Goldman Sachs Exceeds 6% in Grifols After the New Gotham Offensive

The investment bank Goldman Sachs has increased its participation in the capital of Grifols from 5.8% to 6.4% , in a context marked by the latest offensive by the bearish fund Gotham City Research against the blood products firm, which took place this Tuesday, coinciding with the publication of its accounts for the first quarter of the year.

Goldman Sachs owns more than 27 million shares of the blood products company

Melqart, for its part, has reduced its position to 0.9% in the Catalan company through the Melqart Opportunities Master Fund , as recorded in the records of the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) consulted by Europa Press .

Goldman Sachs’ 6.4% stake, through Goldman Sachs International, in Grifols is divided between 1.5% voting rights and 4.8% financial instruments, while Melqart’s stake is entirely to financial instruments, with 0.9% in contracts for differences (CFD).

In total, Goldman Sachs owns more than 27 million shares of the blood products company, which at the current market price (about 9.95 euros) has a value of more than 273 million euros. For its part, Melqart has a portfolio that is close to four million Grifols securities, valued at more than 39.8 million euros.

Grifols anticipates revenues exceeding 7,000 million euros by 2024

Thus, Grifols shares fell more than 2.2% on the stock market this Thursday , around half past two in the afternoon, until its shares were exchanged at a unit price of 9.95 euros.

The company published its results this Tuesday, with a net profit of 21.4 million euros during the first quarter of this year , compared to the losses of 108.2 million in the first quarter of 2023, a period affected by the extraordinary costs of restructuring.

Coinciding with the Gotham attack, the company, which placed its net debt according to its balance sheet at 10,948 million euros , has also stressed that it is moving forward to meet its 2024 guidance , which includes: revenues of more than 7,000 million euros and a result adjusted gross operating profit (ebitda) above 1,800 million euros.

New bearish attack

Gotham launched a new attack this Tuesday against Grifols by stating that BPC Plasma, a company controlled by the Catalan firm, lent “over the years” funds that it “received from a third party, most likely Grifols”, to the Scranton family office. . “We believe that BPC over the years has lent funds it received from a third party, most likely Grifols, to Scranton, as we saw Haema do,” Gotham stated in its new attack on the Catalan firm.

The bearish fund, which published this Tuesday the second part of the report “How an advance payment is converted into a loan”, has indicated that, based on its understanding and analysis, it has seen the same actions in the case of BPC as with Haema, also a subsidiary of the hemoderivatives company . However, unlike Haema, as the bear fund has highlighted, BPC has since declared a dividend to Scranton, amounting to €266 million.

“Instead of paying this cash dividend, BPC has repaid the loans it made to Scranton, which leads us to believe that the family office never intended to repay these loans,” Gotham said.

In this context, the bearish fund has considered that “almost all of this sum has been suspiciously transferred from Grifols shareholders to Scranton shareholders, giving the appearance of having been transferred incorrectly.”

“In our opinion, the fact that there were Scranton shareholders on the board of Grifols, while this transaction was being carried out, seems a total failure of corporate governance,” Gotham noted.

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