Porsche could IPO in fourth quarter, Volkswagen CFO says

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A logo of Porsche is seen outside a Porsche car dealer, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Brussels, Belgium May 28, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman

By Christoph Steitz and Jan Schwartz

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Porsche’s potential initial public offering (IPO) could happen as soon as the fourth quarter of 2022, the finance chief of the luxury carmaker’s owner Volkswagen (DE:VOWG_p) said on Friday, providing further details of what could become a record listing.

Outlining key steps of the deal, Arno Antlitz said Volkswagen, which has embarked on an ambitious shift towards electric vehicles (EV), batteries and software, would update markets about the IPO progress and timeline in late summer.

“For me, this marks an inflection point and the ideal timing for the potential transaction in order to ignite our EV shift momentum,” Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess said.

Shares in Volkswagen and its top shareholder Porsche SE rose as much as 4.5% and 5.1%, respectively, after the companies late on Thursday fleshed out details of a possible Porsche listing.

These include plans to list up to 25% of Porsche AG’s preferred stock, selling 25% plus 1 ordinary share in the carmaker to Porsche SE and paying out 49% of IPO proceeds to Volkswagen’s shareholders as a special dividend.

Assuming a Porsche value of 90 billion euros ($101 billion), this would result in proceeds of around 23 billion euros for Volkswagen – 11 billion via the placement of preferred shares and 12 billion via the sale of ordinary shares to Porsche SE at a premium.

Under the special dividend plans, Porsche SE, which owns 31.4% of Volkswagen, would stand to receive 3.6 billion euros, or around 30% of what it would pay for its Porsche AG stake.

Porsche AG will not receive any proceeds under the current plans.

($1 = 0.8949 euros)