Italian designer Roberto Cavalli is now in talks with Gulf investment firm Investcorp as a potential buyer for a stake in his fashion group. Cavalli, famous for its colorful animal prints, came close last month to the sale of a 60 pct stake to buyout firm Permira but negotiations broke apart as figures for year 2013 were published for the group. Talks between Cavalli and Investcorp, which has owned Gucci in the past and was also a bidder for the 20 percent stake in Versace, are at a preliminary stage.
It’s not clear why negotiations between Cavalli and Permira broke apart. Rumor is that on one side Permira thought a 450 million euros enterprise value for the company (or 20x ebitda) is too high on the basis of year 2013 figures. On the other side the stulist thinks the opposite.
Actually 2013 figures might be read with quite different views. On one side revenues and ebitda grew a lot: revenues were up 9% to 201 millions and ebitda was up 12% to 22.4 millions. However net profit was down by 50% and still not relevant as it was 149k euros (down from 359k euros in 2012).
