New era at Condis Supermercats. The Condal family has sold all of its shares in the company, exactly 60 years after brothers Xavier, Antoni, and Ramón Condal Escudé began their journey in the food distribution sector with a stall in Barcelona's Mercat de la Mercè. From now on, 55% of the chain's shares will be in the hands of the management team, led by Manel Romero, who will become the new president of the group based in Montcada i Reixac. The other 45% of the shareholding belongs to the private equity fund Portobello Capital, which already entered Condis with a minority stake last August. The transaction has been valued at approximately 270 million euros, according to Expansión.
The group has a network of 165 owned supermarkets and 452 franchised ones, with a strong presence in the province of Barcelona. Condis invoiced 783.1 million euros in 2019, when it obtained a net profit of 8.8 million. However, its revenues grew by 13% in 2020 coinciding with the pandemic, reaching approximately 890 million.
Condis will cease to be a family business having only reached the second generation, although in terms of shareholding complexity it is considered a third, as the shares were distributed among twelve shareholders. This occurs in all those companies that have had more than one founder, in this case three brothers, which means that the second generation is made up of a group of cousins, a situation that usually occurs in the third generation.
The Condal family has opted to sell the company to the management team and Portobello, in a transaction that has been carried out in two phases and has also been accompanied by several divestments. Thus, last summer, Condis decided to put an end to its presence in Madrid and concentrate exclusively on Catalonia. It sold a package of 12 stores, those located in the northern area and in the center of Madrid, to Grupo Uvesco (BM Supermercados), which also kept the Mercamadrid warehouse. In parallel, another 18 supermarkets and the Getafe logistics platform were transferred to Grupo Eco Mora (La Despensa).
On the other hand, Condis has just sold its logistics platform in Montcada i Reixac for 65 million euros to a company called Crossbay, owned by the British fund Mark, as reported by La Vanguardia this Friday. The chain will continue to occupy the warehouses, which have an area of 40,000 square meters, under a rental agreement.
In addition to Manel Romero, the other executives who have become owners of Condis are Sara Simón, Víctor Escanciano, and Mario Martínez, who will form a new board of directors with representatives from Portobello and some independent directors. An industrial engineer by training, Romero has been working at Condis for 25 years, where he has developed practically his entire professional career. He was the company's financial director, sales director, and deputy general manager until 2015, when he became the general manager after the previous CEO, Enric Ezquerra, the architect of the chain's growth, left the company.
Condis thus joins the group of Catalan distribution companies that have ceased to be family-owned in recent years, with Caprabo, La Sirena, and the former Miquel Alimentació (today Transgourmet Ibérica) as main examples. On the podium of the sector in Catalonia, only Bon Preu remains in the hands of a family, although the company has also undergone a process of shareholding simplification with the departure of one of the two Font brothers from the shareholding. At a second level in terms of revenue volume, companies such as Ametller Origen, Supermercats Pujol, Sorli, or Fragadis are also family-owned.