China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) It will buy 32.77% of the Galician Constructora Grupo Puentes that retains the Otero family, founder of the company, according to sources from the market known to the process.
The Asian group, subsidiary of the Chinese giant Communications Construction Company (CCCC), the fourth largest builder conglomerate of the world for income, He entered the Capital of Grupo Puentes in 2020, when he took 66.54%. Now, in compliance with the signed pacts, it will be done with the actions that the president of the company, José Manuel Otero, maintains, to take practically 100% of the capital (there is a 068% motor).
The shareholders agreement established the company’s operation regime until 2025 and established the right of CRBC to, as of December 31, 2024, urge Bens Patricios, the Otero vehicle, to sell its participation. On the opposite side, the family also had the right to demand the sale of their actions to the Chinese group. Recently, CRBC has communicated to Bens Patricios its intention to exercise the right of acquisition.
The process will begin soon and the road map of the Chinese company runs to specify the purchase before summer weeks. To do this, Grupo Puentes has to approve the audited accounts of 2024 that will serve as a basis to establish the assessment of the Spanish infrastructure company through a pre -established formula. In 2020, when the Chinese firm broke into the capital of Galician with a control position, The valuation exceeded 100 million euros. If there is agreement on the details, the estimate is that the transaction will occur before summer. If there is not, and the process is enquista, It could be delayed from a few months to years (In case of prosecuting).
According to the latest annual accounts published, corresponding to 2023, group bridges, directed as CEO of Purification Torreblanca, registered revenues of 343.2 million euros, with a gross exploitation result (EBITDA) of 24 million, six times more than a year earlier. In 2024, the business figure, in the absence of official closure, stood between 435 and 445 million, thus spraying its historical record. However, The portfolio was strongly deteriorated, from 800 million to less than 500 million. A very relevant reduction that calls into question the sustainability of the company’s future income, which faces in the coming months the challenge of increasing hiring to ensure workload.
In 2023, international activities represented 62.5% of the Bridge Group business, which expands its presence to several markets in Latin America and Central America, such as Chile, Panama and Costa Rica.
The Otero family sold 66.54% of bridges in 2020 to CRBC for Receive the financial muscle that the company needed to hire in the framework of the pandemic and thus guarantee your future viability.
When CRBC entered the capital of Grupo Puentes, The company’s expectation was to achieve important synergies To aspire to contracts of until then unattainable dimensions, especially in the concessional field given the financial capacity of the Chinese group. On his side, with bridges, CRBC aspired to open the entrance doors to Latin America.
After five years, the opportunities that have materialized jointly have been only one, and at the beginning of the relationship. In 2020, Grupo Puentes and its partner took the concession of the Red Maule hospitals group in Chile. The financial closure, for 360 million, occurred at the end of 2023. On the contrary, in these years, Puentes has seen its options reduced in some projects in Lithuania, Costa Rica and Panama for the alliance with its Chinese shareholder, while it has been banned in the United States.
Grupo Puentes will face with the share movement a new stage already without José Manuel Otero, which founded the company in 1977. The departure of Galician family replica (although with important differences) what happened in another Spanish construction company, Aldede, in which another Chinese giant, China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC), diluted in 2023 the position of the Fernández Rubio family to just 1%. He did it through capital expansion, movement that in no CRBC can execute in bridges.
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