By Joan Faus
BARCELONA (Reuters) - Drugmaker Grifols will meet an imminent deadline for a request for information from Spain's stock market watchdog after a short-seller report sent the shareprice tumbling, Grifols board member Tomas Daga said.
Stock market supervisor CNMV set a 10-day deadline that expires next week for a reply to its questions concerning a Gotham City Research report that on Jan. 9 questioned the Spanish drugmaker's accounting.
It is unclear precisely when the deadline ends.
Grifols declined to comment on Friday, although it has denied any wrongdoing. Scranton did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Daga holds shares in Grifols investment vehicle Scranton, as well as sitting on Grifols' board and its audit committee.
He told Reuters in an interview, he would encourage Scranton, which is Grifols' second largest shareholder with an 8% stake, to offer public explanations about its organisation, including its shareholders, at some point.
"Scranton is now in silence. At a certain moment, Scranton will have to come out, present itself publicly and explain everything," he said, which he added should help to calm the market.
On Friday, Grifols received a boost when ratings agency S&P kept its 'B+' rating for the company, with a stable outlook for 2024.
Its share still closed 0.5% down on Friday in Madrid, and has lost 41% since the Gotham City report.
Daga said the CNMV asked Grifols to explain certain transactions it had already sought more details about in 2019.
Grifols has previously said the CNMV then asked for accounting information related to the 2018 sale of blood donation firm Haema AG and plasma donation company BPC Plasma from Grifols to Scranton Enterprises, an investment vehicle linked to the founding Grifols family.
Daga said Scranton acquired Haema and BPC to help Grifols financially, and had "no interest in having all of this".
In its report, Gotham City said that both Grifols and Scranton fully consolidate in their accounts Haema and BPC Plasma. Grifols said last week it is required to do so because it holds a call option.
Gotham City also questioned Grifols' reported debt and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), and leverage ratio of 6.7 times. It said the leverage ratio was close to 10 to 13 times EBITDA.