Former Vatreni Earned 1.3 Million Euros from Shares

Former football representative Milan Badelj has continued to reduce his stake in the Garden Brewery, which he entered four years ago. Garden Brewery announced on Monday at the Zagreb Stock Exchange that Badelj sold just under 11,000 shares to the investment company Fargo Capital Partners.

Badelj is a co-founder of that company, while his friend Tomislav Alpeza, who is also the CEO of Garden Brewery, serves as its director. With this transaction, Fargo Capital Partners has entered the ownership structure of the brewery.

According to the announcement on the stock exchange, Fargo Capital Partners paid 120 euros per share, allowing Badelj to earn 1.3 million euros from this package. By selling just over 13 percent of the shares, the former Vatreni, who won silver at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, now holds another seven percent stake.

Fargo Capital Partners becomes the second-largest shareholder of the brewery with this transaction, after the AZ pension fund category B, which holds 30 percent of the shares. Along with this fund, shareholders include two voluntary AZ funds and a mandatory fund category A, so AZ holds nearly half of the company’s shares. The two co-founders, Andrew David Plant and Nicholas Colgan, hold 12.9 and 10.9 percent of the shares, respectively.

This is already the second, but so far the largest sale of Badelj’s stake in Garden. In July last year, he sold 2,836 shares to Colgan and Plant. At that time, Badelj reduced his stake from 27.5 to 20.5 percent. It is worth noting that Badelj became a shareholder of Garden Brewery in 2021, and when asked about the reasons for his entry, he stated that he and Alpeza analyzed the market and concluded that ‘craft beer production is something that combines production and creativity, and offers the possibility of return on invested capital.’

– We did this primarily because of the festivals organized in Tisno, and then we marketed our beers in other sectors – Badelj explained at that time.

The company has already paid its third consecutive dividend this year, amounting to five euros per share, which gives a dividend yield of 7.53 percent relative to the price from the public offering of shares. A total of 404,000 euros was allocated for the dividend, which was paid from last year’s net profit of 701,000 euros.

Regarding this year, at the group level, Garden achieved total consolidated revenues of 2.4 million euros in the first half of the year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) reached 19,000 euros. The growth of consolidated revenues amounted to 24.3 percent compared to the same period last year and was primarily generated by the growth of exports in the craft beer production and sales segment, according to the report.

In the craft beer sales segment, the Group achieved annual revenue of 1.8 million euros, which is 28 percent higher than last year. In the food and beverage retail segment ‘Full Circle’, the group achieved revenue of 224,000 euros, 11 percent higher.