By Emma Pinedo, Jesús Aguado and Nell Mackenzie
MADRID (Reuters) -Shares in Spanish drugmaker Grifols fell to a 12-year low on Wednesday, following the publication of a new report by Gotham City Research questioning the financial accounts of the Barcelona-based company.
Since early January, the short-sheller has released three reports repeatedly accusing Grifols of overstating earnings and understating debt in its financial accounts. The pharmaceutical company's market value since then has shed billions of euros.
Grifols has repeatedly denied Gotham City's accusations, saying it had already replied to all of the questions raised in the latter's reports. It declined to comment on the most recent claims on Wednesday.
In its latest report, Gotham City Research concentrated on the financial arrangements between Grifols, its related family office, Scranton, and two subsidiaries.
According to Gotham's original report, both Scranton and Grifols claim revenues from these subsidiaries but the financial relationship between them and the subsidiaries is unclear.
In a statement on Feb. 20, Grifols rejected what it said were Gotham's "malicious, false and misleading insinuations" that had the "sole objective of destabilising Grifols and causing doubts amongst institutional investors".
Grifols said in January it had filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court against Gotham City's founder, Daniel Yu, and his company, seeking damages over the original report.
KPMG is due to issue its audited opinion on Grifols by March 8.
On Wednesday, Gotham City Research alleged that since its first report, Grifols had given new information to sell-side analysts about this relationship - information it said does not match what the pharma firm previously published.
The latest allegation is about the description of 320 million euros that Grifols said in its 2022 financial statement it was owed from "other financial assets with related parties".
Gotham City cited a Feb. 20 research note published by French brokerage firm Kepler Cheuvreux and seen by Reuters. The note said the pharma company had described the 320 million euros as a "cash pooling financing agreement" that Grifols' subsidiaries had with the related family office, Scranton. The note did not provide Kepler Cheuvreux's source of the information.
Kepler did not respond to requests for comments, and the analyst who wrote the report, Pablo de Renteria, said he was not permitted to speak to the press when contacted by Reuters.
Gotham City said Grifols' 2022 representation of the loan was "neither detailed, nor correctly identifies the nature of the transactions".
The hedge fund said it believed that the "cash pooling revelation" was new information, and indicated that "Grifols selectively disclosed new information only to these analysts and not to the public at large."
The latest Gotham City report comes from a partnership of Gotham City Research and Portsea Asset Management, which together form General Industrial Partners.
The report said that members within the group held short bets designed to benefit if Grifols' share price declined.
($1 = 0.9204 euros)