Belgium’s D’Ieteren group signed an agreement to buy from private equity firms Synegra Capital and Index Ventures Growth a 41% stake in the capital of Moleskine, the Milan-listed group producing notebooks, diaries, journals, bags, writing instruments and reading accessories. D’Ienteren will then launch a compulsory tender offer of the remaing shares (download here the press release).
The announcement came yesterday evening afer months of rumors on the market telling that private equity shareholders would like to divest completely their stakes after having been invested in the company for ten years (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The two funds had sold a 7% stake of Moleskine last November in an accelerated bookbuilding process and had listed the company on the Milan Stock Exchange in Spring 2013.
Of the 41% stake in Moleskine’s capital, Syntegra owns a 36.69% stake trough Appunti sarl whileIndex Ventures owns a 6.31% stake through Pentavest sarl. D’Ienteren is paying 2.40 euros per share for a totla equity value of 506 million euros, enterprise value being more or less the same as the company has a positive net financial position.
D’Ieteren is supported in the deal by its financial advisorGoldman Sachs International and by its legal advisor Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. Syntegra Capital is instead advised byi Rothschild & Co. as for the financial issues and by di Raynaud Studio Legale on the legal issues.
D’Ieteren is still controlled by the D’Ieteren family whgo founded the group in 1805 in Brussels, The group has two main activities: D’Ieteren Auto, which is a car distributor for brands such as iVolkswagen, Audi, Seat, Škoda, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche and Yamaha in Belgio; and Belron, a global leader in reparing car glasses with brands such as Carglass, Autoglass and Safelite.
Aftrer having closed the acquisition of the 41% stake of Moleskine from the funds, D’Ieteren will launch the tender offer on the remaining shares a the same 2,40 euros per share price without aiming at any particular target of control.
D’Ieteren will finance its first acquisition through its available cash (277.8 million euros at the end of last June), while it will finance the tender off with a mix of cash and banking facilities.
The company had been priced 2.3 euro per share in ipo with a 490 million euros market cap. From then on the stock never touched again that price and on the contrary reached a minimum at 1 euro per share on december 22nd 2014. From that moment the negative trend had inverted and the stock had a very good performance. Yesterday the stock closed at 2,14 euros (+0.38%) for a 454 million euros market capitalization as the news of the deal was published later in the evening.
Moleskine reached 128.13 million euros in net revenues in 2015 (from 98.67 millions in 2014) with 42.3 millions in ebitda (from 33.7 millions) and a positive net financial position of 14 millions (from a negative net financial position of 4.6 millions). In a press release about 2015 financial results, “the company is pleased to reiterate guidance for full year 2016: revenues of 148-153 millions and ebitda of 46-48 millions at current exchange rates”.
On June 30th the company had reached 60.5 million euros in revenues (+12.3%) and a 14 million euros ebitda (+6.4%), with a net financial debt of just 328k euros.
