Grifols is working to respond to the CNMV against accusations by the bearish Gotham fund of concealing its accounts and hiding part of its debt. Meanwhile, his shares have started this Friday with a new drop, which has reached 18% (with minimums of the last five years) and that around two in the afternoon it was reduced to 9.94%. His shares were worth 8.93 euros at that time. This value means that, since the beginning of the crisis this week, the Spanish giant of blood products has left around 3,000 million euros of its value on the stock market: 5,430 million compared to the 8,400 million with which the market closed on Monday .
Company sources explain that this Friday's fall, three of five days with significant reductions in the valuation, could be linked to an error made by the Refinitiv platform – the company that manages the data of the manager of the London Stock Exchange, which mistakenly stated that Santander was sustaining a 64% cut in the company's valuation, when in reality it values its share price at 27.8 euros. In any case, in addition to bearish investors like Gotham, others have decided to reduce their presence in the capital of Grifols, controlled by the founding family with around 30% of the capital through different companies. Capital Research, the fourth largest shareholder, has decided to reduce its exposure. from 5.689% to 5.104%, it has communicated to the CNMV. The sale occurred on Wednesday.
Grifols management, led by its president, Thomas Glanzmann, held a meeting with analysts on Thursday to defend itself against Gotham's accusations, which ended up having no effect. The stock then began to suffer a drop in value, after Grifols' stock rose in the first part of the day. Álvaro Aristegui, an analyst at Renta 4, believes that this fall had nothing to do with the explanations of the managers, but rather with a concerted action of stock sales that started the stock's collapse again. The company's executives denied the accusations and indicated that they are preparing the response to the CNMV, after the regulator gave them ten days to defend themselves against the accusations of Gotham City Research, the firm that already brought down Gowex in 2014.
The Gotham report maintains that Grifols uses Scranton Enterprise, a company based in the Netherlands and of which the Grifols family is a partial shareholder, to contain the debt of the group of blood derivatives, 9.5 billion, which is the main problem that Grifols is facing and for which which has suffered changes in management, staff cuts and sales of investees due to the distrust it generates among investors. Scranton acquired the Haema and BPC companies from Grifols, which have blood collection centers, but has continued to include these firms in its accounts to increase its EBITDA and thus reduce the company's debt ratio. Grifols argues that he can do it because he has a buyback option on those two companies, despite having no intention of executing it.
The crisis unleashed on Monday by the investment fund's report is a new turn for Grifols' price, very volatile over the last year as a result of the distrust generated by its actions to reduce its leverage and the rumors in the market towards a possible capital increase that would contribute to diluting its debt, but also the value of its share.
At the last shareholder meeting of the blood products manufacturer, it was decided that this year, and for the years 2025 and 2026, Deloitte would be the company in charge of its audits, replacing KPMG. One of the questions is whether, given the scandal unleashed by Gotham, the audit of the accounts changes or whether the parameters that the current auditor has set in recent years are maintained.
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