The president of Grupo Sura, Gonzalo Pérez, told this newspaper on Thursday: “the companies of the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño are public and are exposed to public takeover bids (opa)”, and that is what will happen again in the coming days when the Gilinski Group, after authorizations from the Financial Superintendence, start receiving acceptances for shares of Grupo Argosafter the takeover bid he launched on Thursday night.
(Offer by Grupo Argos, lower than those of Nutresa and Sura. Will it be enough?).
The group chaired by Jaime Gilinski wants to acquire between 26% and 32.5% of Grupo Argos, chaired by Jorge Mario Velásquez, and which is in the infrastructure market.
For this takeover bid, the purchase price for each share of the issuer will be US$4.08, which will be paid in cash and in pesos or dollars, and the offer is for up to US$880 million, that is, around $3.6 billion.
(Gilinski’s arrival in Argos would shake energy and works sectors).
After having carried out six takeover bids, three on Grupo Nutresa and three on Grupo Sura, Grupo Gilinski has 30.8% of the main food processor in the country and owns 34.5% of the GEA financial holding company.
And consulted analysts say that this is a new test for the GEA, which after nearly 45 years of having established the system of cross-ownership participations or also the so-called share castling, to protect itself from hostile purchases by other economic groups or from the entry of drug traffickers, is seeing that an old competitor, leveraged by substantial resources from a group from the emirate of Abu Dhabi, is offering attractive prices to enter as a major shareholder.
For the GEA, this is a new attempt by the new shareholder of Grupo Sura and Nutresa to take a stake in the third column in which it had not entered directly.e: Grupo Argos, linked to cement activities, infrastructure, roads, airports and energy.
In addition, in the future of GEA, as the president of Grupo Sura says, in principle there should not be a change in the growth strategy with the arrival of Gilinski at Nutresa and Sura, and what would be expected of Grupo Argos in the coming weeks. .
Jaime Gilinski himself said so before the shareholders’ meetings in March, in which he confirmed that he wants to work with the management of the two companies where he is already a partner to make them grow and seek new markets and businesses.
THE BUTS
The specialist in variable income from the firm Acciones & Valores, Daniela Triana, considers that the market was not expecting this latest takeover bid, although the growth in Grupo Sura’s share price in recent days, while all the other shares recorded heavy losses , it was a sign that some already knew that a new operation was being generatedalthough it was not known that it was necessarily by Grupo Argos.
“The takeover bid comes when the gains of the Colcap stock index have been erased, the appetite for risk is low and the markets generate losses, in addition to the crowd for the first presidential round,” he says.
The analyst considers that the price of US$4.08 per share (about $16,500) “is very little. It is not attractive at all because on January 18, the title reached $17,000 on the market. It is a thermometer to pass another opa. But it is also difficult to know if it will be the first or the first and last”.
For the GEA, the process again, as happened with the six previous takeover bids, it is not attractive and extraordinary assemblies will come to deliberate on the salewhich could be said in advance that there could be refusals to sell.
But the specialist in equities assures that “for minority shareholders it may be a good option, although it is not known if it is the only one or the Gilinskis are going to improve the price, as in the previous processes, although it is what the market would expect” .
Directly, the GEA owns 52.23% of the property of this infrastructure holding company.
The majority is dominated by Grupo Sura, Grupo Nutresa, several Colombian pension and severance funds, international funds, companies from Antioquia commercially linked to that business group, and some natural persons.
The Sura group owns 35.2% of the property of Grupo Argos, Grupo Nutresa has 12.4%.
BRIEFCASE
