The railway sector of trains has a new giant. The French group Alstom announced on Monday the purchase of the train manufacturing division of Canada's Bombardier for between 5,800 and 6,200 million euros, which it will pay with cash and new shares, although it did not make public in what proportion. When the operation is completed, still pending approval by Alstom shareholders and competition authorities, the Saint-Ouen-based firm will become the second largest rolling stock producer, only behind the Chinese CRRC. And it will also allow you to compensate for your failed merger with the German Siemens after not receiving the approval of the European Commission. The goal, today and then, is to gain weight to be able to stand up to its growing and stronger Asian competition.
The new Alstom will be a colossus in revenue (15,500 million euros) and orders pending delivery (75,000 million) in a market that, according to its figures, will grow at an annual rate of between 3% and 5% by 2025 thanks to the trend towards urbanization and increasing efforts to decarbonize passenger transport. "It is an opportunity to strengthen our position in a market such as mobility," the president and CEO of the French company, Henri Poupart-Lafarge, said in a statement. The acquisition, the buyer adds, arrives “at the right time” for Alstom and allows it to diversify its geographic operations in “key and growing” markets such as North America, China, Germany and the United Kingdom. The Bombardier railway subsidiary (Bombardier Transportation) will add 32,000 million in orders and 7,400 million in sales to the marriage.
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The transaction includes the obligation of one of the current owners of Bombardier Transportation, the public pension manager of the Canadian province of Québec (CDPQ), which has a third of its shares, to reinvest in the resulting company the 2,000 million that you will get for the sale and an additional 700 million. The CDPQ will also become the first shareholder of Alstom with 18% of the capital, exceeding 10% of Bouygues, which has also given its support to the operation.
After the sale of its train division and, last week, of the area that was responsible for the manufacture of commercial aircraft to Airbus, Bombardier - which is reduced to a mere manufacturer of private jets - partially weathers its bad financial moment and obtains more 6,000 million euros of liquidity to face a challenging repayment schedule. But, even when both operations are 100% completed, your debt will remain above 8.5 billion.
