(Reuters) – Spanish drugmaker Grifols, whose shares slumped on Tuesday after hedge fund Gotham City Research questioned its accounts, has grown from a family-run blood testing lab founded in Barcelona in 1909 to a global firm with a big U.S. presence.
Grifols categorically denied any wrongdoing. In a regulatory filing it called the report “false information” and said it had disclosed all information with integrity and transparency.
To finance its international expansion, Grifols has taken on debt, which leading credit ratings agencies rate at below investment-grade. As well as factories in North Carolina, the company has a new facility due to open this year in Montreal and has made acquisitions in Europe and elsewhere.
Following are some key facts about Grifols, which uses blood plasma to make medicines such as immunoglobulin for the treatment of immunodeficiencies:
LEVERAGE
* Net financial debt of 9.5 billion euros ($10.39 billion) as of end-September, or 6.7 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA). The company’s target is to lower that debt ratio to four-to-one by 2024.
* Gotham, whose General Industrial Partners joint venture with Portsea Asset Management has a 0.57% short position in Grifols, said the leverage ratio is close to 10 to 13 times EBITDA rather than the six times reported by Grifols.
* In a filing to Spain’s CNMV market regulator, Grifols said the Gotham report was “false information” and “speculation” and that it had disclosed all information “with the highest level of integrity and transparency”.
* Grifols faces two large debt maturities in the first half of 2025, totalling about 1.85 billion euros.
MEASURES TAKEN
* Last month, Grifols agreed to sell a 20% stake in China’s Shanghai RAAS Blood Products for about $1.8 billion to Chinese company Haier Group Corporation and said it would use the proceeds to reduce debt.
* Grifols said last February that it would lay off 8.5% of its workforce, or 2,300 people, with savings of around 400 million euros annually.
* Grifols has said it cut the cost of collecting plasma by 22% as of September 2023, from its peak in July 2022.
SHARES
* Grifols shares have swung widely over the past few years as the company, whose market value peaked at 20.75 billion euros in February 2020, was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic when plasma collection was restricted.
Before Gotham’s report, Grifols’ A and B shares had a combined market value of 8.7 billion euros.
* Its top shareholders, according to CNMV, are:
Holding companies of the founding family: Deria (9.2%), Scranton Enterprises (8.67%), Ponder Trade (7.09%), Ralledor Holding (6.15%)
Capital Research Global Investors 5.66%
BlackRock 3.2%
* Out of 22 analysts that cover Grifols SA, 16 rated the stock as “strong buy” or “buy” before the Gotham report, five recommended “hold” and one “sell”.
OTHER FACTS
* In 2002, Grifols entered the U.S. market by acquiring SeraCare, now Biomat, and its 43 plasma donation centres in the United States for $117 million.
The United States and Canada accounted for 65% of Grifols’ 2023 nine-month revenues of 4.46 billion euros.
* Last May, Grifols named long-time director and global healthcare sector entrepreneur Thomas Glanzmann as its new chief executive, giving him full powers and ending the founding family’s executive leadership.
* In 2017, Grifols was the only Barcelona-based company listed on Spain’s blue chip index IBEX 35 which did not move its legal headquarters out of Catalonia during political turmoil triggered by the region’s independence bid.
($1 = 0.9146 euros)
(Reporting by Andrei Khalip, Jesus Aguado, Joan Faus, Emma Pinedo, Matteo Allievi, Jakub Olesiuk, Nell Mackenzie; Editing by David Latona and Alexander Smith)
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