Portobello is in seller mode. The Spanish private equity fund is analyzing the sale of Grupo CTC, a company specialized in outsourcing, this year, after the failed attempt in 2018, according to market sources. The company’s valuations start at 200 million euros.
After a 2021 of intense buying activity –in which it acquired Legálitas, the former Ferrovial Servicios, the plastics manufacturer Caiba and the Italian Farmol, as well as the Condis supermarkets and the clinical analysis company AGQ Labs, with its recent minority fund– , now comes the turn for Portobello to hang the sale sign on one of its investees. Especially when you plan to launch a new fund at the end of the year and you need to prove to your investors that you can make profitable and successful trades.
In addition to divestment in Grupo CTC, the fund is also considering two other operations. The first is the sale of the sensory marketing company Trison, for which it has signed up Cannacord. The idea is to launch the sale process after the summer. Another company that is considering selling is the manufacturer of spices and condiments for food, Sabater.
Portobello built Grupo CTC from the merger of Stock Uno and CTC Outsourcing. It is one of the historical holdings of the fund, which it acquired in 2015 and later transferred to its first secondary fund. A vehicle with which he currently also controls Mediterránea de Cátering and the stake in Angulas Aguinaga that he did not sell to PAI.
Portobello already tried to get rid of Grupo CTC in 2018, when it ordered its sale to Deloitte, but which it decided to paralyze months later due to the effect of the outbreak of the procés and the independence referendum in Catalonia in October of that year, for being a company with headquarters in Barcelona. He sounded out the market again to carry out this operation in 2019, at that time with the advice of Natixis. At that time it was the increases in the minimum wage of the Government of Pedro Sánchez that complicated an operation in a sector highly dependent on labor. Two years later, the M&A department of this French bank is also emerging as the advisor for the operation, although Portobello has not yet granted the mandate.
figures
Grupo CTC accumulates 28 years of history and has three offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon, and 12 delegations. It has a staff of 9,000 workers and more than 500,000 square meters managed. It is a national leader in outsourcing, with a focus on the management of labor-intensive industrial processes, logistics chain management and business processes at the point of sale. Its client portfolio includes Eroski, Carrefour, Decathlon or Seur.
In 2019, the last year with audited accounts deposited with the Mercantile Registry, it registered a profit of 1.78 million. income was 217, 68 million.
Since 1986, when the company that Juan Cruz Alcalde runs today was founded, the firm has passed through the hands of various venture capital funds. The first was Espiga Capital, which sold its stake to Ibersuizas in 2006. This historic fund transferred this company along with the rest of its investees to Portobello, the fund founded by some of the former directors of Ibersuizas after a conflict with some of its shareholders. In 2013, it merged Stock Uno with Grupo CTC, which was in the hands of Suma Capital. And in 2015 he starred in the first major secondary operation of Spanish venture capital, by transferring the firm to a vehicle participated in with Harbor Vest.