More companies to exit the Mexico’s stock exchange market

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Grupo Sanborns SAB, a chain of retail stores controlled by billionaire Carlos Slim, is moving to delist from Mexico’s stock market, making it the latest in a string of companies to exit the nation’s exchange.

Grupo Carso SAB, Sanborns’s parent company, said in a filing that it planned to offer of 26 pesos ($1.27) per share in cash for all stock in Sanborns, representing an 18% premium over Tuesday’s closing price of 22 pesos. Sanborns, listed in 2013 at 28 pesos, jumped 9% to 24 pesos on Wednesday.

Sanborns is joining a growing parade of family-controlled companies that are giving up on Mexico’s stock market after years of watching their companies trail global peers and lose value in dollar terms as shares wallowed in low-volume trading.

The planned tender comes nearly a decade after Slim, Mexico’s richest man, listed Sanborns at the height of a boom in the local stock market amid hopes for dramatic economic reforms. In 2013, Slim sold 17.4% of the company for about $900 million, giving Sanborns a market capitalization just over $5 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

Since then, interest in Mexico has waned as investors focused on more dynamic markets like China and Brazil while the rise of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his nationalistic energy policies have been blamed for crimping investment and growth in Mexico. Amid a drop in the stock price and slump in the peso, Sanborns has seen its market cap shrink by more than half in dollar terms to around $2.4 billion as of Tuesday, July 26th, 2022.

While the global market for initial-public offerings collapsed this year, Mexico had already been in an extended drought without a major company IPO since late 2017. Last year, Grupo Lala SAB and Sempra Energy’s Infraestructura Energetica Nova SAB delisted while Slim’s two building-products companies followed in the first half of 2022. Airline Grupo Aeromexico SAB voted to delist in June and chicken producer Industrias Bachoco SAB is awaiting government approval for a tender to buyout minority shareholders.

Sanborns, which grew out of a luxury soda fountain and gift shop started by Americans in Mexico City’s historic center after the Mexican Revolution early last century, is the main subsidiary of Carso. It contributes more than 50% of the conglomerate’s consolidated revenues and operating income, according to Carso’s website.

Source: El Financiero

Mexico Daily Post