LetterOne Investment Holdings Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev has acquired 3% stake in the Spanish retailer Dia and got the option for another 7% of the company. It is reported by Spanish newspaper El Pais. This information is also contained in the Dia materials posted on the website of the National Commission on the stock market in Spain.
The representative of the Dia declined to comment on the details of the transaction. The representative of LetterOne at the time of publication had not responded to a request to RBC.
On the basis of the market value of the Dia at the time of announcement of the transaction (€3.2 billion), the cost of 3% could amount to €96 million.
Dia was founded in 1979, the Spanish chain of supermarkets-discounters. Now, the group consists of 7.4 thousand stores in Spain, Brazil, Argentina and China. In the first half of 2017, the Dia revenues grew by 4.1% to €12 billion Net profit of the company decreased 9.7%, to €54 million.
In the case of the option LetterOne will become the second largest shareholder of Dia after the British investment company Baillie Gifford & Co, which owns 10,02%. After the announcement of the deal with LetterOne of Dia stock rose by 16.8%, to €6,1 per share, the market capitalization reached €3.8 billion.
This is the second acquisition for LetterOne retail market over the summer. In late June, the retail division of investment company L1 Retail announced the purchase of British retailer Holland & Barrett at the Carlyle Group. In early July it became known that Citigroup, HSBC and UBS are ready to provide a loan to a potential transaction in the amount of from £800 million to 1 billion, Reuters wrote.
L1 Retail was established in December of 2016, so, as stated, to develop the “stars of retail in the XXI century”. The company is ready to invest about $3 billion in several foreign networks that “possess leadership potential in their segments in their markets”, said LetterOne. More than 20 years the shareholders “created the largest grocery retailer in Russia,” X5 Retail Group and now the goal of the company is investment in a new generation of international retail chains, said Friedman.
