1,959 Valuations of the YPF Shares Expropriated to Repsol

Abstract

On April 16, 2012 the Argentine Federal Government decreed the intervention of YPF. Its share price declined 29% the day after. Two weeks later the Argentinean Parliament approved the expropriation of 51% of the YPF shares owned by Repsol. We prepared a month ago the case “Valuation of an Expropriated Company: The Case of YPF and Repsol in Argentina” (The case may be downloaded in: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2176728) with a question: “What is your best estimation of the compensation that Repsol should receive for its expropriated 51% of YPF shares?” We report 2,043 answers from professors and managers from 42 countries.1,972 of the 2,043 answers had a specific valuation. We considered 13 of them as outliers because they provided a very small or a very high value. The average of the remaining 1,959 valuations is $51.2/share, that is, US$10.27 billion for the 51% of YPF shares. We also provide an analysis of the answers by country and by answers by respondent (managers of non-financial companies; managers, analysts, fund managers…working for financial companies; and professors). Nearly 70% of the valuations provide 2 results: $47.3/share ($9,488 million for 51% of the shares) and $56.7/share ($11,373 million for 51% of the shares).