Jenoptik halts sale process of mechatronic division Vincorion

21 Jan 2020

Company board concluded that offers submitted “do not correspond to its business potential”.

Vincorion's builds assemblies that customers can integrate into their products.

The Executive Board of Jenoptik (which is traded on the Frankfurt Prime Standard stock exchange as JEN) has decided today to halt the process of selling the mechatronic business operating under the brand name Vincorion.

The board has come to the conclusion that the offers submitted do not correspond to the business potential, which VINCORION demonstrated in the fiscal year 2019, and thus do not meet Jenoptik's expectation. Going forward, Vincorion will be operated as an independent investment of Jenoptik.

In recent months, the management of Jenoptik and Vincorion had been engaged in discussions with “interested parties” considering a potential sale of the mechatronical activities as a possible strategic alternative. Among other things, the aim was to realize an even higher value creation potential with a new owner compared to what was possible within the Jenoptik Group.

Six-month sale effort

The process was started in July 2019 after Jenoptik had taken the decision to strengthen its focus on photonic business activities within the framework of its mid-term strategy. In the course of the sales process, Jenoptik had received several offers for the purchase of all shares in Vincorion.

Ultimately, Jenoptik’s Executive Board came to the conclusion that the offers submitted did not reflect the business potential of its mechatronic activities and decided to keep Vincorion in the portfolio as an independent investment.

“In view of the excellent development of VINCORION in 2019 with a significant growth both in order intake and earnings the submitted offers did not meet our expectation,” said Dr. Stefan Traeger, President & CEO of Jenoptik. “Considering the business development in the past year and the current project pipeline we are confident that Vincorion will be able to achieve further increases in revenue and profitability in 2020.”

Hans-Dieter Schumacher, Jenoptik’s CFO, added, “We have a strong and diversified portfolio of products, systems and solutions for attractive markets which will allow us to benefit from good growth opportunities in the future too. Our sound financial resources and funding enables us to execute opportunities for bolt-on as well as transformatory deals.”