(Tokyo) The Japanese industrial and technological conglomerate Toshiba announced on Monday its intention to split into two independent companies and to sell several of its activities, going back on a previous plan to separate into three entities which some shareholders opposed.
Posted at 1:20 a.m.
Toshiba, pressed by its shareholders to maximize its value, now wants to create a new company combining its activities in electronic devices and data storage, including semiconductors, and list it on the stock market by the end of March 2024. detailed its CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa.
The second, made up of the rest of Toshiba, must retain its activities, particularly in digital infrastructure and solutions, and also manage the approximately 40% share it currently holds in Kioxia, the Japanese giant of memory chips that Toshiba wants to see introduced in Stock market quickly.
Mr. Tsunakawa deemed Monday the “optimal” solution of the split in order to improve the enterprise value of the conglomerate and to promote a more “agile” operation, acknowledging that Toshiba suffers in the current state “from slowness in taking of decision”.
The project must be submitted to the shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting scheduled for next month, at a date still undetermined.
In order to reduce significantly the costs” and the uncertainty associated with the transaction.
This plan also provided for the creation of a company dedicated to Toshiba’s activities in energy and infrastructure.
“Deliver more value”
But the announcement had aroused contrasting reactions at the time, and the opposition in particular of its second largest investor (with around 7.5% of the shares), the activist fund 3 D Investment Partners, which in January had urged Toshiba to consider other strategies.
Wishing to make itself more attractive and to “generate more value” for its shareholders, the group also wants to sell segments far from its core business.
He thus announced on Monday his intention to sell the majority of his shares in his Toshiba Carrier Corporation (TCC) air conditioning activity to the American Carrier Global, with which he holds this joint venture created in 1999, for an amount of around 100 billion euros. yen (759 million euros).
Toshiba, which would reduce its stake in TCC from 60% to 5% according to a press release, explains that it is in its opinion “the best way to fully exploit the potential and the value of its activities in the field of air conditioners. “.
The company also wants to get rid of its elevator and lighting activities by the end of March 2023.
Former Japanese industrial and technological flagship, Toshiba has lost a lot of its luster since a huge makeup scandal of its accounts revealed in 2015. The group then found itself on the brink after the bankruptcy of its American nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse in 2017.
To survive, the Japanese had to sell many assets including its pearl Toshiba Memory, its memory chip entity bought in 2018 by a consortium led by the American fund Bain Capital for around 18 billion euros and since renamed Kioxia.
Toshiba has also recently experienced a deep crisis of governance: its general manager Nobuaki Kurumatani and then its president Osamu Nagayama were sacked last year under pressure from shareholders, who were very angry at management’s troubled methods to ensure the vote on its resolutions. at the group’s ordinary general meeting in 2020.