Puig: The Barcelona Fragrance Family That Listed and Kept 93% of the Votes

Puig went public because its third generation concluded that a family that wants to own the world’s best beauty brands needs a currency other than its own cash. The listing gave the company acquisition capital and a public valuation, and gave the Puigs a structure that keeps control for as long as they hold their class A shares. This article, part of the Spain Company Stories hub, examines the IPO, the brands, the family and the two years since.

Why did a century-old family company decide to list?

To fund acquisitions in a market where the price of a top brand had risen beyond what a private family could pay from retained earnings, and to give a fourth generation of shareholders liquidity without selling control. Marc Puig had spent a decade preparing the company for this, and the 2020 pandemic delay made 2024 the window.

The commercial logic was set in 2021, when Puig bought a majority of Charlotte Tilbury for about £1bn and Byredo for close to €1bn a year later. Both were financed with debt and family cash, and both were transformative: Charlotte Tilbury gave Puig a makeup division for the first time, and Byredo a niche fragrance house with luxury multiples. The next step of that size would have needed either a partner or a listing.

The family logic was generational. Antonio Puig Castelló founded the company in 1914 selling lipsticks and imported fragrances; his four sons built Agua Brava and the Paco Rabanne licence in the 1960s and 1970s; the third generation, led by Marc Puig, turned licences into owned brands and moved the group from €1bn of sales in 2010 to €4.3bn in 2023. With dozens of family shareholders across branches, a listed share was the cleanest way to value everyone’s stake.

How big was the IPO and who bought?

It raised about €2.6bn including the over-allotment option, priced at the top of the €22–24.50 range on 30 April 2024, and gave the company a market value of roughly €13.9bn at listing on 3 May. It was the largest European IPO of 2024 and the largest in Spain since Aena in 2015.

About €1.25bn was primary money, used mainly to pay for the remaining stakes in Charlotte Tilbury and Byredo and to reduce debt; the remaining €1.36bn was sold by Exea Empresarial, the family holding. Cornerstone demand came from long-only funds in the US and UK attracted by the growth record: Puig had compounded revenue at about 18% a year since 2020, faster than L’Oréal or Estée Lauder, and its fragrance brands were gaining share against Coty.

The listing was widely read as a rare success for Spanish equity markets, which had seen almost no large flotations since 2015 and where the domestic retail-fashion story is dominated by companies that never listed, like Mango, or listed decades ago, like Inditex. The IPO also showed that Spanish family capital can raise money in London and New York on brand strength alone.

What is in the brand portfolio?

Three tiers. The prestige fragrance and fashion houses, Rabanne, Carolina Herrera and Jean Paul Gaultier, which rank among the top ten global fragrance brands and generate most of the profit; the niche houses, Byredo, Penhaligon’s, L’Artisan Parfumeur and Dries Van Noten; and the newer makeup and skincare businesses built around Charlotte Tilbury.

Fragrance and fashion produced €3,646m of 2025 revenue, 72% of the group, at an 18.7% operating margin. Rabanne’s 1 Million and Phantom, Carolina Herrera’s Good Girl and Gaultier’s Le Male are the volume drivers; Puig owns these brands outright rather than licensing them, which is the structural difference from Coty or Inter Parfums and the reason the margin is higher. Nina Ricci, Adolfo Domínguez and Antonio Banderas fragrances fill the lower price points.

Makeup reached €845m, up 13.7% like for like, almost all of it Charlotte Tilbury, which held the number one prestige makeup position in the UK and number three in the US in 2025. Skincare, at €551m, is the weakest segment with a 6% margin, built around Uriage, Apivita and Dr. Barbara Sturm, the German dermatology brand bought in 2023. Management has been explicit that skincare needs either a larger acquisition or more time.

How does the dual-class structure work?

Class A shares carry five votes each and are held by Exea, the family holding; class B shares carry one vote and are the ones that trade. At listing the family owned about 74% of the economic capital and around 93% of the votes, a gap that would have been impossible under Spanish company law before the 2021 reform permitting loyalty shares.

The structure was borrowed from luxury peers. LVMH and Hermès are family controlled through holding companies and long-term voting rights, and Puig’s bankers argued that beauty investors were accustomed to it. The class A shares convert to class B on transfer outside the family, so control erodes only if the Puigs sell, and there is no sunset clause. Exea is governed by a family council with representatives from each branch, and a protocol restricts individual sales.

The trade-off is that Puig receives a governance discount. Proxy advisers flagged the structure at the 2025 and 2026 general meetings, and some index providers weight the stock down for limited free float. Puig responded with an independent board majority, a lead independent director and the commitment that Marc Puig’s eventual successor as CEO will be chosen on merit, which may mean the first non-family chief executive in 110 years.

What has Puig delivered since listing?

Every financial commitment in the prospectus, and a share price that ignored it for eighteen months. FY2024 revenue rose 11.3% to €4.79bn and FY2025 reached €5,042m, with adjusted EBITDA of €1,045m, a 20.7% margin, net profit of €594m (up 11.9%) and free cash flow of €664m. Net debt fell to €716m, or 0.7x EBITDA.

Growth was broad: EMEA up 5.5% like for like, the Americas 7.7% and Asia-Pacific 21.7% from a small base. The group paid a dividend of €0.42 per share, about €237m, and Marc Puig told shareholders in 2026 that Puig had “delivered on all of our commitments made a year ago” and more than tripled revenue against its 2020 plan.

Yet the shares fell below €17 in 2025, roughly 30–40% under the IPO price, before recovering in 2026. The reasons were external: a de-rating of the entire beauty sector after Estée Lauder’s profit warnings, worries about US tariffs on European fragrance, a slowdown in Chinese travel retail, and the overhang of the family’s stake. Puig’s own results consistently beat consensus. For long-term holders the gap between operating performance and valuation is either an opportunity or a permanent feature of family-controlled beauty stocks.

What is the Charlotte Tilbury arrangement?

A staged buyout. Puig bought a majority of Charlotte Tilbury Beauty in 2020 and raised its stake to 78.5% in July 2024 for about €215m; in 2026 it paid a further sum, reported at around €351m, to move toward 85%, with the remaining shares to be acquired through call and put options running to 2031.

The structure keeps Charlotte Tilbury herself involved as chairman and creative director while Puig gradually takes full ownership, and it has been extended twice as the brand outgrew expectations. Charlotte Tilbury is now the largest single brand in the group by revenue. The cost is a multi-year cash commitment that competes with new acquisitions and with the dividend.

The same logic applies to Byredo, where founder Ben Gorham stayed on for a period after the 2022 sale, and to Dr. Barbara Sturm. Puig’s model is to buy founder-led brands, keep the founder for the transition, and fold distribution and manufacturing into its own network. It is a beauty-specific version of the approach described in Inditex’s vertically integrated model: own the brand, control the supply, keep the story.

How does Puig compare with Inditex and Mango?

All three are Catalan or Galician family companies that reached global scale, and each chose a different answer to the ownership question. Inditex listed in 2001 with the founder keeping 59% and no dual-class shares. Mango has never listed and after founder Isak Andic’s death in December 2024 remains wholly owned by his heirs. Puig listed with dual-class control.

The comparison shows the trade-off between capital and control. Amancio Ortega never needed outside money because Zara’s cash conversion funded expansion; his control comes from ownership, and his holding uses the dividends elsewhere. Mango grew more slowly and had to restructure in 2015–2019 partly because family capital was the only capital. Puig needed acquisition currency for brands that cost €1bn each and accepted public scrutiny to get it.

On governance Puig sits between the two. It has a family CEO, like Inditex under Ortega until 2011, and a family board presence, like Mango, but its listed status brings independent directors, quarterly reporting and an audit committee that neither Mango nor the pre-2001 Inditex had. The Grifols crisis is the cautionary opposite: dual-class shares without those safeguards.

What comes next for the Puig family?

A succession that the company has said will be handled “in due course”. Marc Puig, born in 1962, has run the group for over twenty years and is the only family member in an executive role. The fourth generation is represented on the family council but not in management, and the board has stated that the next CEO will be selected on merit.

The more immediate agenda is portfolio. Puig has cash and a 0.7x leverage ratio, which gives it room for another €1–2bn acquisition in skincare or niche fragrance, the two segments where it is under-scale. Management has also flagged an expansion of its own manufacturing in Barcelona and in the US to mitigate tariff exposure, and a doubling of investment in China through the Charlotte Tilbury and Byredo channels.

The family, for its part, has shown no intention of selling. Exea’s stake has not moved since the IPO lock-up expired, and the 2026 dividend increase suggests the shareholding will be a source of income rather than liquidity. As long as the class A shares stay within the family, Puig will remain the largest company on the Spanish market that is controlled from a single family council.

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