CriteriaCaixa invests $2.2 billion in listed companies in two months

With a speed never seen in the Black Towers of Barcelona’s Diagonal, Caixa criteriaholding company of the La Caixa Foundation, deployed investment offensive in Spanish listed companies, which already amounts to about 2.2 billion ebison.

This figure does not include the approximately 1,200 million that the next purchase of new Telefónica shares will entail. in order to increase the share in the telecommunications group from 5% to 10%, the operation has already been approved by the board of directors, nor the takeover bid that Criteria plans to submit to Naturgy along with the Taqa group.based in the United Arab Emirates.

Investments in access control systemsapproved on Thursday by the supreme governing body of Criteria and announced yesterday, for now represents the last major movement of the new phase of the holding, chaired by Isidro Faine and under the leadership since the end of January of this month of Angel Simon.

Appearing in a construction group represents payment of 983 million euros and it only comes two weeks after the agreement reached with Colonial for the investment group to increase its participation in the real estate company to 17% through an injection of 350 million and the contribution of assets worth 272 million euros.

Earlier, at the end of April, “Criterion” bought 3.05% of the capital of Puig Brands as part of the IPO of a perfumery, cosmetics and fashion company.

Three weeks earlier, the La Caixa investment group completed a project worth around 500 million euros. acquisition of an additional 2.5% stake in Telefónicauntil it doubles its participation in the company and reaches 5% of the capital.

Cash and dividends

All these investments, which revolutionized the Criteria perimeter in record time, were able to Financing a holding in two ways. On the one hand, with almost 1 billion euros of liquidity with which it closed last year was between 550 million in cash and cash equivalents and 430 million in undrawn credit policies. On the other hand, Criteria included more €1.2 billion in dividendsmainly from CaixaBank and Telefónica.

To cope with the additional investment effort that will be required due to the new commitment to Telefonica (where Criteria seeks to match the 10% government participation) and the projected takeover bid for Naturgy, the holding company will have to resources from the sale of assets and may increase its liabilities.

The company has the opportunity to increase its debt, which at the end of last year amounted to 4.4 billion euros. In 2016, before he left Abertis, the figure was around €8.7 billion.

On the sales side, Criteria is trying to unlock the Saba operation., a parking company with a book value of €700 million. Merger talks with Belgian group Interparking last year failed, but the holding company remains determined to exit Saba, which is set to reach an agreement with the creditor bank before refinancing its debt. . Moreover, the Criteria would begin reduce your participation in Cellnexwhere the stated participation is 4.36%.