GS E&C offloads Spanish water treatment arm GS Inima for $1.2 bn

GS Engineering & Construction Corp. (GS E&C) said on Friday it has agreed to sell its Spanish water treatment arm GS Inima Environment SA for $1.2 billion as part of a portfolio realignment to focus on core businesses.

The South Korean builder did not disclose the buyer.

However, sources in the construction industry have speculated that Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (TAQA), a state-controlled energy holding company of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is the likely buyer.

GS E&C had been engaged in prolonged negotiations over the sale.

GS E&C took over GS Inima Environment from OHL Group, a Spanish construction company, in November 2011. 

In a regulatory filing, GS E&C said the deal values a 100% stake in GS Inima at $900 million, adding that the final price is subject to change pending regulatory approval and contractual fine-tuning.

GS Inima has been active in seawater desalination facility construction in the Middle East, including a 2.4-trillion-won project in Oman and a 920-billion-won construction in the UAE in 2023.

In 2024, the company earned 52.2 billion won ($37.5 million) in net profit on sales of 493 billion won.

GS E&C has been divesting non-core units to improve liquidity since last year.

In October, it sold GS Elevator Co. and Zeit O&M Co., an energy facility maintenance service provider, to Genesis Private Equity for undisclosed sums.

It fell into financial difficulty after halting new project activities between Apr. 1 and Nov. 30 of last year, following a structural collapse at an apartment construction site in Incheon, west of Seoul.

Write to Yu-Rim Oh at our@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.