Wednesday, March 27

Solarpack’s hard core takes 8% after EQT’s takeover bid



The founders of Solarpack, the Galíndez family, will accompany the company in its new stage of growth after the takeover bid launched by the Swedish fund EQT last June. As financial sources have confirmed to The newspaper of SpainJosé María Galíndez – co-founder and vice president of the energy company – will keep a stake of close to 5% in Solarpack, while his nephew Pablo Burgos – co-founder and CEO – will keep 3% of the capital. In total, through the companies Beraunberri (Galíndez) and Burgest 2007 (Burgos) se will be left with 8% of the energy company after reinvesting 75 million euros. In this way, the company’s hard core will remain in shareholding after the delisting from the stock market, which became effective on December 28.

The EQT fund, led in Spain by Asís Echániz, launched a takeover bid for 100% of Solarpack’s securities in the middle of last June, offering 26.5 euros per share of the energy company, valuing it thus in 881 million euros. Acceptance was 96% thanks to the 45% premium offered by Veleta BidCo regarding the closing of the stock market the day prior to the launch of the takeover bid, which took place on June 16, 2021. At that time, the management company of Swedish venture capital already had 51% insured corresponding to the founding family, who supported EQT’s plans from the outset.

The Galíndez family founded Solarpack in 2005 making it one of the first companies to develop and generate solar photovoltaic energy in Spain, with a presence in markets in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. TO At the end of 2018 it debuted on the stock market, with a valuation of 266 million euros. The takeover bid launched by the Wallenberg fund (one of the richest families in Sweden) involves multiplying its value by more than three with respect to its opening on the stock market. For the Galíndez family, this transaction represents an income of 450 million euros. EQT was advised by Credit Suisse and Clifford Chance, while the founders enlisted the assistance of Citi and Cuatrecasas.

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EQT’s takeover bid valued Solarpack in an amount more than three times higher than that obtained in its stock market premiere in December 2018

This operation, named public to private, It is very common among venture capital funds, which set out to ‘fish’ for companies on the stock market, considering that they are trading below value that it could take out in the private market. In fact, the Swedish fund carried out a similar transaction at the end of 2019: it launched a takeover bid for Parques Reunidos together with Corporación Financiera Alba and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) through the company Piolin BidCo, valuing the leisure company at 1,130 millions of euros. Later it also delisted it from the stock market, where it had returned in 2016 after the forced exit in 2004 caused by another venture capital fund, Advent. Both operations were articulated through the fund’s fifth investment vehicle for infrastructure, which it raised in 2020 with commitments amounting to 15,000 million euros.

Great competition

In this sense, the Swedish manager has not been the only one that has dared to conquer the Spanish stock market in recent years, since other well-known funds such as KKR or Investindustrial have carried out similar operations with listed companies such as Telepizza or Natra. For them, it is a way to gain control of companies in a cheaper way than in the usual processes in which they compete. For example, in the case of EQT – which invests between 100 and 600 million per transaction – it is very difficult to be able to buy a company outside of an auction in which it competes with other heavyweights in the sector, so it is common for this type of funds will play all the work to the highest bid.

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A fact that becomes more notable in the world of renewable energies, where the great investment appetite has triggered prices generating a boom in million-dollar operations. Added to this is also a strong increase in competition: the funds do not compete only against other risk capitals, they also compete against traditional energy companies that are immersed in a transformation of their business towards the green world, against insurers or large equity companies, which They look for assets that offer good and stable returns over time. Thus, in recent months well-known transactions such as the Repsol and Amancio Ortega alliance in renewables or Naturgy’s purchase of Ence’s photovoltaic plant, among others, have been closed.

Who is EQT?

The Swedish fund opened an office in Spain in 2015 at the hands of Daniel Pérez Wilmarck, who gave the witness at the head of this square to Echániz (from KKR) in autumn 2017. From the infrastructure division, EQT has carried out Two other acquisitions in Spain that it subsequently sold: the fiber optic operator Adamo, which it just sold to Ardian for around 800 million euros; and Islalink, the submarine fiber optic cable operator that runs from the Iberian Peninsula to the Balearic Islands. Just a few months after the incorporation of Echániz, EQT strengthened the Spanish office with the signing of one of the best-known executives in the sector in Spain: Carlos Santana, who since then has been in charge of leading the practice of Private Equity (pure risk capital) of the firm in Spain. Santana has starred in famous investments in Spain, such as the Idealista housing portal for 1,300 million euros (the largest operation of a national dotcom), Freepik (the Spanish ‘Google’ of images) or Igenomix, dedicated to the assisted reproduction that it has recently sold to the Swedish group Vitrolife. In addition, they have recently launched a specific division to invest in real estate in Spain led by Carlos Molero.

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