Italian drinks group Campari said its controlling shareholder Lagfin had increased its voting rights to 84% from 68.6% under a special voting mechanism approved in 2020.
Under the scheme, shareholders with an uninterrupted holding period of at least five years can increase voting rights from two to three votes.
Campari chief executive Bob Kunze-Concewitz told Reuters last month that increased voting rights would give Lagfin, the holding company of the Garavoglia family, more flexibility to make a larger M&A deal.
The special voting mechanism was introduced to encourage a capital structure more supportive of Campari’s long-term growth strategy, including organic growth combined with external growth, and rewarding a shareholder base with a long-term investment horizon.
Investment
Campari Group noted that the company has grown more than five times in both net sales and adjusted EBITDA since the IPO in 2001 and has completed over 40 acquisitions for an overall investment of approximately €4 billion.
In the past 10 year, it achieved an organic net sales CAGR growth of around 7%, accelerating to approximately 12% in the past three years.
The company’s market capitalisation grew more than 15 times since the IPO, from €0.9 billion to €14 billion to date, while the total shareholder return (with dividend reinvested) achieved a CAGR of around 15% since the IPO.
Last month, the Italian drinks group Campari posted a 14.2% rise in like-for-like revenues in the first half of this year and confirmed its margin target for the year.
Sales growth for the maker of Aperol and Campari bitters slowed down in the second quarter compared to the first three months this year, which had benefitted from some temporary effects.
Article by Reuters, additional reporting by ESM.
