italy’s wealthy Bonomi family has increased its stake in Club Méditerranée to 10.07% of shareholders capital and this is not the end. Bonomi family’s target is a 15-20 pct stake in few days tilla maximum of a 29.9 pct stake, MF-Milano Finanza writes today. Strategic Holdings sarl, an investment veichle 100 pct owned by Bonomi family’s BI-Invest holding, will go on shopping Club Med stocks in a number representing 1 pct shareholders capital stake per day at least so that they will come to a 15.20 pct stake by Friday May 23rd.
Next Friday will be infact the last day of the tender offer launched on Club Med shares by Chinese Fosun International and French private equity operator Ardian at 17.50 euro per share for a total of 558 million euros. However Club Med shares price hase been quite higher than that on the Paris Stock Exchange in the last few days and yesterday it closed at 19.10 euros.
The tender offer will suceed only if Club Med shares representing more than 50 pct will be delivered to the offer. At the moment share for just 34.23 pct have been delivered, included shares in Fosun and Ardian’s portfolio (a total of 19.33 pct).
Last Monday May 19th Strategic Holdings bought 427.635 share at an average price of 18.96 euros per share, taking its position to a 10.07 pct stake in Club Med. BI-Invest bought its first 1.8 pct tranche at the beginning of April, it reached 4,6 pct at the end of Aprile and 6.5 pct at the beginning of May.
In a press release by the French supervisory Authority on financial markets, AMF (download here the French press release), which was compulsory as BI-Invest breached the 10 pct level of shareholders cpaital in a listed company, is written that Strategic Holdings «has no intention to take control of Club Med at this point (and this is why Strategic Holdings does not aim at overcome the level at which it would be compelled to launch a compulsory tender offer) as this is not part of its actual strategy». The latter words are quite important however.
This actually means that the Bonomi family are not seeking to take control of Club Med at this point. However, its stratecgy might change in a second phase, after next June 3rd results for the bidding offer will be published. The AMF press release infact writes that “whenever the tender offer has not a positive result, Strategic Holdings might examine the situation together with private equity funds managed by operators (Investindustrial Private Equity) which are indirectly controlled by BI-Invest Holdings”.
This is to say that BI-Invest won’t launch a counter-offer now, but if Fosun and Ardian’s offer is not to have a positive result, BI-Invest might luanch its own tender offer together with Investindustrial. In the meantime Strategic Holdings will ask for a representative member in Club Med’s Board of directors.
The AMF press release says also that Strategic Holdings is not acting together with any other investor now. In the last few days some French press wrote that the Bonomi family might have an agreement with the Benetton family, the wealthy Italian family which controls the Benetton casual wear brand. The Benetton family actually told that they won’t deliver to the offer their Club Med shares (hold in Edizione holding‘s portfolio) representing a 2.1% stake but they actually told that they would an year ago, when the tender offer was launched (before a complicated legal action started against the offer by some minority shareholders, the legal action having ended just last April 29th with a ruling by Paris Court favourable to Fosun and Ardian). Fosun and Ardian have already gone to their legals on the matter (download here the press release).
At this price Club Med is valued at around 6x its ebitda, that is to say a rather low multiple for the sector, with a 2013 ebitda of 118 million euros (from 126 millions in 2012) and stable revenues of 1.48 billion euros. In the first semester ended last April ebitda was 85 million (from 81 millions in H1 2013) and revenues were 776 millions (from 758 millions).
Andrea Bonomi and its Investindustrial are generally quite good at investing. Investindustrial paid back one billion euros to its investorssince last Novwember 2013 (see a previous post of BeBeez). The figure comes from rich exits from prevoius investments such as the one in Italian bank, Banca Popolare di Milano, and the last one in the European helicopter emergency service group Avincis (see a previous post of BeBeez). But some pay back to Investindustrial’s investors came also from some dividend recap and refinancing deals by other portfolio’s companies (i.e. the Spanish park theme PortAventura, which issued 400 million euros of bond last December for the purpose of refinancing debt and paying a 150 million euros dividend to its shareholders).
