CVC sells its 13.8% stake and exits Naturgy’s share capital, having carried out an accelerated placement aimed at institutional investors in which it successfully placed 11.08% of the shares at a price of €28.55 per share, representing a 4.6% discount on Tuesday’s closing price.
Reported by Consejeros Editorial Team
On Tuesday at market close, CVC commissioned the sale of an 11.08% stake in Naturgy via a book-building process. The price of this placement was €28.55 per share, representing a discount of 4.64% compared to the market close. At the placement price, this stake is valued at around €3.1 billion.
In December last year, CVC had already taken a first step towards selling its shares in Naturgy by rewriting the shareholders’ agreement it had with the March family to jointly manage 18% of the energy company. This allowed for a potential exit by either CVC or March, regardless of what the other party did.
CVC entered Naturgy in 2018 when it bought the stake from Repsol at a price of around €18 per share. Since then, the share price has risen by more than 50% and has also received significant dividends during this period.
CVC’s disposal comes just a few months after the exit of BlackRock and GIP, which sold the 18% stake they held in Naturgy in two transactions, one in December 2025 and the other in March 2026.
Following the exit of CVC and BlackRock, the market does not expect any further sales of significant blocks in the short term by Naturgy’s remaining shareholders. The shareholding structure is therefore as follows: la Caixa is the largest shareholder with over 28%, IFM is second with 15%, and the March family remains the third-largest shareholder with 5%.
Share price down 4%
Renta 4’s analysis team notes in its daily report on Tuesday that, although this move is likely to cause a adjustment of the share price to the placement price – at the start of the trading day, shares were down by more than 4% – ‘we consider the news to be positive as it allows the share price to gain greater liquidity, as well as removing one of the sources of selling pressure’.
They also note that the placement discount slightly increases the potential for our target price, which, together with an attractive dividend policy (DY of over 6.5%), leads us to reiterate our Overweight rating for the time being.
‘We will see whether this exit by CVC, together with GIP’s exit in March, could lead the Group to review its strategy for the coming years.’
For their part, analysts at Bankinter consider that CVC’s exit from Naturgy was a possible scenario, given that it had already exceeded the typical holding period for a private equity firm in a company’s shareholding structure.
“At the placement price (€28.55 per share), we view Naturgy as a good buying opportunity, with a dividend yield of 6.3% and a 2026 P/E ratio of 13.7x. Naturgy’s market price quickly recovered from the discounts applied in previous placements following the exits of Blackrock/GIP, and we believe the same will happen again on this occasion”.
