Link Securities | César González-Bueno, Sabadell’s CEO, reiterated this Friday during the presentation of Sabadell’s annual results that the takeover bid launched by BBVA at the price that has been offered makes no sense, according to Expansión newspaper.
The acquiring bank is offering one newly created share for every 5.0196 Sabadell shares and a cash component of €0.29 (equivalent to the dividend paid at the end of 2024). All in all, BBVA currently values Sabadell at around €12.7 billion.
The bank’s CEO referred on Friday to the collapse of the premium as a sign that BBVA’s offer does not adequately value Sabadell. The premium is negative, and that means that investors give a certain probability that BBVA will improve the offer; or that investors recognise the intrinsic value of Sabadell, which is worth more than what BBVA is offering, said González-Bueno.
Several analysts assume that BBVA will rush to improve its proposal via cash at the last minute. The bidder accumulates around €1.9 billion of top-quality capital that it could use to improve the proposal, as reported by Expansión on Friday. And some experts believe that BBVA should improve its offer by 20% to make it attractive, i.e. a figure of around €2,000 million.
González-Bueno also indicated that he does not see this operation coming to fruition because there is overwhelming social opposition. And he has stressed that the opposition to the OPA is not political, but social. “69 associations of all kinds appeared before the CNMC, everyone is against it. The opposition to the operation is based on the common good,” the CEO concluded.
