The Italian company Prénatal, which specializes in children’s fashion and childcare, is looking to expand its offering with the acquisition of the Spanish division of the toy company Toys’R’Us.
The toy company filed for voluntary insolvency proceedings last April and, according to the financial newspaper Expansión, has informed the 9th Commercial Court of Madrid that it already has an offer from Prénatal to acquire most of its assets in the country.
Prénatal’s binding offer will be evaluated by the insolvency administrator and, in the process, other interested companies could present their acquisition proposals. For its part, the current ownership of Toys’R’Us has indicated that its objective is to ensure the future of the company and of the largest possible number of workers.
In the Iberian Peninsula, the toy store operates 46 stores in Spain and 11 in Portugal, as well as 891 workers in both countries, but, as indicated by the aforementioned media, the asset sale operation to Prénatal will not affect the Portuguese subsidiary.
Toys’R’Us Iberia was taken over by the Portuguese fund Green Swan in 2018, after the company’s parent company in the United States filed for bankruptcy. Despite an investment plan, the company has been negatively affected by the pandemic and the supply crisis at the end of 2021, which pushed it into bankruptcy proceedings in Spain.
The Italian Prénatal, for its part, operates in five markets with some 300 stores and in the Spanish market has annual sales of 19 million euros (8.8 million from childcare; 2.58 from fashion for newborns and 2.1 from children’s clothing). In 2020 and because of the pandemic, it reduced its turnover to 15.4 million euros and posted losses of 5.4 million.
Artsana S.p.A. took full control of Prénatal Retail Group in October 2017, after acquiring the corresponding shares from Giochi Preziosi, with whom it had formed a joint venture in 2015.
