Siemens sells postal and parcel business and dissolves e-car joint venture FINANCE Logo FINANCE – The leading B2B platform in the CFO world Currently at FINANCE+ FINANCE Logo FIN+ Logo

At Siemens, the big cleaning up of the portfolio is happening in quick succession. As the group announced on the eve of today's Annual General Meeting, it is selling the postal and parcel logistics business to the Hamburg-based technology company Körber. This was previously part of the "Portfolio Companies" division, from which M&A deals are now emerging with a high frequency.

Körber pays 1.15 billion euros, the closing of the deal is planned for this year. The business with airport logistics solutions, also part of Siemens Logistics, will remain with Siemens, emphasizes Ralf P. Thomas. The CFO confirms that the group intends to remain “stable and profitable” as a global market leader.

CFO Profile

dr Ralph P Thomas

In addition to the sale of the division to Körber, Siemens is also selling its 50 percent stake in a company for electric car drives to the joint venture partner Valeo. Siemens boss Roland Busch wants to complete this transaction by July at the latest. Siemens did not name the purchase price for the exit from the e-car joint venture, but did say that there would be a positive effect on earnings of 300 million euros after the separation.

The recent sale of the traffic technology subsidiary Yunex to the Atlantia holding company of the Italian entrepreneurial family Benetton brought significant book profits and cash inflows to Siemens. The valuation of this M&A deal was almost 1 billion euros.

Körber CFO Onno Schüssler is an integration specialist

The new owner of Siemens' mail and parcel logistics business is also very familiar with portfolio management. The family company Körber underwent a major corporate restructuring many years ago and has since invested heavily in the business with equipment for the logistics industry. To this end, in 2019 the company brought M&A-experienced Linde manager Onno Schüssler to Körber Supply Chain as CFO. Since then, Schüssler has had to integrate more than a dozen acquisitions and investments and align the rapidly expanding company with profitability.

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CFO Onno Schüssler has to integrate 12 companies

With the acquisition of Siemens Logistics, Körber Supply Chain's buy-and-build strategy has reached a milestone. The billion-dollar acquisition extends the existing supply chain offering to include solutions for postal and parcel logistics, which Körber predicts will see double-digit growth rates in the coming years. The sorting division includes the planning, design, installation and maintenance of products for postal and parcel automation. Corporations like Deutsche Post have been investing billions in the construction of new, ultra-modern parcel sorting systems for years.

The valuation is correspondingly impressive: Based on the reported annual turnover of 500 million euros, Körber pays a multiple of 2.3x turnover for the Siemens division. For comparison: The current FINANCE multiples put the market value of large machine and plant manufacturers at 0.69x to 1.08x sales.

CFO Profile

Onno Schuessler

Siemens is experiencing a boom in incoming orders

Beyond the M&A department, things are going well at the Dax group Siemens: In the first quarter, which ended at Siemens at the end of December, sales rose by 9 percent to 16.5 billion euros, and the operating result from the industrial business rose by 12 percent to 2.5 billion euros. The industrial group has experienced an "unprecedented boom" especially in incoming orders due to the early procurement measures of many customers, quotes the FAZ as CEO Busch. Incoming orders rose in the first quarter by 42 percent to 24.2 billion euros.

The bottom line is that Siemens has an after-tax profit of 1.8 billion euros, an increase of 30 percent - reason enough for the stock market to push the share up 7.5 percent and thus out of the downward trend that the paper has established since the beginning of the year had.

The next step in the transformation at Siemens could be the sale of the large motor production facility "Large Drive Applications". This unit is currently being outsourced.

melanie.ehmann[at]finance-magazin.de

Melanie Ehman

Melanie Ehmann is an editor at FINANCE and focuses on current developments on the M&A market. She studied political science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Before FINANCE, Melanie Ehmann worked for six years in the editorial department of Platow Verlag, first as a trainee and later as a business journalist for the Platow Brief and the special publications.