Duesseldorf Andreas Wolf could be quite satisfied. The 58-year-old is the boss of a new large company, which has about 40,000 employees and is represented worldwide. The outsourced powertrain division of the ContinentalGroup should intensively deal with electric drives in the future, so it is also promising for the future.
An IPO, in which the Hanoverian supplier separates from 25 percent of the division, is planned for this year. Since the turn of the year, the spin-off has also officially been completed – the new company with an annual turnover of just under € 7.7 billion in 2017 is in the commercial register.
Nevertheless, the problems for new CEO Wolf grow: worldwide, the car manufacturers switch to reverse. After ten years of continuous growth, things suddenly do not go up as if by themselves. Even in China, the world’s largest auto market, sales have shrunk for the first time in two decades. And since July, when ContiCEO Elmar Degenhart announced the Powertrain IPO, the stock markets have collapsed as well.
The IPO is planned so far for the middle of the year, the supplier wants to take a one-digit billion amount, but at the same time retain the majority.
Andreas Wolf can not rely on a quick IPO under the current conditions. Conti CFO Wolfgang Schäfer has just warned at the beginning of the week before too great expectations. The powertrains division’s partial listing will only happen under the appropriate market conditions: “We have nothing to give away.” Continental’s automotive analyst Arndt Ellinghorst even advises that the company should completely abandon the IPO.
Bought up by Conti
Andreas Wolf will need patience, if the parent company Continental should postpone the IPO after all, There is also enough to do with the newly founded company. In a few days Conti wants to announce the name of the new stock corporation. So much has already leaked in the run-up: It will definitely be an art name. Nearby German-English word combinations from “power” and “drive” were all already occupied and legally protected, they say.
And maybe not the best idea anyway: the quaint Portmanteau “Healthineers”, the Siemens missed out on his public health service, which caused a lot of ridicule at the time. However, the spin-off share has performed well since then.
Andreas Wolf will be watching closely as the “divide and rule” policy Continental plans Siemens is working. If only because he is a trained “Siemensian”. Immediately after studying business administration in Nuremberg, he joined the Munich-based industrial group in 1989. In 1996, he joined a Siemens automotive technology plant in Regensburg as a logistics manager and later joined the Siemens VDO subsidiary VDO.
Auto parts supplier: “The party is over” – Continental management expects falling margins
His move to Conti 2007 was, so to speak, force majeure: The Hanoverians took over the Siemens subsidiary. So far, the powertrain division has its headquarters in the university town of Regensburg, where seldom enough is an independent company with tens of thousands of employees going public, which is likely to cause some excitement.
Even if Wolf soon has to promote a stock market story as well as a new company name, he wants to work for the old forms of power as well as for the Stromer. The end of the internal combustion engine he thinks is far from come, especially for the diesel not. “The Euro 6d diesel with its modern exhaust aftertreatment is not only economical and climate-friendly, but also clean – that should not be forgotten in the heated diesel debate,” emphasizes Wolf.
Electric cars will be able to prevail in his viewIf the conditions such as range and price are correct: “Then we see a much higher acceptance of alternative drive concepts.” Distributing optimism will also be part of Andreas Wolf’s job in the future. Especially if he wants to go public in 2019.