(News Bulletin 247) – Invexans has announced that it has sold 4.2 million Nexans shares at a unit price of 80 euros, a discount of 9.4% compared to the stock market price on Tuesday.

Nexans finds itself under pressure on the stock market on Wednesday. The cable manufacturer fell 7% around 3 p.m., posting the largest drop in the SBF 120. The action of the company headed by Christopher Guérin suffered from a sale of securities by its reference shareholder, Invexans.

The Chilean company announced that it had sold 4.2 million Nexans shares, or 9.6% of the capital. This subsidiary of the Quinenco conglomerate – itself owned by the Luksic family – entered the group’s capital in 2008, taking a stake of 2.5 million shares in exchange for the transfer of its assets in several Latin American countries to Nexans. Invexans then increased its stake to around 29% of the capital in 2014.

In total, the subsidiaries of Quinenco (Invexans therefore, but also Techpack) lowered their stake to 19.2% in the French cable group. These subsidiaries have made a commitment to retain their remaining securities for a period of 180 days.

A good stock market performance over the long term

In a statement made to the Chilean Stock Exchange Constable, Invexans indicates that it made this sale at a price of 80 euros per share to institutional investors, thus raising 336.3 million euros. The price per share thus shows a discount of 9.4% compared to the price of Nexans at the close of Tuesday (80 euros).

The Chilean company explains in its press release that the purpose of this sale of securities on the market is to “adjust its position in Nexans, whose value has risen sharply in recent years, in order to be able to diversify its portfolio and free up resources for new strategic investments and other corporate objectives”.

The Nexans share has indeed had a good stock market performance over the medium term. Over five years, the price has doubled, and even been multiplied by almost three, if we take as a reference the price of the summer of 2018, the year in which the company had to deal with the surprise departure of its general manager, Arnaud Poupart-Lafarge, before issuing an important earnings warning.

Arrived in July 2018, the current CEO, Christopher Guérin, then launched a major performance improvement plan, by restoring cash-destroying activities and favoring the creation of value over volumes. This made it possible to raise the group’s gross operating income (Ebitda) to 600 million euros last year against 325 million in 2018 and to more than double the return on capital employed, to 20.5%. .

This strategic plan was followed by a second, presented at the start of 2021, which aims to transform Nexans into a “pure player” in electrification, via major asset rotations. This plan should enable the group to generate an Ebitda margin of between 10% and 12% in 2024, compared to 8.9% in 2022.