Since last Thursday Dentix seeks a solution that compensates for the lack of understanding that caused the flight of KKR, which had agreed to take the capital. That is why Rothschild - the bank to which the owner of the dental firm, Ángel Lorenzo has entrusted the sale - has recovered an old proposal, according to financial sources to CincoDías. It is a sale to its main competitor, Vitaldent, which in June was acquired by the venture capital fund Advent.
The Spanish dental sector fully experiences the boom in venture capital in Spain. The taking of Vitaldent - a chain of dental clinics rescued by JB Capital, the investment boutique of Javier Botín, after the bankruptcy and imprisonment of its former leaders - triggered the appetite in the sector. Portobello threatened to part with Vivanta and Lorenzo started looking for a minority partner for his company. And he found it in KKR, which had already granted him a loan for about 150 million.
The fund that pilots in Spain Iñaki Cobo came to appoint a new CEO, Enrique Francia, who had been responsible for VIPS. However, last Thursday both France and KKR decided to abort the operation. According to Europa Press, the due diligence commissioned to KPMG found "wrong and incomplete information" in the company.
The discrepancies were about 40 million, as this newspaper learned. Dentix sources indicate that these were divergences in the valuation of consumer loans in Mexico and various projects in Spain. Other sources consulted point directly to an accounting hole in consumer finance.
A KKR spokesperson told this newspaper that the fund had neither entered Dentix's capital nor plans to do so in the future. Dentix sources, however, indicate that negotiations with KKR continue and that they have no information about Advent's intentions.
In any case, KKR's reversal - which, for the moment, will continue as a creditor - leaves Dentix in a complicated situation. The fund had agreed to convert its debt into shares and support a capital increase that injected oxygen into the group. Now KKR can request early repayment of their loans. The lack of funds that the venture capital giant was going to inject also suspends the future of the chain.
Before reaching this situation, Dentix and Rothschild hope to find a white knight. And this may come from the past. After the summer, the investment bank put on Lorenzo's table the possibility of selling the dental chain to Advent, who had just bought Vitaldent. The US fund opened a new venture capital fund with this operation and has never hidden that its plan is to act as a consolidator of the sector in Spain.
The dentist, however, did not want to give up most of the firm's actions that he had created from a small clinic in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood (Madrid). And Advent did not contemplate the taking of a minority in the main competitor of its active star in Spain. If you invest in Dentix it is to undertake a merger with Vitaldent. Vitaldent and Advent sources have declined to comment.
After taking this chain, Advent said it was the touchstone of a more ambitious plan. Its plans include investing in the next few years about 200 million to create a dental giant of more than 600 clinics, with the aim of starring in the long term. Dentix would be an important boost for this plan. Only with this acquisition Vitaldent would add about 350 clinics, of which more than 200 are located in Spain and the rest mainly in Italy, Mexico and Colombia.
