ST Considering Break-Up

STMicroelectronics is considering breaking itself up, reports Bloomberg. It is thought that the profitable analogue business will be split from the loss-making digital business, while the ST-Ericsson joint venture will be sold – probably to Samsung.

ST has seen a sales slump this year. From $9.73 billion last year, first half 2012 sales were 18% down at $4.17 billion, Analogue revenue fell 15%. Digital revenue fell 24%.

Full year sales are expected to be about $8.6 billion which is roughly  the level of recenues ST had when the current CEO Carlo Bozotti took over from Pasquale Pistorio  in 2005.

Meanwhile the ST-Ericsson joint venture has wracked up over $1.2 billion of debt since it started trading in early 2009 and is losing over $250 million a quarter. The worry is that, if the loses are allowed to continue, it could bring down STMicroelectronics.

“It’s pathetic, totally bloody pathetic,” says Europe’s leading semiconductor analyst, Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons, “the whole of the top management of ST should resign en masse. It’s an indictment of seven years of failure.”

If ST put its power and discrete products together with its analogue, MEMS and microcontroller products in a separate company it would have a business doing about $4 billion making about 10% profit.

It could then try and sell the rest.

Last month, ST’s chief strategic officer Philippe Lambinet left ST  to be replaced as CSO by Georges Penalver, a partner in US investment fund Cathaya.


Comments

6 comments

  1. P.S. [anonymous],i think this relates to a comment from Bozotti at the Q3 earnings call that it was intended to lose 500 employees by the end of 2013 to save an annual Euros150m in costs. Sounds like something appease the analysts who are always after fresh blood. It won’t make much difference to the fate od ST.

  2. Sorry [Anonymous] I ‘m swanning around on an island off the Georgia coast and haven’t been following the Norwegian and Dutch press as assiduously as usual. I thought the restructuring plan wan’t due till December.

  3. I did expect to read it here too, but round 6 of STE re-org is reported by Norwegion and Dutch local press:
    Grimstad: http://www.elektronikknett.no/id/5105
    Nijmegen: http://www.bits-chips.nl/nieuws/bekijk/artikel/st-ericsson-sluit-deuren-in-nijmegen.html

  4. Looks like an object lesson on how not to grow a Company using government(s) money (which of course is our money).
    STM has been riding the EU money train for far too long?

  5. Looks like a plan to me, Carlo

  6. I have after long and careful consideration arrived with the following solution to this dilemma. (It wasn’t easy and against my best interest, but I pursued it anyway)
    There you go:
    http://i.imgur.com/xPDnv.jpg
    //Carlo

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