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Puig, a family-owned Spanish beauty group, is preparing an initial public offering through which it aims to raise more than €2.5bn, in the biggest flotation in the sector in years.
The Barcelona-based company, which owns perfume and make-up brands ranging from Paco Rabanne to Charlotte Tilbury, announced its plans to list in Madrid and on other Spanish stock exchanges in a regulatory filing on Monday.
Bankers have valued the 110-year-old business at between €8bn and €10bn. The company said it wanted to raise about €1.25bn through a primary offering, followed by a “larger” secondary share sale that would take the total sum raised to more than €2.5bn.
The filing did not specify the portion of shares that the founding family wants to sell to investors.
The flotation of Puig, which bills itself as a “premium beauty” group, is likely to be the biggest in luxury since Ermenegildo Zegna in 2021 but comes as the sector grapples with the end of a post-pandemic spending boom.
Puig insists that its business is more resilient than others because it suffers less from consumers retrenching, as the unit price of its fragrances and make-up is lower than for watches, handbags and other luxury products.
Marc Puig, chair, chief executive and the third generation of his family to lead the business, said it was “important for any family business to have the right checks and balances in place, particularly during generational transitions”.
“We believe that the balance of being a family-owned company that is also subject to market accountability will allow us to better compete in the international beauty market during the next phase of the company’s development,” he added.
Puig has led the company since 2004 and said he would be the last generation of the family to head the business, even though he has no plans to step down. He signalled that the family’s involvement in the business would remain strong.
“We strongly believe that building premium brands requires long-term thinking and having a family behind a company fosters this long-term approach, because they tend to care in equal measure about the time horizon of the next generation and the next quarter,” he said.
Puig is small compared with sector-leading peers L’Oréal and Estée Lauder but has grown rapidly through acquisitions in the past decade, striking 11 deals in the past 12 years.
Those included the purchases of British make-up business Charlotte Tilbury, French brand Jean Paul Gaultier and Belgian fashion house Dries Van Noten.
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