“Joining Ibex increases confidence in the group’s project”

Puig Brands, the family-owned beauty company that owns brands including Rabanne, Carolina Herrera and Charlotte Tilbury, will join the Ibex 35 next Monday, July 22, just two and a half months after its stock market debut.Panola, May 3, in Europe’s biggest stock market offering this year.

In an interview with EXPANSIÓN, the first since the premiere on stage, Marc Puig Guasch (Barcelona, ​​1962), president, CEO and grandson of the founder of the century-old company producing fragrances, fashion, make-up and skin care, assures that Entry into the selective index “gives credibility to Puig’s project. It is recognition of the way of doing things and the offer.”

“The forum that made this decision (the Technical Advisory Committee) interested them and represents recognition of the proposal and the project that we have,” the manager emphasizes, highlighting the speed with which it was implemented. Capricorn.

The Catalan company closed this Thursday with a capitalization of 15.103 million euros, although only Series B shares are listed on the stock exchange, while members of the Puig family own Series A shares with five times more political rights.

Marc Puig insists he is not too concerned about the company’s price dynamics. “We haven’t spent much time looking at it, but it’s true: if it was much lower or much higher, it would have caught my attention,” he says.

“I’m concerned about what we’ve committed to, how we’re managing the commitments we’ve made and the goals we’ve set. We’re taking our time,” he says. And he adds: “The evolution of the stock is confirmation that the valuation at which we went public seems to be the one that the market and investors think is right.”

“This is a very thoughtful decision and for now the reasons why we went public remain valid. We believe that the combination of the long-term perspective that the family provides with the rigor and control of the market can be useful in overcoming the challenges,” says Marc Puig.

When asked if he ever regretted jumping onto the court, the manager was clear: “Not yet, it happened very recently; ask me in five or ten years,” he says, smiling.

The operation was “a response to a structural situation, but also to our temporary situation, which did not depend on whether the market was hot, cold, open or closed,” he explains, referring to the transition between the third and fourth generations of the family.

Puig’s president understands that other Spanish companies have slowed or postponed their plans to go public, perhaps because “they haven’t yet found the response from investors that they were expecting.” “In our case, the project was attractive enough for investors to give their support. We felt that this support existed, so we continued to move forward,” he recalls.

The role of CriteriaCaixa in the capital of the group

CriteriaCaixa, the investment holding company of La Caixa Foundation, played a major role in the operation, acquiring a 3.05% stake in the IPO. “Our offer is attractive to long-term investors like Criteria,” he says. “Their arrival at Puig coincided with a change in their investment approach, and a company like ours was a good fit.” The investors who have bet on the group are international.

Ahead of the stock market debut, Puig added María Dolores Dancausa, former president of Bankinter, and Tina Müller, former director of Henkel, Opel and Douglas, to his board as independent directors. “There is the possibility of appointing new directors,” says Puig, arguing that some members will leave the board “because they have been there for many years and we have to obey what the CNMV dictates.”

“No branch of the family wants to sell”

Marc Puig admits that the decision to list only Series B shares, which have five times fewer political rights than the titles in the hands of the family, is not to the liking of some investors. “As a mechanism, in principle, some do not like it, but there are others who are supported by the conviction that there is a family behind this project that wants to continue to lead it. Therefore,” he says, “the average is not necessarily in favor, but there were those who appreciated it, because it is not an exception in other companies in the sector.”

Puig defends the group’s formula for merging all the family’s shares into a single company, Exea Empresarial Holding, and insists that “there is not a single subsidiary that it would like to sell.” Following the listing, the family reduced its participation to 71.7%, although Exea retains 92.66% of the political rights. “We have a structure in which all the company’s participation is carried out through a single corporate vehicle,” says Puig.

“We could have used,” he explains, “a system in which branches or individuals directly participated in a listed company and which could give them the freedom to sell or partially or completely liquidate their participation, but we decided to work with a joint mechanism, where the family has a unique voice in the company. Puig admits that “the difficulty is that you are very tied to the degrees of freedom to generate liquidity, although there are mechanisms for redemption; but in a company that intends to pay regular dividends, this must be enough to satisfy shareholders.” ‘needs.

“We have made public the scenario of generational change”

“The reason we went public is because we are in a generational transition scenario,” emphasizes Marc Puig, who does not specify the date of the fourth generation of the family’s entry into the business. “My grandfather,” he says, “left the leadership role to his children at a relatively early age because I thought they were better prepared, and my father’s generation also gradually gave up the reins when they thought it was appropriate. We will do it, I hope, but I don’t know when,” says Puig. The head of the company assures that the separation of the functions of president of the board of directors and CEO, which are currently entrusted to him, and remember that he will be the last Puig to wield executive power in the family business.