(new: closing price clearly in the red again)
FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) – New reactions from GRENKE to the allegations of fraud by the Viceroy investor group have caused the leasing specialist’s recently badly shaken shares to fluctuate sharply. The shares had initially made up for interim losses of almost 12 percent early on Monday, but turned back into the red from noon. In the end, they slumped 7.2 percent to 30.90 euros. The market environment was deep red. The MDAX, in which they are listed, fell by 3.7 percent due to new coronavirus fears among investors.
After the allegations of fraud by the investor group Viceroy, Grenke is examining the integration of his much criticized franchise system into the group. Wolfgang Grenke, company founder and deputy chairman of the supervisory board of the group, offers to take over the shares held by the company CTP in the franchise companies. Due to possible conflicts of interest, he will suspend his supervisory mandate with immediate effect until these allegations have been dispelled, it said.
The expert Philip Häßler from the analysis company Pareto Securities was still rather skeptical: “In general, we see the risk of a loss of confidence among investors, which in the future could lead to lower valuation multiples and higher refinancing costs.” This risk should persist at least until the results of the special audit are published by KPMG. Overall, despite the denial of all allegations, doubts are likely to remain and operationally the development of risk provisioning continues to be a major factor of uncertainty.
Before the new reactions from Grenke, the specialist Marius Fuhrberg from the analysis house Warburg Research had struck rather optimistic tones on Monday. Although the nature of the allegations made by Viceroy is generally difficult to refute publicly, Grenke has done a relatively good job with his statements to date. With the special audit, the leasing specialist is now striving for more transparency.
According to Fuhrberg, questions remained unanswered about the CTP company, its previous owners and the purchase price paid. The operational business of Grenke is not affected by this. Fuhrberg is now eagerly awaiting Viceroy’s reaction to the Grenke statement.
The Grenke share price collapsed after the Viceroy report was published last Tuesday – at its peak, the company’s market value had fallen by more than 1.4 billion euros by Thursday. On that day, the papers had dropped below 24 euros at times and had thus reached the level of 2014./la/nas/men/tih/fba
