Cirsa expands in Italy with three acquisitions

The company controlled by the Blackstone fund has undertaken three acquisitions in recent months with a joint investment exceeding 60 million euros. In its traditional business, that of machines, the largest corporate operation was the purchase of the operator Modena Giochi, a company with extensive implementation in the Emilia-Romagna region, in the north of the transalpine country.

In the digital world, Cirsa also made two investments. The first was SportItaliaBet, an online betting brand, which will be added to the portfolio of brands that E-Play already had at the time of purchase. The second, of lesser significance, is a small part of the E-Gaming group.

In this way, the organization based in Terrassa (Barcelona) continues its expansion throughout Italy, a country in which it has operated since 1997. According to available data, it closed the 2023 campaign with 10,986 slot machines compared to the 7,204 it had in 2022; a growth of 52% in one year. In addition, it has a dozen bingo halls and more than 500 employees in the country.

With this commitment, the Italian market went from representing 4.5% of sales in 2022 to 7.2%, placing it fifth in relevance behind Spain, Panama, Colombia and Mexico.

The company founded by Manuel Lao thus continues with its oil spill expansion policy, focused on medium-sized acquisitions or even SMEs as opposed to large corporate operations. This is what it did in the last two years, in which in addition to growing in Italy it was active especially in Spain, its main market, and in Mexico, where it acquired the Ganabet sports betting house, the fifth largest in the country.

The company maintains its inorganic growth while its business has already forgotten the blow of the pandemic. It took a new leap in 2023 to revenues of 2,396 million euros, 17.5% more than in 2022, and a net profit of 80 million, 41.5% more than the previous year, in a record year in which It also incorporated physical assets, such as casinos in Mexico (bought for 10.5 million in Tuxtla) and Panama (opened after being renovated).

Despite this growth policy, net debt remains stable at 2,247.9 million euros, 23.1 million less than on December 31, 2022, and business growth has cut the debt-ebitda ratio of 4.1 to 3.6 times.

Waiting for Blackstone's plans, with the stock market on the horizon
In recent years, Cirsa's name has occupied many of the pools of future companies to make the jump to the stock market, something that seems to have cooled in recent years. In fact, Reuters explained that Blackstone is considering different options to face its exit from the shareholding after six years.

In the last conference with analysts, Antoni Grau, financial director, warned: "We believe that market conditions are not those that could provide us with the valuation that we believe the company deserves. So we are in no rush to execute an IPO." . Thus, there are other options on the table, with a possible sale.