The automotive supplier’s board of directors has been checking for more than a year Continentalhow to best position the company for the future. The latest status, announced last fall: The display and infotainment area UX and a few other areas would be separated and put up for sale. But now the turning point: The board of directors, led by Nikolai Setzer (53), announced in an ad hoc announcement that it would examine an IPO of the entire automotive division “in detail” and prepare the implementation at the same time.
The automotive division would then no longer be part of Continental AG; The company would largely be back where it started: as a tire manufacturer, with part of the Contitech rubber division remaining. The general meeting is scheduled to decide on the separation on April 25, 2025, and the IPO of the car business is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.
The announcement states that contract manufacturing should also be listed on the stock exchange. The aim of the demerger is to be able to fully exploit the value and growth potential of the then separated companies.
In the company, supervisory board chairman Wolfgang Reitzle (75) is considered the person who has been driving division for a long time
. Reitzle is considered a supporter of the radical solution that is now being sought, in which everything revolves around tires and rubber tubes and in which the car business is increasingly losing importance.
The plans were well received on the stock market. On a very weak trading day, Continental’s shares went against the trend and went up slightly.
Everything on tires – farewell to the conglomerate
The plans are based on the knowledge that Conti’s weak car division is slowing down its strong tire division. This should also be reflected in the half-year figures, which will be presented this Wednesday. The tire division generated a profit of 374 million euros in the first quarter alone (with sales of around 3.3 billion euros). The car division, which was led by CEO Setzer until the end of April 2023, had sales of 4.8 billion euros – and a loss of around 255 million euros.
Instead of being able to invest in growth, the company’s top management realized that the tire board around Christian Kötz (54) all too often had to compensate for the losses of their colleagues. And the entire company loses on the stock market. For a long time now, the more focused companies appear on the market, the more successful they are. At first it was Microsoft, then followed Apple, Google and Facebook. The stock market started penalizing diversity. Reitzle no longer wants to accept the conglomerate discount.
Moving away from the car business
Setzer emphasized on Monday: “We keep the interests of all employees firmly in mind as part of the detailed review. They would benefit from independent and strong companies.” Automotive boss Philipp von Hirschheydt (49) will also have at least as much of an eye on the further restructuring of the division until the IPO and will probably approach it even more consistently than in the past few months. In his first year as car boss, he missed his own goals. The pressure to achieve results therefore grew. The austerity programs are causing heated discussions internally Dispute among employees
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Now Setzer is accepting the split of the group in order to get out of the crisis. One in two of the approximately 200,000 employees is now employed by Automotive. After the spin-off of the Vitesco drive division in 2021, the IPO of the car division would be the final departure from the car business.