Grifols will use all the funds from the sale of Biomat to repay debt, approximately 14% of the €6.2 billion of net financial debt at the end of March, for a leverage level of 5.1 x EBITDA. Although it is not known what percentage of Biomat has been sold, some market sources put it at between 30% and 35%.
Grifols now operates 344 plasma centers worldwide: 289 in the U.S. and 55 in Europe across Germany, Austria and, recently Hungary. The 25 centers acquired from BPL are authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
After announcing that the United States considered it “basic infrastructure” in the coronavirus health emergency, Grifols has signed a multilateral collaboration agreement in that country with the U.S. Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other federal public health agencies. The objective will be to collect plasma from patients who have recovered from Covid-19, process it and produce hyperimmune immunoglobulins.
US President Donald Trump has reportedly declared Grifols’ donation centers and fractionation plants to be essential infrastructures. So their activity would be guaranteed in the face of a possible economic slowdown. The US is the country where Grifols has most of its fractionation plants and plasma donation centers (more than 92% of the 300 centers it operates).