BERLIN — Volkswagen Group brands have been instructed to prepare for a stock market listing as a training exercise, CEO Oliver Blume told a German business paper.
With the advice of a banking team, chief executives and financial officers at each brand are working on sharpening their focus with capital markets in mind, Blume told Handelsblatt, without commenting on whether further listings were planned.
VW Group’s listing of Porsche last Thursday prompted speculation of further listings as a means of unlocking value in the group, which executives view as strongly undervalued.
The group’s brands include the Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini luxury marques as well as the VW, Skoda and Seat mass-market brands.
With the advice of a banking team, chief executives and financial officers at each brand are working on sharpening their focus with capital markets in mind, Blume said.
The results of the exercise would be presented at a capital markets day next year.
“It should be understood like a training session,” Blume said. “Within the Volkswagen Group I sense a clear motivation to give capital markets a higher relevance.”
Listing other VW Group brands could be a good move, QuantCo analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said.
“I could certainly imagine the Volkswagen Group as a sort of holding for various listed companies. Done wisely, it could add significant value and improve competitiveness of the group and brands,” said Ellinghorst, who is an automotive expert at the data firm.
Porsche is already worth almost as much as its former parent, which Blume told Handelsblatt underlined the potential hidden value in the group.
Still, the Porsche listing has yet to benefit VW’s valuation, with shares in the group down around 10 percent in part because investors switched from the former parent to the sports-car brand.
VW chief financial officer Arno Antlitz told Reuters last week the next listing on the cards was of the group’s battery unit PowerCo, declining to specify whether other brands like Audi could also be put on the market.
The Porsche listing relied on factors such as the support of the Porsche and Piech families controlling most of VW’s voting rights, which could not be guaranteed for other brands, said Tom Narayan of RBC, pointing to a listing of the battery or software divisions as the most likely next step.