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Munich, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf The announcement was in the air, but a little surprise succeeded Conti's boss, Elmar Degenhart. After the completion of an badysis, the board has "made one of the greatest conversions in the history of the company," announced the Dax group Wednesday in Hanover. Continental AG will split after 147 years of the company's history and will inform its shareholders by ad-hoc release.
The current five divisions will become the Continental Group – a holding company with three divisions. In the future, "Continental Rubber" will represent the traditional business of tires and rubber products, while the "Automotive" business unit will represent the conventional supplies sector with chbadis and components in the future field of driving. autonomous.
The third pillar "Powertrain" is responsible for the activity with injection systems, engine controls, hybrid and electric engines. This part is supposed to be made public in mid-2019. A step that Degenhart does not rule out for the tire industry in the future.
For months, Degenhart, along with Chairman of the Supervisory Board Wolfgang Reitzle, had been pondering this milestone, which they justified by the imminent transformation of the industry. "In the next decade and beyond, the auto industry is undergoing the largest and most profound change in its history of more than 130 years," said Mr. Degenhart in the afternoon . "We are approaching this change early and with foresight."
On July 26, the conversion to the Supervisory Board must be approved. Employees are likely to agree after the board has given employees extensive site and job warranties. Degenhart wants to use the product of the IPO and invest in electric drives and autonomous driving techniques. The development of these areas must be concentrated in a central research and improved organizationally.
In fact, the conversion has a characteristic character: With 235,000 employees and a turnover of 44 billion euros, Continental is the second largest automotive supplier after Bosch. The company has also had a turbulent history lately. After the takeover of Siemens' VDO division in 2007, the tire manufacturer has finally become a technology group with global ambition.
Shortly after, the company is threatened by an attacker. But the Schaeffler family's attempt to control Conti with a hostile takeover proved too daring in the financial crisis. It was agreed to a truce that ultimately benefited everyone. The Schaeffler family is content with 46% of Continental AG and since then, like the Quandt family, it has been a major shareholder of BMW.
The leadership of CEO Elmar Degenhart was able to operate freely, making Conti one of the most profitable industrial companies in the country. And this time too, Degenhart sees the Schaeffler family at his side: "The main shareholder accompanied the projects very constructively. We are counting on the support of the Schaeffler family, "said Degenhart.
Degenhart is not alone with his division plans.The diesel crisis and the transition to electric drives put tremendous pressure on manufacturers and suppliers Traditional combustion technology must be developed with billions of dollars of investment to meet increasingly stringent standards in terms of emissions and fuel consumption. Companies must finance the introduction of electric readers, whose success in the market today is still completely uncertain.This include the digitization and autonomous driving, in which Conti plays a key role with its radar and sensor systems
.This creates a huge pressure for innovation in the industry, which challenges existing structures. Monoliths become farms in which newly formed girls make more flexible and decentralized decisions. The money and investments are no longer collected centrally and distributed with watering can. In the future, the respective companies will themselves compete for money and investors, enter into partnerships and recruit staff.
The tectonics of the sector is on the move: Volkswagen has already split its trucking subsidiaries Scania and MAN under the name "Traton". The new company under the direction of Andreas Renschler should be ready at the latest in the space of one year
IPO also at Daimler?
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Faster is only the Knorr-Bremse supplier group: Owners Heinz-Hermann Thiele may be an IPO for months to consider, in September could to fall the decision. What drives it less is money, but the question of how the company can be run after its time.
For investors, the proceedings are long overdue. Since the beginning of the diesel crisis, car manufacturers and their suppliers are far behind the stock market. Only the potential spinoffs of Daimler and Volkswagen's truck subsidiaries could bring an additional market value of 30 billion euros, badysts said.
Frank Schwope salutes Continental's move to the holding company. "It's a serious change that will spark a lot of momentum," says NordLB badyst. Especially in a context where all car parts manufacturers are facing mbadive technological change – far from traditional combustion engines to electric drives – conversion would make sense. "But it also costs a lot of money." Schwope complains of Conti's planned spending for conversion
"Continental sees the end of the internal combustion engine and pulls the plug in time," says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. University of Duisburg-Essen now sees competitors like Bosch, heavily dependent on diesel and gasoline engines, under pressure.The industry is undergoing a huge transformation. "Anyone who enters this process of transformation with old structures will have blockages on the legs that will interfere during the race ", warns Dudenhöffer
" It seems that a race has just burst on the introduction of the structures of e holding and the IPO. subsidiaries to unleash potential and values, "observes Marc Tüngler, Managing Director of the German Association for Securities Protection (DSW).
These spin-offs and restructurings would be motivated by low interest rates. The cheap money is currently rating prices across the ceiling, Tüngler: "If the dark clouds on the stock markets, the window of time for such transactions, but close quickly," warns the protector of shareholders .
Tüngler is skeptical for the benefit of investors. The sum of the parts need not necessarily be worth more than the big picture. "A group with three or four pillars is much less vulnerable, because the weaknesses and strengths of the group are balanced.This natural balance disappears when the components of the company go their own way," says Tüngler.
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