Hitachi : mulls selling half of its stake in machinery subsidiary
October 23, 2020 at 12:48 am EDT
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Hitachi Ltd. is considering selling about half its stake in Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. in a bid to streamline its business, sources close to the matter said Friday.
Hitachi currently owns around a 51 percent stake in the machinery subsidiary. The Japanese conglomerate has been focusing its resources on the infrastructure and information technology sectors and offloading subsidiaries not strongly connected to its core business.
To concentrate on key areas, Hitachi sold its entire stake in chemical unit Hitachi Chemical Co. to Showa Denko K.K. in April and is considering selling its listed steelmaking unit Hitachi Metals Ltd.
Hitachi specializes in manufacturing and marketing of electronic and industrial equipments. Net sales (including intragroup) break down by family of products and services as follows:
- social infrastructure and industrial systems (24.7%): elevators, escalators, industrial facilities, railway systems, power generation units, etc. The group also provides engineering and construction of nuclear, hydroelectric, and thermal power plants services;
- information and telecommunications products and services (20.1%): systems integration, cloud computing, software, servers, hard disks, PCs, ATMs, data communication base stations, payment terminals, etc.;
- materials and components (16.6%): semi-conductor materials, printed circuit cards, cables, copper and forged steel products, magnetic materials, organic and inorganic chemical products, etc.;
- construction equipment (10%) : hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, mining equipment, etc.;
- automotive systems (9.4%): powertrain systems, control systems, etc.;
- electronic products (9.2%): fiber-optic components, screen tubes, testing and measurement equipment, medical equipment, equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, etc.;
- household appliances (4.7%): heating and air conditioning equipments, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.;
- other (5.3%): mainly transport, financial and logistical services.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Japan (49.2%), Asia (21.3%), North America (12.7%), Europe (10.8%) and other (6%).