Alpitour, close on divestment: five big names ready to bid

Four large foreign tourism multinationals and a private equity fund specialising in the sector: names such as the Spanish Wamos, the third most important tourism group in the Iberian peninsula, the German Tui, one of the largest companies in the world, and the New York financial group Certares, specialising in travel and hospitality. Finally, the field of suitors would be completed by two other multinationals in the sector, one American and the other Asian, on whose identity there is absolute secrecy.

The near future of Alpitour, the Italian tourism giant that indirectly belongs to the Tip group of entrepreneur Gianni Tamburi, will be played out among this shortlist of international players, skimmed from the initial list of 15 interested parties. For the company, which was founded in Cuneo in 1947 by Lorenzo Isoardi and then entered the portfolio of the Agnelli family's Ifil holding company in the early 1990s, only to be sold again in the following years, a new shareholding reorganisation is in prospect.

Studying a valorisation of the subsidiary, with the assignment to the financial advisor Goldman Sachs of an exploratory mandate, is the current shareholder, Tip. The process of selling Alpitour is about to get into full swing, after it had been put on standby for a few months, in order to wait for the final results of the 2023 financial year, which closed on 31 October last with strongly growing economic data: 2.3 billion euro turnover and 141 million euro Ebitda with 50 million euro net profit, as well as almost zero debt.

The information memorandum, a hefty 200-page document, was sent to possible suitors last December.

Now the last step is awaited: that is, the presentation of the economic data for the first quarter of the financial year 2024 (with the months of November, December and January), which includes the Christmas and end-of-year holiday period, which is also expected to grow strongly compared to the previous year.