The Ferrovial board of directors signed for the first time on July 27 from Amsterdam the group's quarterly accounts. It's just a pre-holiday formality, but it holds some symbolic value for the company: business is now running as normal in the Netherlands.
After its notorious change of headquarters accompanied by a run-in with the Spanish Government, the company has already made its first presentations in the Dutch Euronext market and is now looking for new offices for the workforce in the country. It weighs more central locations than the current address, which is that of the former local headquarters, located at 151 Kingsfordweg street, at the foot of the A10 motorway, which bypasses the city.
It is at least a matter of housing the CEO of the group, Ignacio Madridejos, and his team. The manager is obliged to reside in the Netherlands, although a large part of the operational center continues in Madrid, on Príncipe de Vergara street, where the headquarters were located until June.
In its debut with the local press, Madridejos gave an interview to the Dutch newspaper FD in which it emphasized a message that the group has been repeating for months: Ferrovial "will never leave Spain" nor does it intend to "pay less taxes than it is used to". The change of headquarters was a "logical step" for a company that wants to internationalize and that aspires to "regain a good relationship with the Spanish Government."
The pivotal moment for the company actually occurred a month and a half ago. On June 15 it was registered as a Dutch company and one day later, on June 16, it began trading simultaneously in the Netherlands and in Spain. It remains on the Ibex, although the parent company, Ferrovial SE, is now the former Dutch subsidiary.
Ferrovial has traveled the 1,800 kilometers between Madrid and Amsterdam with the massive support of its shareholders meeting and without any of them having got off the hook and sold their shares in accordance with the separation right established in the merger project.
The calendar has been adhered to to the letter and, apart from settling in a better office in the Dutch capital, the next step is now the start of listing in New York. It is scheduled for the end of the year, and the company is working to gather all the necessary information, but it depends on the approval of the market supervisor, the SEC, so the process could be delayed until the beginning of 2024.
"We continue with the corporate reorganization and preparing the applications in New York," explained the company's financial director, Ernesto López, during the recent presentation of the half-year results to analysts. “The approval process will be longer or shorter depending on the SEC's requirements,” he added. The intention is to hold a capital market day after the premiere, to present itself to international investors.
For the company, the United States is the arrival point in its plan to change its headquarters and list on both sides of the Atlantic. "There are attractive investment opportunities ahead in the United States," said López, referring to a market that accounted for a third of the almost 4,000 million euros received by the group in the first half of the year.
From the outset, Ferrovial has ensured that the Euronext stock exchange in Amsterdam is the best platform for listing in New York, among other things, because the documentation required is almost the same. This comment made the CNMV feel quite bad, which reproaches the company for not having informed of any impediment that places Spain at a disadvantage compared to the Netherlands.
In its last semester with headquarters in Spain, Ferrovial doubled its profit and earned 114 million euros thanks to improved mobility, both on the highways it operates in the United States and Canada and at London's Heathrow airport, in the that it has 25% and that it has been a while without paying dividends.
In the United States, it has completed the construction projects for the I-66 highway in Virginia and the NTE 35W in Dallas, from which it will obtain significant recurring income from now on. The first was inaugurated last year after an investment of 3,500 million euros, while the second, to which another 900 million have been dedicated, has come into operation a few months ago.
It has important projects in the country, such as the Managed Lanes highways, in Texas, or the future new Terminal 1 of the emblematic New York airport. He trusts that its presence on the New York Stock Exchange, together with these emblematic projects, will make it a family business for the American investor. These are the cabals of a company that insists on its Spanish links and that already looks at the world from the Dutch capital.
