Naturgy’s shares are returning to calm after yesterday’s shock after the failure of negotiations between CriteriaCaixa and the Emirati Taqa to launch a joint takeover bid for the Spanish company. Energy shares have turned upwards, after starting the trading session with moderate declines, and now add around 0.7%, to 20.30 euros. In the year it accumulates 20%.
On Monday afternoon, and with the market already closed, CriteriaCaixa announced to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) that it had ended negotiations with Taqa to launch a takeover bid for Naturgy. In recent weeks, both firms had analyzed the possibility of a joint operation over 100% of the energy company to reorganize their capital. The breakdown of the talks caused Naturgy to record a historic drop in the stock market yesterday.
Despite this, CriteriaCaxixa stressed its support for the transformation plan in which Naturgy is immersed. “CriteriaCaixa reaffirms its commitment as a long-term investor to the Naturgy industrial project,” they point out in Link Securities. At the time, and CriteriaCaixa recalls this in its statement to the CNMV, the holding company reported that it normally maintains conversations to explore possible partners that could allow Naturgy to deepen its transformation and accelerate its energy transition.
CriteriaCaixa owns 26.7% of Naturgy’s capital, while the British fund CVC maintains 20.7% and the American fund GIP – recently acquired by BlackRock – 20.6%.
From XTB, analyst Javier Cabrera considers that Taqa’s withdrawal from the operation is an example of the difficulty that corporate operations have, and how “dangerous” it is to take something for granted in the financial markets. He points out that he “sees it as normal that Taqa has withdrawn from the negotiations, because this operation included, on the one hand, the strategic company component, with government reluctance and, on the other, a totally stuck shareholding.”
Bankinter analysts have changed their recommendation on Naturgy from neutral to sell. “Criteria will continue looking for new options and it is possible that another interested group could appear, but until this happens the price could be negatively affected,” they comment. They explain that “there have been several factors that have ultimately hindered the success of the operation, among them, the exit price of the funds, the details of the co-management agreement with Caixa and the possible geopolitical drift of the entry of Taqa -controlled by the Government of the Emirates – in the shareholding”.
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