Porsche could go public by the end of the year if plans presented by parent company Volkswagen are approved by the boards of both companies.
After confirming earlier this week that it was considering taking the sports car brand public, Volkswagen has now outlined how it intends to make Porsche public once again.
Porsche’s shares will be split equally between ordinary voting shares and non-voting preference shares.
The Porsche-Piech family, through its convoluted Porsche Automobil Holding SE, will acquire 25 percent plus one of the ordinary voting shares of Porsche, granting the Porsche-Piech clan a minority blocking stake in their namesake brand.
The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) also plans to take a stake in Porsche. With its 14.6 percent stake, QIA is currently the second-largest individual shareholder in Volkswagen behind the Porsche-Piech families with a 31.4 percent stake.
As part of the proposal, Volkswagen will pay a special dividend of 49 percent of the gross flotation profits, helping the Porsche-Piech family or QIA to pay for their stakes.
Proceeds from the initial public offering (IPO) will also be used for a special payment of around €2000 (US$3150) each to 130,000 Volkswagen employees.
Only 25 percent of Porsche’s non-voting preference shares will be listed on the stock exchange as part of the IPO.
As such, Volkswagen will retain a majority stake in Porsche and will continue to include the brand in its financial statements “as full consolidation.”
While Porsche’s 301,900 sales accounted for only 3.5 percent of the Volkswagen Group’s 8.6 million sales in 2021, the luxury brand’s high profit margins mean it constitutes a significantly larger proportion of the automaker’s profits.
Bloomberg estimates that Porsche could be valued at around €85 billion (US$134 billion). The money raised from the flotation is likely to be used to fund ongoing development of electric vehicle architectures, new EV models, and autonomous driving research for the Volkswagen Group.
Since the Porsche brand became part of the Volkswagen Group in 2011, it has been closely integrated into the larger automaker’s research and development system.
In addition to using group platforms, such as MLB for the Macan and Cayenne, it has developed the MSB architecture that underpins the Panamera and Bentley Continental.
The Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT share the same EV platform, and the two brands are jointly designing the upcoming Premium Platform Electric (PPE) that will underpin the second generation of the Macan and the new Q6 e-tron.
According to Automotive News, Arno Antlitz, CFO of the Volkswagen Group, Porsche’s initial public offering could take place in the fourth quarter of 2022.
