You are Hélène Bastide, chief financial officer of Lumiform S.A., a Lyon maker of specialty materials listed on Euronext Paris. An institutional fund has just published that your shares are worth 20% less than they should be, and before you propose any change you have to decide what you believe is holding the multiple down: it is the diagnosis you will take to the board this week.
The situation
Lumiform turns over €480 million a year, earns €76 million of EBITDA — about 16% of sales — and employs some 2,300 people at plants in France, Spain and Poland. It trades on the standard segment of Euronext Paris at 7.2 times enterprise value to EBITDA. Its competitors trade at 9.0 times. Each turn of multiple, on your EBITDA, is about €76 million of enterprise value.
On Monday, 11 May 2026, a fund with a record of public campaigns published nine pages on Lumiform. Its thesis: the gap does not come from the plants but from how hard and costly the shares are to buy — on average €1.1 million trades a day, at a bid-ask spread of 65 basis points — and from a structure in which the founding family holds 28% of the capital with double voting rights. Institutions hold 31%; the rest is in retail hands. A single analyst covers the stock. There is no investor-relations function: your finance team keeps the share register.
At midday the registrar called: a holder linked to the family might sell 9% of the capital, about €39 million, and wants an answer within the quarter. The annual general meeting is ten weeks away and the fund wants to meet before it. Your long-term incentive is paid in Lumiform shares, and you have twice raised with the board how thin the register is; both times you were asked to keep the meeting on margin.