Italian retail chain group Coin spa has been bought by Centenary, a newco controleld by Coin’s managers and a group of italian entrepreneurs led by Stefano Beraldo, ceo of Coin and its Milan-listed spinoff Ovs.
Mr. Beraldo told Repubblica that “Coin is to become something more than a shop. Our project is to transform the department stores in meeting points for people who might want for example see an exhibition”.
23 Coin’s mangers are owning a 25% stake in Centenary while the remaining capital is owned by some Italian entrepreneurs with stakes ranging from 5% to 15%. Among them are said to be Alessandro Bastagli (active in the fashion market and owner of Lineapiù and Shanghai Thang brands), Enzo de Gasperi (owner of furnishing and design products maker Edg), Giorgio Rossi (a former fashion entrepreneur now active in the real estate sector), Jonathan Kafri (owner of clothing company Sicem and of some luxury hotels) and a Swiss-based family office, which is a shareholder in Sempione fashion group, which in turn, together with Ovs, is the owner of the Swiss reatiler Charles Vogele. Mr. Beraldo owns a minority stake too.
Centenary has been advised by Gianni Origoni Grippo Cappelli & Partners law firm, while Latham & Watkins law firm supported Coin’s shareholders and Coin. Notary operations were conducted by Studio Busani & Partners.
COin’s sale process has been opened last Spring, when Coin’s major shareholder BC Parnters appointed Rotschild as its financial advisor for the deal (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Coin group has been controlled since 2011 by BC Partners, with its coinvestors Investindustrial and Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, and by the management, after a delisting from the Italian Stock Exchange.
More in detail, Coin, through Icon 1 sa, was controlled with an 80.5% stake by BC Partners, with a 13.68% stake by Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, with a 4.56% stake by Investindustrial (through GB Holdings) and with a 1.245% by the managers. Investors also bought some convertible financial instruments issued by Icon with some of them paying a PIK coupon (payment-in-kind, i.e. coupon is capitalized and paid at maturity). Investindustrial had subscribed the whole 57.5 million euros PIK instruments issue (see here MF Milano Finanza).
In April 2013 Coin’s shareholders made (through Icon 2 sarl) a 53.8 million euros recap in Coin in order to bring its financial position to an equilibrium and mantain its investments program (see here MF Milano Finanza). The recap was a must as the group saw its ebitda to drop to just 150 million euros in FY 2012-2013 from 186 millions the year before, while revenues were just a little lower to 1.465 billion euro from 1.492 billions.
The group then reached 1,56 billion euros in consolidated revenues in FY 2015-2016 on jan 31st 2016with a net financial debt of 358.6 millions (see here an analysis by Leanus, after free registration an login). However those figures still included Milan-listed Ovs retail chain as Coin still owned a 52.12% stake in the company after the ipo in 2015 relating to a 47.88% stake and raising 445.6 million euros.
Coin has then been selling other stakes of Coin’s capital in the last two years, last deal being the one announced last September when Coin sold a 12.3% stake in Ovs at a 6.53 euro per share price cashing in 183 million euros and reducing its remaining stake to 17.8% (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Coin group counts today 35 shops which the company is directly managing and about 70 other shops which are managed by third parties. The group posted 400 million euros in net revenues last year with 12 million euros in ebitda and no losses and was valued about 70 million euros in the Centenary deal.
This figure then is clearly not including the stake that Coin still owns in Ovs as the listed company has a 1.23 billion euros market cap. As for the remaining 17.8% stake in Ovs, Coin is said to be close to a sale.
