Gotham City accounting queries wipe $3 billion off Grifols value
By Inti Landauro and Joan Faus
MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) -Shares in Grifols fell by 30% on Tuesday, wiping nearly $3 billion off its market value, after hedge fund Gotham City Research questioned its accounting, prompting the Spanish drugmaker to «categorically» deny any wrongdoing.
Gotham questioned Grifols' reported debt and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), and leverage ratio of 6.7 times. It said the leverage ratio is close to 10 to 13 times EBITDA.
Grifols, which makes medicines with human plasma, said in a filing to Spain's CNMV stock market supervisor that the Gotham report was «false information» and «speculation». The company had disclosed information about all the transactions raised «with the highest level of integrity and transparency», it said.
After holding a crisis committee meeting on Tuesday morning, Grifols called an emergency board meeting in the afternoon, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
The company is set to release a new statement to the stock market regulator on Wednesday with business details that were referenced in Gotham's report and plans to hold a call with investors to address any doubts, the source said.
CNMV head Rodrigo Buenaventura said it made «no sense to question the integrity of the audited accounts» of Grifols or to ignore the «very serious accusations» made by Gotham.
«What we at the CNMV have to do is gather additional information to clarify the situation and see which aspects of the information need to be reviewed or analysed,» he told reporters.
«Our house is clean, we are very sure about that. We will explain it again point by point,» board member Tomas Daga, who sits on Grifols' audit committee and has advised it as a lawyer
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