Wolf Henning Scheider
The boss of the auto supplier ZF does not extend his contract.
(Photo: picture alliance/dpa)
ZF boss Wolf-Henning Scheider has rejected an offer to extend the contract and will be leaving in early 2023. After more than three decades in the auto industry and having reached the age of 60, he has decided to end his active time in the industry at the end of the year, the company announced on Thursday.
Scheider was already known in the past for surprising – critics say lonely – decisions. Even his change in 2015 from the head of the Bosch car division to the head of the much smaller car supplier Mahle came out of the blue. In 2018, the move to ZF followed just as surprisingly and quickly.
His predecessor Stefan Sommer failed because the owners did not want to risk taking over the brake manufacturer Wabco at the time. Scheider was then able to pull through with the strategically important acquisition two years later. The integration of Wabco is now largely complete.
As a result, ZF has not only become a system provider, but also sees itself as the world’s largest supplier in the commercial vehicle business. Behind Bosch, the foundation group from Lake Constance has risen to become the second-largest auto supplier after Continental shrunk through the spin-off of its drive division.
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“In the past four years, Wolf-Henning Scheider has made a decisive contribution to ZF developing into a leading supplier of state-of-the-art electronic mechatronic systems in its business areas,” explained the new Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Heinrich Hiesinger
“The fact that ZF is back on course after the last two years of crisis is also due to Wolf-Henning Scheider. We regret his personal decision, but we respect it,” said Friedrichshafen’s Lord Mayor Andreas Brand, head of the Zeppelin Foundation. The supervisory board must now look for a successor. After two external CEOs in a row, there could also be an internal solution again.
ZF is doing well operationally
In the past year, ZF consolidated its second position in the German automotive supplier industry, despite supply bottlenecks, the chip crisis and the pandemic. Sales increased by 17.5 percent to 38.3 billion euros and are thus above the level before the pandemic. The adjusted EBIT increased from one to 1.9 billion euros, the EBIT margin increased from 3.2 to five percent. “Despite the strong headwind that set in over the course of the year, we stayed on course and achieved the goals we set at the beginning of the year,” said Scheider on Thursday.
Scheider emphasized that ZF reached strategic milestones in 2021 and set further course for the future. The Electrified Powertrain Technology division, which was founded at the beginning of the year, cited the integration of the Wabco acquisition and the collaboration with Microsoft for the creation of the ZF Cloud as examples. In it, all company data and processes are digitized, networked and made available worldwide.
ZF has also further aligned its product range to the electric and software-defined vehicle of the future and has received substantial orders from international car and commercial vehicle manufacturers for these solutions.
The company, which grew up with transmissions and chassis, had caught up with the industry leaders Bosch and Continental through the courageous billion-dollar takeovers of TRW and Wabco in future electronic technology, but had to accept a high level of debt.
“In a volatile environment with profit warnings and revised forecasts, we have achieved our goals in the middle of our forecast range,” said CFO Konstantin Sauer. “This has helped us not only to make substantial investments, but also to reduce our financial liabilities and strengthen our equity base.”
Gross liabilities fell by EUR 752 million to EUR 12.5 billion over the course of the year; At the end of 2021, the equity ratio was again around 19 (2020: 12.1) percent, and according to the company, expenditure on research and development is now eight percent of sales again.
The company remains cautious about the outlook given the Ukraine war, supply shortages and inflation. Subject to no further escalation, ZF expects group sales of more than 40 billion euros for 2022. The adjusted EBIT margin should be between 4.5 and 5.5 percent.
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