PAI, Pamplona and Partners in final stage for €1bn Rovensa sale - report

Alessia Argentieri
02 March 2020

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Private equity firms PAI Partners, Pamplona Capital Management and Partners Group have reached the next stage of talks to buy Bridgepoint-backed Portuguese agrichemical business Rovensa, according to Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias.

The process also includes one industrial bidder, UPL, according to the report.

Rovensa is reportedly worth around €1bn.

Bridgepoint bought a majority stake in Rovensa in a carve-out from Sapec Group in 2016. The deal was valued at €456m. A pool of banks consisting of BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Crédit Agricole CIB, HSBC, Rabobank and Mizuho provided a €250m debt package, which included €190m of senior debt and €60m of retained cash flow, to support the transaction.

Bridgepoint mandated HSBC and Uría Menéndez for the sale of the company at the beginning of the year. Several industrial investors and private equity houses, including Ardian, Permira and Carlyle, showed interest.

Established in 1962 and headquartered in Lisbon, Rovensa manufactures crop protection products, such as herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, as well as specialty crop nutrition fertilisers, including micronutrients and biostimulants. It generated revenues of €342m in 2019, according to press reports.

Iberian activity update
Despite political instability, the Iberian private equity industry thrived in 2019, recording a significant increase in both deal volume and value. Iberia saw 79 buyouts last year, worth an aggregate value of €13.8bn, according to Unquote Data. By comparison, 53 buyouts for a total EV of €11.1bn were inked in 2018.

Among the largest deals were PAI Partners' acquisition of catering specialist Areas for €1.5bn; the take-private of amusement parks operator Parques Reunidos by EQT Partner, which valued the company at around €1.2bn; and CVC Capital Partners' purchase of a majority stake in Universidad Alfonso X El Sabio (UAX), for an EV of around €1.1bn.

On the sell-side, Iberia recorded a noticeable increase in the number of exits to 66 in 2019 from 50 in 2018. Furthermore, there was a sharp rise in SBOs to 21, from only nine recorded in the previous year.

Among the largest SBOs inked in 2019 was the sale of Accelya, a Spanish provider of airline financial analytics, sold by Warburg Pincus to Vista Equity Partners, in a deal which gave the company an EV of around $1.3bn.

Another large SBO was the deal for business process outsourcing specialist Konecta, sold by Banco Santander and PAI Partners to Intermediate Capital Group.