NewPrinces

What Is NewPrinces? (NWL.MI)

NewPrinces is a European food and consumer staples group built through acquisitions. Controlled by the Mastrolia family since 2008, the company has expanded from a relatively small Italian dairy and pasta business into one of the largest agrifood platforms in continental Europe, with annual revenue now approaching €6.5 billion.

The group was originally known as Newlat Food. It adopted the NewPrinces name after the acquisition of Princes Group in 2024, a transaction that materially increased its scale, broadened its category exposure and added a much larger presence in the UK market.

Today, NewPrinces operates across food manufacturing, branded products, private label and large-scale distribution, with activities spanning Italy, the UK and other European markets. The business has become significantly broader and more complex than the legacy Newlat company that many investors first came to know on the Milan market. The group combines a listed Italian parent, exposure to a separately listed UK subsidiary, and a long acquisition-driven track record built around buying non-core or underperforming assets and attempting to improve them through integration, restructuring and scale.

At the same time, part of the market’s caution reflects the increasing complexity of the group and the execution risks attached to some of its more recent transactions, most notably Carrefour Italia. While the strategic logic of the broader platform is clear, investor confidence has been affected by the operational challenges surrounding the Italian retail business and by a growing debate over how much value should be attributed to that asset today.

MORAM Capital initiated its Equity Research on NewPrinces back in 2022, when the market was still treating the company as a much smaller and simpler Italian food business. Since then, the group has evolved into a far more ambitious and difficult-to-value European platform, which is why closer analysis is required.

NewPrinces M&A: How the Group Was Built

To understand NewPrinces, it is essential to understand its M&A strategy. Acquisitions have been the main driver of its expansion over time.

Since the foundation of Newlat, and particularly under the leadership of Angelo Mastrolia, the group has completed more than 20 acquisitions across food, dairy, pasta, branded consumer products and distribution. The objective has generally been consistent: acquire assets that are non-core to the seller, operationally under-optimised or strategically overlooked, integrate them into the wider platform, and improve profitability through scale, procurement, industrial efficiency and tighter cost control.

That strategy accelerated materially after the company’s 2019 IPO. Access to public equity markets increased the group’s visibility and broadened its strategic options, helping NewPrinces move from being a relatively small Italian food operator to becoming a much larger and more diversified European consumer staples platform.

Among the most relevant post-IPO transactions were Delverde, which strengthened the group’s position in premium pasta; Princes Group, which transformed the scale and international profile of the business; Plasmon and other Italian consumer assets, which expanded the group’s category exposure; and Carrefour Italia, the most complex and debated acquisition in the company’s recent history.

As a result, NewPrinces is no longer easy to classify within a single category. It sits somewhere between a food manufacturer, a consumer holding company, a turnaround platform and a strategic consolidator in European staples. That complexity is one of the main reasons the market continues to debate how the group should be valued.

Princes Group IPO and the 2025 London Listing

Princes Group became one of the most important parts of the NewPrinces story after its 2025 London listing. Acquired by NewPrinces in 2024, the business came to market in October 2025 with a price range of 475p to 590p per share, but ultimately priced at 475p, the bottom end of the range, implying a market capitalisation of around £1.16 billion.

That result was important. Many investors had seen the IPO as a potential value-crystallisation event for NewPrinces, but the final pricing pointed to more cautious demand than initially expected and reinforced doubts over how much value the market was willing to recognise within the broader group structure.

The transaction was also notable because NewPrinces itself subscribed for around £200 million of shares, while Newlat Group S.A., the Mastrolia family office, subscribed for a further £54.7 million. After the IPO, NewPrinces still controlled 82.7% of Princes Group, so the listing created a market reference point for the asset without materially changing control.

This helps explain the mixed reaction. Princes Group became a separately listed UK vehicle with its own valuation and access to capital, but the subdued pricing, the limited free float and the continued control by NewPrinces left the market still questioning how much value had really been crystallised at the parent level.

Carrefour Italia and the NewPrinces Turnaround

If the Princes acquisition changed the scale of NewPrinces, the Carrefour Italia deal changed the debate around the stock.

Through this transaction, NewPrinces acquired a retail network of more than 1,000 stores in Italy, operating under the GS brand, with roughly €3.7 billion of net retail sales. On the surface, the deal looked unusual: a large supermarket business with clear operational challenges, acquired for a nominal equity price and with a balance sheet heavily shaped by lease liabilities.

For NewPrinces, however, Carrefour Italia was not only a distressed retail asset, but also a distribution platform with potential relevance for the wider group. Control of a nationwide store network could create commercial, industrial and brand advantages across categories such as baby food, dairy and other packaged food segments where shelf space and distribution remain important.

The difficulty is that this rationale comes with substantial execution risk. A retail turnaround of this scale will take time, management’s timeline has already moved out, and recent results have reinforced a more cautious market view. For now, the market appears to assign limited value to Carrefour Italia within their sum-of-the-parts framework.

This makes Carrefour one of the key variables in the NewPrinces equity story. If the turnaround remains slow, it is likely to continue weighing on sentiment. If operations begin to stabilise, it could eventually alter how the wider group is valued.

NewPrinces Analysis, Research and Company Updates

We have followed NewPrinces closely since 2022 because we believe it is one of the most interesting serial acquirers in the European consumer sector, and one whose underlying value remains difficult for the market to assess through conventional frameworks.

What makes the company difficult to assess is not only the pace of its expansion, but also the structure it has created over time: a listed Italian parent, a separately listed UK subsidiary, a long acquisition history, and an increasingly important debate around Carrefour Italia, execution risk and the true earnings power of the wider platform.

Our coverage includes:

• Initial equity research on the original Newlat/NewPrinces investment case
• Detailed analysis of annual and interim results, including the main drivers of revenue, EBITDA, cash flow and leverage
• Conference call reviews and management commentary, with a focus on guidance, capital allocation and execution risk
• Work on the group’s M&A strategy
• Analysis of the Princes Group acquisition and 2025 London listing, including the implications for the parent company’s valuation
• Coverage of Carrefour Italia and the potential GS turnaround, including the strategic rationale, execution risks and the market’s evolving view of the asset
• Independent financial projections, including scenario work on Carrefour Italia, retail profitability, lease-adjusted balance sheet considerations and real estate-related questions
• Discussion of corporate structure, minority interests, listed subsidiaries and sum-of-the-parts valuation issues
• Regular company updates when results, strategic developments or market events materially affect the investment case

The aim of MORAM Capital is to track how the NewPrinces story evolves over time and which parts of the group are driving, or weighing on, the equity case.