With the resale of Nutresa by business units, the Gilinskis are betting on tripling their investment

However, then two more takeover bids (March and May 2022), which left the Gilinskis with about 32 percent of Nutresa shares; a series of internal disputes with other partners of the company (Sura and Argos) for control of its board of directors, which threatened to go to court, and a Framework Agreement (June 15, 2023) that ended the participation of Sura in Nutresa and generated the departure of Valle del Cauca investors from the share structure of Suramericana de Inversiones, the possibility of Nutresa becoming the first ‘creole multinational’ dissipated with the announcement made this week that the units of businesses that make up said organization will be sold separately.

As confirmed by EL TIEMPO with market sources, The Gilinskis will sell the eight business units separately in transactions they hope to close this year. In fact, they are already analyzing some proposals from investors from the United States, Europe, Mexico and Brazil, which makes them assume that they could receive around 12 billion dollars. 3.5 times more than what they paid for the entire group, of which they have 99.4 percent today.

The interest in the assets of said organization was joined this week by some food companies of Spanish origin that are requesting information about Nutresa’s businesses for sale.after the Gilinskis’ intention to segment the newly acquired group was known, as confirmed to this publishing house by a firm specialized in facilitating this type of processes in the country.

And what is for sale is not only an organization with more than 100 years of tradition in the country, if we take into account that the seed of what Nutresa is today was sown in 1920 with the creation of the National Company of Red Cross Chocolates.

Today, this business organization has eight business units in the segments of chocolates, cookies, ice cream, meat, coffee, pasta, cold drinks (Tresmontes Lucchetti) and consumer foods, with brands such as Starbucks and El Corral, among others.

There are more than 63 brands that it markets through these units in 18 countries, ranging from the United States to Chile, in which it has installed a network of 46 production plants, the majority of these (29) in Colombia.where they also have their operations center and generates close to 60 percent of their total sales.

Last year alone, in the midst of economic turbulence, Grupo Nutresa sold close to 19 billion pesos, while profits totaled more than 720,000 million. The company, through its business units, has a consolidated market share of 50.2 percent in the country, a report states.

The imminent sale of Nutresa, apart from arousing the interest of investors such as Nestlé, Mondeléz and Univeler, among others, skyrocketed the value of its share, which, given its concentration, has lost liquidity on the Stock Exchange (BVC). However, The company’s title reached a maximum this week of 65,000 pesos, far exceeding the value paid in the recent takeover bid. Only in the last trading session of the week the firm’s title rose almost 17 percent, in the midst of the expectation generated by the announcement of its largest shareholders to segment the organization to get the best out of their investment.

But what opportunity are the owners of Nutresa seeing today that perhaps they did not attend to at the time in the Antioqueño Business Group (GEA)?

For some experts in mergers, purchases and sales of companies in the country, in the business world everything is an opportunity, although in this particular operation, there may even be cultural aspects very specific to the idiosyncrasy of Antioquia.

“There are several important considerations here. One of these is a cultural issue and is that the GEA had a notion of business cohesion and it was not in its idea to separate those operations that generated social value integrated into a single organization. and with special corporate governance that empowered them in all areas,” he explained.

But it was not what the Gilinskis ended up seeing, according to the source who confirmed to EL TIEMPO the intention to sell Nutresa.

“Today multinational companies have their businesses very focused, those that make cookies are not interested in being in the meat business, for example, so the way to maximize value is not to look at Nutresa as a holding company but as a microsegmented company in its vertical. So, what ends up happening is that companies that operate in certain businesses buy what truly interests them and enhance their markets and what ultimately leads to is maximizing the value of the structure,” he commented.

Mauricio Rodríguez Múnera, expert in Leadership and Senior Management and professor at several universities, points out that: “Gilinski had the ability to identify an excellent company with a very undervalued stock and the audacity to buy it at a time of great uncertainty due to the political, social and economic turbulence that Colombia has been experiencing since the social outbreak.”

However, he does not believe that these assets can be sold for 3 or 4 times the price he paid for the organization, although he does not doubt that he and his Arab partners will make a huge profit.

Opinions shared by other consulted experts, for whom there is no doubt that investors saw a market opportunity in a company that, like many others in the country, are undervalued, so they took advantage of the moment to enter.

“Without a doubt the Gilinskis bought a business very cheap and are now going out to sell quickly, segmentedly and when the company has acquired a relevant value, a strategy that will leave them good profits,” said the expert in acquisitions and mergers consulted, who added that this operation will lead to reflection on how a market as illiquid as the Colombian one can affect the value of an asset that ends up being purchased in the capital market very cheap.

It also stands out that if the investors of these business units are different, the result will be a different corporate culture and this will bring an important enhancement to the Colombian business apparatus in terms of corporate governance and in the way of gaining efficiencies.

“For the purposes of the Colombian market there is something interesting, because just as the takeover bids were the business of 2022 and 2023, the sale of these units will be the large businesses of 2024 and 2025 and that leads to a very interesting business positioning of the Gilinski Group. Well, it leaves him in a very interesting cash position. It cannot be ignored that they are very intelligent, astute investors, and without a doubt there will be a local, regional or international business that will later catch their attention,” the source said.

Rodríguez Múnera, for his part, maintains that in Colombia there are several companies whose market price is lower than their book value, which is very attractive, considering that they are very solid and very well managed firms.

“It is possible that we will see more investors with Gilinski’s risk appetite buying cheap stocks in the coming years, betting on a thriving Colombia in the post-Petro era,” the expert noted.