(Bloomberg) -- French fuel distributor Rubis SCA is exploring options including a potential sale, according to people familiar with the matter, after its shares slumped by about two-thirds over the past six years.
The Paris-listed company is working with advisers and has reached out to potential suitors to gauge interest, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. Considerations are at an early stage and Rubis could decide against a deal, they said.
A representative for Rubis declined to comment, adding the company “has regularly been the subject of rumors in recent months.”
Shares of Rubis surged as much as 6.6% Wednesday before erasing the gains. They traded 0.2% lower by 9:28 a.m. in Paris, giving the company a market value of about €2.4 billion ($2.5 billion).
Rubis distributes products such as gasoline and bitumen in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. The firm last month completed a sale of its 55% stake in the Rubis Terminal joint venture to I Squared Capital. It’s also been boosting investment in clean power after its 2022 acquisition of a solar farm developer.
Rubis has been under activist investor pressure to change its governance and strategy after its shares dropped about 65% from an all-time high in May 2018.
While Rubis managing partners Jacques Riou, Gilles Gobin and his daughter Clarisse Gobin-Swiecznik only own just over 2% of the company’s shares, they have broad sway over the firm due to its status as a partnership limited by shares, known in French as société en commandite par actions.
The company’s current status needs to be replaced by a corporate form that restores the power of shareholders in the composition of the management body, Ronald Sämann, a Canadian businessman who holds 5% in the firm, wrote in a letter dated May 1 and seen by Bloomberg News.
Sämann, the majority shareholder of Car-Freshner Corp., was elected to the Rubis board in June. French billionaire Vincent Bollore and entrepreneur Patrick Molis earlier this year also disclosed their 5% holdings, respectively.
--With assistance from Crystal Tse.
(Updates share price movement in fourth paragraph.)
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