ACS has closed the sale of 74% of its stake in a batch of six tranches of ‘shadow toll’ highways in Spain to the Hermes fund. The operation was agreed last November and will generate a capital gain of 40 million euros for the infrastructure firm. The group will keep the remaining 26% of its share in the highways, which it will also continue to manage. Their total and joint value amounts to 950 million euros.
ACS delivered mixed news on Thursday. On the one hand, it announced the agreement it reached with Galp to sell it solar photovoltaic projects in Spain totalling 2.9 GW. On the other hand, CIMIC, owned by ACS and Australia’s biggest construction company, reported a $1.8 billion write-down after leaving MiddleEast.
Santander Corporate & Investment | We reiterate our recommendation to Buy after revising our model with the aim of including the performance in the first quarter of 2019 and recent tendencies. We have lowered our new objective price (OP) for the close of 2019 from 4.7€/share to 42.5€/share mainly because the valuation at market prices of CIMIC (without recommendation) in our model.
Morgan Stanley | ACS (ACS) continues to reduce its risk profile following the purchase of Abertis and its exposure to assets. This is already discounted in the price. in addition it remains without control over the cash flow of its most important assets (Abertis; ACS/Hochtief/Cimic).
Bankinter | The company has announced that it will share 1.44 euros gross per share as a complementary dividend. This means that the total dividend for the year will be 1.89 euros/share (+37% over the previous year).
The project, in which the Spanish engineering company Sener is also participating, forms part of the bid that Cobra, the subsidiary of the group chaired by Florentino Perez is making for investment in constructing new installations for the generation of renewable energy.
Of the total of this initial loan, 3 billion euros will remain in the company, 2.2 billion will be repaid in the short term through asset disinvestment like the sale of Hispasat and 29.9% of Cellnex (already completed in June), while another tranche of 4.75 billion will be financed with bonds.
The Constitutional Court has declared null and void the agreement reached by the Spanish government in 2014 to resolve the problem of the Castor gas storage warehouse, the biggest in Spain, and the subsequent controversial €1.350 billion compensation given to the concessionary firm Escal (in which ACS has 66%). The ruling also says the compensation system set up allowing Enagás to charge consumers for the cost of Castor via their gas bill is illegal.
The difference between top managers’ salaries in Ibex-35 companies and the lowest salaries in these same firms is on average 207 times, which shows the salary gap in Spain is increasing.
Spain’s new CNMV board, headed up by Sebastián Albella, has embarked on a big reform drive, implementing a whole range of initiatives, to make the Spanish financial market more trustworthy.