Grifols set for biggest weekly drop ever on short seller accounting claims

Grifols SA shares slumped anew, putting the stock on a pace for its biggest weekly drop ever after a short seller criticized the Spanish blood-plasma company’s accounting and corporate governance.

Shares of the Barcelona-based company sank 12% Friday to €8.72 at 11:22 a.m. They’re now down almost 40% since Gotham City Research LLC’s report Tuesday. Management efforts to reassure investors have done little to sustain the stock, with the company’s market value shrinking by €3.3 billion ($3.6 billion).

Gotham City said Grifols’s financial statements included earnings from BPC Plasma and Haema, two companies for which Grifols has a call option and that are owned by Scranton Enterprises NV, an investment vehicle for some members of the Grifols founding family and a group of former executives. 

Following two regulatory filings rebutting Gotham’s accusations, company management held a call Thursday in which Chief Executive Officer Thomas Glanzmann accused Gotham City of “re-purposing financial information” and acting out of “pure self-interest and financial gain” and reiterated that the board will take legal action against the firm.

He said Spanish securities regulator CNMV has asked the company to provide more information following the short seller report. 

The call failed to reassure investors, with the stock slumping 16% Thursday. It’s now set for the biggest weekly drop ever in the company’s 18 years on the stock market.

Grifols “fell short of appeasing investor concerns given the steep market reaction,” JB Capital analyst Joaquin Garcia-Quiros said in a note Friday. “More information on the Scranton balance sheet situation, as well as providing a reassurance that such third-party transactions would never happen again, would have helped.” 

Investors would have welcomed cash flow figures for 2024, he said, and “the absence of a material reassurance led to the negative reaction, even though we are surprised by the magnitude of that reaction.”

Investors also have been focused on Grifols’ debt pile, which totaled €9.5 billion as of September, with maturities of almost €2 billion due in 2025.

Analysts overall are still backing the company: Grifols stock has 19 buy recommendations, five holds and one sell, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, little changed from before the Gotham City report.

The slide in Grifols stock is a buying opportunity, Banco Santander SA said in a note Friday. 

The shares may have dropped Thursday because the company said its agreement to sell an investment — a key for the company to reduce its indebtedness — doesn’t contain any penalties if either side pulls out, analyst Jaime Escribano wrote. In a followup conversation with Grifols, the company said the process to sell most of its stake in Shanghai RAAS Blood Products Co. to Haier Group for about $1.8 billion was well on track, he said.