Liquidity Matters — Re-Rating Lumiform S.A. on Euronext Paris

A four-round, advanced corporate-finance and equity-capital-markets simulation set inside Lumiform S.A., a EUR 480M-revenue, EUR 76M-EBITDA French specialty-materials manufacturer (Lyon, founded 1991, ~2,300 staff) listed on Euronext Paris. Lumiform is a thinly traded mid-cap: average daily volume of only EUR 1.1M, a 65 bp bid-ask spread, just 31% institutional ownership, a founding family holding 28% with double-voting rights, and sell-side coverage down to a single analyst. It trades at 7.2x EV/EBITDA against peers at 9.0x — a ~20% illiquidity-and-governance discount worth roughly EUR 137M of enterprise value. On 11 May 2026 an activist-leaning fund publishes a note demanding change before the AGM in ten weeks, and a family-linked holder signals it may sell a 9% block (~EUR 39M) into a thin market. Playing the CFO, you must convert governance, listing and investor-relations choices into multiple expansion while protecting firm value through a liquidity shock. Round 1 (Diagnose): trace the causal chain liquidity -> transaction costs -> institutional demand -> valuation multiple and judge the two strongest drivers of the discount — the trap is earnings tunnel vision, believing better guidance alone closes a liquidity discount. Round 2 (Structure): set the listing compartment, board independence, the double-voting-rights structure and a liquidity provider, facing the control-versus-value trade-off — entrenching family control while expecting institutions to pay peer multiples caps the re-rating, and over-engineering every lever at once with no sequencing wastes credibility. Round 3 (IR & Block): choose an investor-relations move (IR head, roadshow, restored coverage) and manage the 9% block — an orderly placement to new institutions versus dumping it into a thin tape that signals distress — while a mid-round liquidity shock (accelerated block or market-wide risk-off) tests whether you confuse a market-wide price fall with firm-specific repricing. Round 4 (Re-Rate): assemble the integrated case for the board and the activist fund, owning the control trade-off and showing how the levers lift liquidity, lower the spread, attract institutions and narrow the EV/EBITDA discount toward 9.0x. The math rewards demand-and-ability levers working together, fair sequencing and an orderly block, and punishes the five classic errors: earnings tunnel vision, control at all costs, mishandling the block, plumbing without demand, and confusing price with value. Final KPIs track the EV/EBITDA multiple (turns), the bid-ask spread (bp), institutional ownership (%) and recovered enterprise value (EUR M of the EUR 137M at stake). Grounded in Alexis Guyot's research linking market liquidity and corporate governance to firm value.