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Private equity major Blackstone on Friday sold a 23 per cent stake in Essel Propack Ltd (EPL) for $252 million in a single block trade .
Blackstone had acquired 75 per cent of the packaging company in August 2019 for $470 million at ₹134 per share. Friday’s stake sale was done at ₹256.5 per share.
The PE firm will continue to own 52 per cent of EPL, which was earlier part of billionaire media baron Subash Chandra’s Essel Group. It said its stake in EPL will not go below this level.
“The transaction was executed to create liquidity in the stock given significant investor interest after the company’s strong performance. Also, the 23 per cent shares came in an open offer last year which now have been sold back to high quality global and domestic investors,” said a Blackstone spokesperson.
In the June 2020 quarter, despite the impact of Covid-19, EPL delivered a YoY revenue growth of 18 per cent, EBITDA growth of 39 per cent and net income growth of 115 per cent, with a ROCE of 20 per cent.
Blackstone had recruited former Viacom18 chief Sushanshu Vats as the CEO of Essel Propack.
Other top appointments in the company over the past year include Parag Shah as CFO, Uwe Roehrhoff (ex-CEO of former Blackstone portfolio company Gerresheimer Packaging) as Independent Director and DS Brar (Chairman of Mphasis, a Blackstone portfolio company) as Independent Director and Chairman.
Productivity programme
In addition, Blackstone launched a productivity improvement programme for EPL that helped deliver 170 bps of margin expansion and 400 bps of ROCE improvement.
Founded in 1982, EPL makes laminated tubes with a presence in 10 countries. It manufactures 7 billion tubes annually, and employs more than 3,158 people.
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