The company’s supervisory board announced the spinoff on May
7 as part of its Vision 2020+ strategy concept. The board said the move would
help Germany-based Siemens meet medium-term growth and profit targets by
“clearly focusing its portfolio on dynamic growth markets and efficiency gains.”
Siemens is set to announce its quarterly earnings on May 8. The company’s stock
price has risen about 5% this year.
The Gas and Power spinoff and transfer of SGRE stake would
create a new “major player on the energy market” with a business volume of €30
billion and more than 80,000 employees, Siemens said. The carveout will give
the new company “complete independence and entrepreneurial freedom,” it said.
Siemens said the new company will have a stock exchange listing by
September2020.
The Gas and Power unit had sales of 12.4 billion euros
($13.8 billion) in 2018, and 377 million euros ($421million) in profit.
Profitably has fallen year-over-year in recent years due to growth in renewable
power generation and decreased sales of Siemens’ gas turbines and other power
plant equipment.
Siemens, which employed 379,000 workers worldwide at the end
of 2018, including about 44,000 in its Gas and Power unit, said it will create
25,000 new jobs in digital industries and smart infrastructure, including
electric mobility, energy storage, and smart buildings, though job cuts in
other areas will reduce the net number of new jobs to about 10,000. The
company wants to cut about $2.5 billion in costs by 2023.
