Iberdrola launches a takeover bid of 1,030 million to buy the remaining 16.2% of the Brazilian Neoenergía
Iberdrola reactivates one of its largest recent operations in the Latin American market with the presentation of a share acquisition operation (takeover bid) over the 16.2% that it does not control of its Brazilian subsidiary Neoenergía. The movement, communicated this Monday to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), would leave the electricity company chaired by Ignacio Sánchez Galán as the sole shareholder of the company and would mean the exclusion of its shares from the Brazilian stock market (B3).
The proposal lands just a few weeks after the Spanish group completed the purchase of 30.29% of Neoenergía in the hands of the Previ pension fund, a transaction whose price of 32.5 reais per share (5.2 euros at the current exchange rate) will be used as a reference to calculate the consideration for the takeover bid. With this premise, and without yet considering the rate adjustment or hypothetical dividends, the operation reaches a value of 6,395 million reais (1,027 million euros).
Iberdrola supports that the takeover bid seeks to simplify the corporate and organizational structure of the subsidiary in order to gain margin in the financial and operational management of the company. The electricity company defends that the reorganization will benefit both the shareholders and the internal functioning of the subsidiary, which in recent years has grown to consolidate itself as one of the main utilities from Brazil. With this transaction, Iberdrola values the company reaffirms its commitment to Brazil and for a growth model based on electrical networks, which account for 90% of Neoenergia’s business.
In this way, the group follows the steps it already did with its American subsidiary Avangrid, in which it completed the acquisition of 100% of its shareholding at the end of 2024. It should be noted that the electricity company launched its Brazilian subsidiary on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange in July 2019. At that time, it controlled more than 50% of the capital, with Previ as a partner, with 32.9%.
Neoenergia supplies electricity to nearly 40 million Brazilians through 5 distributors (in the states of Bahia, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, Sao Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul and Brasilia) and 18 transmission lines, making it the first distribution group in the country by number of clients. At the operational level, the Brazilian subsidiary of Iberdrola has more than 725,000 kilometers of distribution lines and 8,000 kilometers of transportation lines and has 3,800 megawatts (MW) of renewable generation, mainly hydroelectric.
