Another truck manufacturer begins its adventure alone, although with a shareholding relationship with its parent company, CNH Industrial, until now. Iveco is preparing for an electrified future with Nikola, and thinking about autonomous driving with Plus.
Today an extraordinary shareholders meeting of CNH Industrial to vote on the spin-off of its Iveco division, a manufacturer of industrial vehicles. By overwhelming majority, 99% of the votes, the separation of the two companies was approved. It ends like this a two-year process.
The separation is expected to be completed on December 31, and this will be effective on January 1, 2022. From then on, the Iveco Group will be an independent company and will begin trading on the Milan Stock Exchange on January 3, the first day business of the year.
Current CNH Industrial shareholders will receive one Iveco share for every five they own. The largest shareholder of Iveco will therefore be Exor -Agnell family investment group-, with 27% of common shares and 42.5% of voting rights. Other relevant shareholders will be Harris Associates and the BlackRock fund.
Iveco Daily Camper
This movement of Spin-off sounds familiar to us, because it is the third we see within two years. Back in 2019 the Volkswagen Group took its truck division, renamed as Traton in 2018. It integrates the manufacturers MAN Truck & Bus, Scania AB, Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus (Brazil), Navistar and the RIO digital services division.
Another German manufacturer, Daimler AG, decided to focus on the passenger car and van business and drop Daimler Truck, dedicated to trucks and buses. On December 10, the separation was consummated, and the new company was listed on the stock market. The old parent kept 35% of Daimler Truck and the rest was distributed among its shareholders. They had been together for 125 years.
This time it is CNH Industrial who prefers to forget about the business of industrial road vehicles and focus on agricultural machinery and construction equipment. The reason was not that Iveco lost money, in the first half of this year it earned 124 million euros and invoiced 6,319 million (+ 44.4%). 2020 was a bad year, we all know why.
Iveco Stralis NP
Iveco has two factories in Spain. Daily vans are manufactured in Valladolid, and trucks are produced in Madrid. The manufacturer’s range is primarily focused on trucks. In road format it has the Eurocargo in medium size, and for large loads the S-Way tractor units.
In the heavy category it has a light off-road model, the X-Way, and a complete off-road model, the T-Way. In turn, both Daily and Eurocargo have 4×4 versions to be able to circulate on any terrain, see works. In addition, it has a division of buses and minibuses, as well as a camperized version of Daily. On the sidelines is the military vehicle division.
Iveco technology is focused on conventional combustion engines, mainly Diesel Y Natural gas, although he is a partner of the American Nikola. In fact, the Nikola TreThe fully electric vehicle is based on the S-Way and is manufactured in Germany in a new plant in Ulm. Then (2023) a version of a hydrogen fuel cell will arrive, currently in the prototype phase.
Nikola Tre
The manufacturer looks to the future, not only in terms of alternative propulsion, but also in terms of autonomous driving. In fact, this week it announced a pilot project for autonomous trucks in Europe and China with Plus.
The latter company develops kits to change human drivers for other robotic ones, making some adaptations. The S-Way will be the truck that will be used in the tests. The goal is to reach a autonomy level 4In other words, the intervention of a remote operator will be required from time to time to solve certain driving situations.
The trucking sector is obliged to transform itself not only because of the commitments to reduce emissions, but also because of the growing problem of the lack of “vocations” in the noble profession of truck driver, which makes it essential to look for alternatives to maintain a decreasing number of professionals who are retiring and have no generational replacement.