(News Bulletin 247) – The group will continue negotiations with the group of investors led by Daniel Kretinsky. The Czech businessman’s revised bid to bail out the company shows a slightly different dilution than expected. But that is not reflected in the share price.

Casino shares resume trading on Tuesday. The title of the distribution group in the midst of financial restructuring had been suspended the day before, pending a press release which was to follow the examination of the last capital contribution offer still in the running, that of Daniel Kretinsky.

Allied with entrepreneur Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, the Czech businessman rallied to his cause this weekend the British investment fund Attestor, one of Casino’s key creditors, which helped push the Niel trio -Pigasse-Zouari, carrier of the other offer initially in the race, to throw in the towel.

Casino announced late Monday evening that it had, based on a unanimous recommendation from its board of directors, decided to continue discussions with both the group of investors led by Daniel Kretinsky as well as with its creditors. to find an agreement on the restructuring of its heavy debt (more than 7 billion euros at the end of June) by the end of July.

This therefore allows the action to quote again, the title Casino losing 11.8% at 11:15 am to 2.77 euros.

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A dilution that is still not sufficiently visible in the course

Note that Daniel Kretinsky has slightly revised his copy compared to the first version of his offer, submitted in early July. The equity contribution remains higher than the injection targeted by Casino (a minimum of 900 million euros). But it is now planned at 1.2 billion euros, against 1.35 billion euros in the first version of the project, in order to leave more room for creditors.

Of these 1.2 billion euros, 925 million euros will be contributed by the holding companies of Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, as well as by Attestor. The balance will come from a capital increase open to creditors and existing shareholders, with however priority given to creditors.

Another slight modification: the amount of secured debt converted into capital is a little less (1.336 billion euros against 1.5 billion euros in the first version).

In the end, the existing shareholders, once the restructuring is over, would still be greatly diluted, apart of course from the holding companies of Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière.

The current holders of the company would thus find themselves with 0.3% of the capital. And this before the impact of equity warrants (BSA) – equity derivative instruments that are similar to options – which would be allocated to the holding companies of Daniel Kretinsky and Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière as well as to Attestor.

The first version of the draft provided that the share of current Casino shareholders would fall to 0.2% post-restructuring.

In all cases the potential dilution of shareholders amounts to more than 99%. This is hardly reflected in the current Casino share price, which “only” fell by 61% over one month.

“’Very clearly we are not there”, judges a financial analyst. “A possible explanation is that Casino shares are very clearly held by individual investors with whom there is always more inertia to realize the losses in value and to understand the impact of this dilution. decorrelated from the fundamentals”, he develops.