AUGSBURG (dpa-AFX) - The Borsengang of Augsburg-based tank transmission manufacturer Renk will not take place after all. In recent days, the market environment had clouded over noticeably, it was said in a company statement published late Wednesday evening, a few hours before the planned IPO. The option of a Borsengang at a later date is being examined by Renk and its owner, the investment company Triton, it said.

Renk had targeted a range of 15 to 18 euros per share for the initial public offering and wanted to offer up to just over 27 million shares, according to earlier statements. The shares were to be traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange from Thursday. The target was a free float of up to 27 percent, with Triton retaining a stake of at least 73 percent. According to circles, the attempt to sell the shares was sluggish. In recent days, the mood on the stock exchanges had deteriorated significantly.

Renk manufactures gear units for vehicles and ships, among other things, but also for industrial plants, where they are used in industrial heat pumps, for example. The defense market accounted for 70 percent of the company's sales of 849 million euros in 2022, with the rest coming from the civil sector. With an estimated global market share of more than 30 percent, Renk says it is one of the leading suppliers of transmissions for military tracked vehicles such as main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzers.

The company has experienced a special boom due to the armaments boom in the wake of the Ukraine war. Renk reported a record order backlog of 1.7 billion euros at the end of the first half of the year and aims to increase sales to up to one billion euros in 2023.

So far this year, there have been only a few borstones in Germany due to the weak economy, sharply higher interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty. Most recently, Schott Pharma, the pharmaceutical division of Mainz-based specialty glass manufacturer Schott, made the leap to the trading floor./he/als/DP/ngu