2024-04-18 03:00:13
It is a photo which was to symbolize the flight of the new European champion of health sovereignty. Surrounded by the Euroapi staff, we see, all smiles, the Belgian Karl Rotthier, recruited a few months earlier to take the helm of this young company, taking part in the traditional bell ceremony amid applause, on the occasion, this May 6, 2022, of the company’s IPO in Paris. Now independent, the former subsidiary of Sanofi, of which the pharmaceutical laboratory remains a 30% shareholder, then envisages a flourishing future far from the fold of its former parent company.
Almost two years later, the happy faces are just a distant memory. The atmosphere is no longer so much partying as crisis management at Euroapi. Landing in October 2023, Karl Rotthier had to cede his chair as general director to a compatriot, Ludwig de Mot, the former boss of the sugar maker Tereos, who took office on 1is March. In the process, the executive committee was reshuffled: a new sales director and a new operations director joined the ranks of the tightened team « in order to refocus and gain efficiency », to get Euroapi out of the doldrums. Because the take-off of the French manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients, these substances which give medicines their therapeutic properties, has turned sour.
Since December 2022, the group has continued to accumulate setbacks and make a series of about-faces. In the space of fifteen months, it has revised its short and medium-term financial outlook downwards four times. In 2023, the company narrowly crossed the milestone of one billion euros in turnover – a threshold that it aimed to reach in 2022, when it was launched –, despite sales increasing by 3.8 %.
At the same time, its losses worsened, plunging from 15 million to 190 million euros, and its debt increased. Not very encouraging, the picture darkened further on March 14, when a new communication from the manufacturer informed of the suspension of all of its outlook for the year 2024, just two weeks after the presentation of the annual results of the company and the announcement of the implementation, during the second quarter, of a vast restructuring plan.
Disappointed, investors are fleeing the debacle. To the great dismay of the former “Sanofiens”, who, initially reluctant to leave the protective cocoon of the laboratory, had finally embarked on the adventure, convinced of the development potential of the company, and massively subscribed to the proposed shareholding plan. by management. « No investor today wants to hear about Euroapi. Those who took a position are very disappointed, they are very angry with the management. The company will have to make a lot of effort to regain their trust », confides a scalded analyst. The fall of the French group on the markets is spectacular: the stock has collapsed by almost 80% since 2022, settling below the 3 euro mark. The company now weighs less than 300 million euros, almost four times less than when it started.
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