Bilbao – CIE Automotive has announced today the sale to Mutares of its forging business in Germany, which implies the sale of 100% of the share capital of (i) SCHONEWEWEISS & CO GmbH, (ii) Gesenkschmiede Schneider Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, (iii) Falkenroth Umformtechnik GmbH, and (iv) Jeco-Jellinghaus Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung (hereinafter ‘the German forging companies’).
With around 600 employees and sales of EUR 220 million in 2022, these companies specialise in the manufacture of forged and machined forged components and are primarily oriented towards the European truck market.
The enterprise value of the transaction amounts to EUR 55.5 million, which is equivalent to around 5 times the 2023 proforma recurring EBITDA.
As of December 15th, 2022, the Board of Directors of CIE Automotive approved the strategic decision of discontinuing these forging activities in Germany and put this business up for sale, registering its consolidated net assets as a ‘group of assets and liabilities held for sale’ at its realizable value in 2022, updating this value as negotiations progressed during 2023. Consequently, the sale of the business will not have a significant additional impact on CIE Automotive’s consolidated income statement.
Mutares is a global private equity investor, headquartered in Germany, specialised in acquiring medium-sized companies and carve-outs in special situations, which show operational improvement potential.
According to Jesus Maria Herrera, CEO of CIE Automotive, ‘This business was integrated into CIE in 2013, within the framework of the alliance with India’s M&M. Over the last decade, we have worked to continuously improve its profitability and productivity, having achieved fully satisfactory results in this period’.
And he continues: ‘Today we want to proceed to divest it as we do not consider it core and with the main objective of redirecting financial and management resources to higher return businesses, including other geographies with higher growth potential and other technologies with higher demand from our customers in the context of industry megatrends (decarbonisation, car lightweighting, comfort…)’.
The closing of the transaction is subject to the fulfilment of the usual conditions for this type of operation.
