Grifols shares plummet after admitting its financial results were not audited

Grífols shares have plummeted 35% on the stock market on Thursday, closing at a value of €7.50, after the company admitted that their financial results for 2023 presented earlier today were not audited.

In the results presented earlier on Thursday, Grífols indicated that it made profits of €59 million, 71.5% less than the previous year.

Grifols has suffered huge volatility on the stock market in recent months following the accusation of fraudulent accounting from the fund Gotham City Research. Grifols have strongly denied and fought back against the short seller's claims, and have said they will take legal action against Gotham City Research. 

The Catalan pharmaceutical is now awaiting a report from Spain's market regulator on the case, and defended that their financial results are impacted by extraordinary items such as the cost of restructuring. Without these impacts, the profit would be €206 million, they say, while the company assures that it saw a "record" year with revenues of €6.592 billion.

In a call with investors, executives said they have a written commitment from KPMG that the accounts will be ready by March 8. In the call, the managers of the pharmaceutical company pointed out that the accounts submitted to the market regulator did not include the signature of the company's CEO, James Costos, and alleged that he did not attend yesterday's meeting of the board of directors for "personal reasons."

In the meeting with analysts, the executive chairman of Grifols, Thomas Glanzmann, defended the "solid financial position" of the company.

However, after the meeting, the share price collapsed again on the stock market, leading the Ibex to close with a decline of 0.67%.