World Cup coming up e new sales items for the legendary Panini stickers. Exactly as happened four years ago on the eve of the World Cup in Brazil, this time too, a few months before Russia 2018, it seems according to rumors that the Modena-based company – as Il Sole 24 Ore writes this morning – has ended up on the radar of some conglomerates foreigners who would have shown interest.
So it's not the first time that shareholders find themselves at a crossroads: to give up and distort forever one of the most typical products of the Italian custom, or to keep it? And above all: if to sell it, at what price? Already in 2014 the crux had been precisely the price requested by the Panini shareholders: at that time, mainly private equity had participated in the tender, which instead would not be part of the new exploration phase that would have started in recent weeks and for which the company has commissioned a leading international bank.
currently Sandwiches, which also prints Mickey Mouse and Marvel comic strips, generates between 600 and 700 million in turnover with a gross operating margin of around 80 million euros. Last year there was a shareholding reorganization among the historic shareholders of the Modena group, which saw the exit of Fineldo of the Merloni family.
The shareholders are therefore currently the managing director Aldo Hugo Sallustro, at the top of the group and a leading shareholder, as well as Anna Baroni (president of Panini) and Maria Francesca Baroni.
The company, which operates in 125 countries, presents a strong growth in turnover in the years of the World Cup and the European football championships. A cyclical trend which, without sporting events, attests the turnover to be around 500 million. On the contrary, in the years of the European Championships, it exceeds 600 million and reaches and surpasses 700 in the years of the top competition for nations. It is therefore no coincidence that even the new rumors are circulating again in view of the World Cup in Russia.
