Cosentino is the trendiest investment banking company in Madrid. The group from Almería, manufacturer of the Silestone of millions of kitchens in the world, can end the drought of IPOs in recent months and become a listed company. If it did take the plunge, it would become the first company to ring the bell of the parquet since July of last year, when renewables group Opdenergy debuted.
Since it became known that the countertop manufacturer has hired JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to measure the market temperature, enormous expectations have been created. The two US banks have a global reach and can gauge the convenience of the moment after the turbulence of 2022. The survey comes after last year IPO projects such as those of Ibercaja, Mecalux, Primafrio or renewables were left halfway of Repsol due to the volatility of the market, which made it impossible to accurately assess the interest of the latter and of the companies themselves.
For the moment, Cosentino has not made any decision and remains extremely cautious. The only certain thing is that he has everything that investors usually like: a financially healthy family group with a strong international presence and his own industrial model deeply rooted in his place of origin. Few companies can boast of having created a large logistics pole capable of transforming the economy in several kilometers around. A complete success story that recalls that of the largest listed company on the Ibex: Inditex.
The company employs 5,900 people, distributes its products in 116 countries, has 31 international subsidiaries and has eight factories, seven of them in Almería and one in Brazil. Its annual revenues exceed 1,400 million euros after growing at double digits for several years, and the gross operating profit (ebitda) is 275 million. The margins are around 20% and, to complete the financial x-ray, the debt, of 174 million euros, is barely equivalent to 0.75 times the ebitda.
The history of the company is also exceptional. Francisco's parents, Eduardo and José Martínez-Cosentino, the three owners of the group, began working in the marble quarries of Macael in Almeria. Spain has always sold worse than Italy, but Cosentino explains that Macael marble, without having the prestige of Carrara, is of the same quality and has been extracted since Phoenician times. It can be found in the Alhambra in Granada, in the Mosque of Córdoba or in the Royal Palace in Madrid.
The company Mármoles Cosentino was built on marble in 1980, created by the three brothers with just 17 workers. It was made with a particular connection to Barcelona, since the current president, Francisco, had been a school teacher in the city, from which he returned to Macael to launch the project. When the business began to take off, the first thing he did was open a store in Barcelona and convince himself that he had to go beyond marble.
The beginnings of the company were not without setbacks. The brothers insisted on going abroad to sell and to look for new products with which to diversify, first with an innovation called Marblestone, a type of stone industrialized from marble that turned out to be very porous and, therefore, a commercial failure. "He was about to ruin the company," they say from Cosentino.
The Martínez-Cosentino brothers continued in search of their particular philosopher's stone: a superior performance product made from stone using an industrial process that reduced dependence on marble, whose extraction is limited. Starting with quartz and other minerals, they finally hit the nail on the head and invented Silestone, a product that was adapted to different architectural uses and which, in a new script twist, ended up becoming the perfect kitchen countertop. Now they sell it along with other products all over the planet.
Macael's marble workers export 92% of what they produce, and an IPO could help finance an ambitious investment plan in the region of 700 million euros. The group has its own port infrastructures and has a showroom model called Cosentino City, present in Sydney, Singapore, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Milan, London, Dubai, Miami, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm, Tokyo and other cities, including Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga.
Before investors and clients, it can boast of innovation. It has launched new products such as antibacterial Silestone or Sensa, a granite with anti-stain treatment. He also created Dekton, an ultra-compact surface that has now become his second main trademark. His latest creation is called HybriQ and is an improvement on Silestone.
