Spain’s Laboratorios Almirall has announced more details about its eagerly-awaited offering of some shares and revealed that its earnings for 2006 soared 25%.
Almirall is scheduled to list in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia on June 20 and is offering around 27% of its share capital, which could rise to 30%. The remainder will stay in the hands of chief executive Jorge Gallardo, his brother Antonio and the entrepreneur Daniel Bravo Andreu (the brothers currently control 89.4% of Almirall and Mr Bravo holds the rest).
The offering is structured into three tranches, and the first, which has started today, is for institutional investors. The latter two, for retail Spanish investors and for employees, will begin on on June 4, while a purchase option or ‘green shoe’ has been granted to the financial institutions leading the offering, including Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Banco Santander.
The offering, the shares of which are expected to be priced at 12.5-15.5 euros (valuing the firm at around 2-2.5 billion euros), will bring more liquidity to the stock and provide extra funds to support its R&D efforts, most notably for Eklira (aclidinium bromide) for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Almirall also reported a 3% increase in turnover for last year to 758 million euros, while net profits increased 25% to 147.2 million euros, mainly due to international performance. Some 70% of sales last year came from the company's 10 top-sellers and four of those originated from Almirall's own R&D – the migraine treatment Almorgran (almotriptan), the antihistamine Ebastel (ebastine), the anti-inflammatory Airtal (aceclofenac) and the antacid Almax (almagate).
The firm was particularly pleased with its performance in international markets, especially France and Italy, where sales were boosted by Almirall obtaining Italian licensing rights to the gastrointestinal drug Pantopan (pantoprazole). The company also revealed figures for the first quarter of 2007 which showed that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation was up 7.3% to 62 million euros, while turnover increased 2.4% to 213.6 million euros.
McKillop joins board
Finally, Almirall also announced it had appointed three new members to its board of directors, notably Sir Tom McKillop, the former chief executive of AstraZeneca who is also the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
