Breathe easy in Wolfsburg. In the midst of the market turbulence on the stock exchanges and the mounting recession, it succeeds VolkswagenGroup, the IPO of the sports car subsidiary Porsche achieve the announced maximum price. The 113.9 million preferred shares of Porsche AG will be issued to investors at a price of EUR 82.50 each, as the group announced on Wednesday evening. The Porsche AG is thus valued at an impressive 75 billion euros.
With this, the car manufacturer, under CEO Oliver Blume (54), is bringing in proceeds of 9.4 billion euros – and is thus creating the largest German IPO in more than 25 years. Only the IPO of Deutsche Telekom brought in more money in 1996. The dimension is also clear in a global comparison: Measured by the proceeds from the issue, the Porsche IPO is among the top 20 of all time.
The price range for Porsche shares was between 76.50 and 82.50 euros. The demand was so great that the shares could be sold at the highest price. That makes Porsche the second most valuable carmaker in Germany. Just for comparison: Volkswagen itself comes to around 85 billion euros, Mercedes-Benz to 58 billion euros, bmw only to 43 billion euros. “We are very pleased that we were able to carry out a successful IPO for Porsche AG,” said VW CFO Arno Antlitz (52).
The share capital of Porsche AG consists of 911 million shares, of which half are ordinary shares with voting rights and half are non-voting preferred shares. The previous sole owner, Volkswagen, sold a quarter each of the trunks and the preference, i.e. up to 113.9 million units each.
Four anchor investors had already committed in advance to subscribe shares for up to 3.68 billion euros. They guaranteed almost 40 percent of the planned proceeds. A fifth of the issue was secured by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund QIA. He now has to spend 1.88 billion euros for this. The Norwegian oil fund managed by Norges Bank and the US wealth manager T. Rowe Price each contributed EUR 750 million, and the state-affiliated Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company (ADQ) EUR 300 million.
Power gain for the Porsches and Piëchs
Of the ordinary shares, 25 percent plus one share goes to Porsche Automobil Holding SE, which is controlled by the Porsche and Piëch families. You pay a premium of 7.5 percent over the price of the preferred shares for the common shares. That is arithmetically 88.69 euros per share and a total of 10.1 billion euros. For this, it is prepared to borrow up to 7.9 billion euros. The family holding company Porsche SE is already taking over 17.5 percent of Porsche AG in parallel with the IPO, and the remaining 7.5 percent will not be taken over until early 2023, when it receives the special dividend planned by Volkswagen.
In the future, the families will not only be major shareholders in the Volkswagen Group. With almost 32 percent, your holding company is the powerful owner of VW. With the IPO, you also secured veto power over Porsche AG.
The Volkswagen Group is the financial beneficiary of the deal. It takes a total of 19.5 billion euros from the IPO at the highest price. The group keeps 51 percent of it to finance its electric car strategy. 49 percent are to be distributed to the company’s own shareholders in the form of a special dividend. That would be almost 9.6 billion euros – or about 19 euros per Volkswagen share. Porsche SE alone can now count on three billion euros. About one billion euros is to flow to QIA – a good half of the money that the state fund put into Porsche preferred shares. The state of Lower Saxony, as the third major VW shareholder, can count on more than 1.1 billion. Porsche AG gets nothing from the IPO.