Following FORVIA HELLA’s announcement, on April 2, of the closing of the sale of its 50% stake in BHTC to AUO Corporation, representing €205 million of cash proceeds, FORVIA today makes further progress in the execution of its second €1 billion asset disposal program by announcing an agreement to transfer its 100%-owned subsidiary Hug Engineering to the Belgian OGEPAR Group for an enterprise value of c. €55 million. Hug Engineering is a major player in depollution systems for high horsepower engines, currently part of FORVIA’s Clean Mobility business group.

Combined proceeds from the closing of the disposal by FORVIA HELLA of its stake in BHTC and expected proceeds from the newly signed transaction, whose closing is expected by the end of June 2024, should represent a total amount of c. €250 million of cash proceeds or c. 25% of the second disposal program for €1 billion that was announced by FORVIA in October 2023, designed to accelerate the Group’s deleveraging.

As a reminder, in less than two years, between the acquisition of HELLA in February 2022 and the end of 2023, FORVIA had already significantly reduced its net financial debt by €1.4 billion and its Net debt/Adjusted EBITDA ratio by 100bps (from 3.1x at the end of June 2022 to 2.1x at the end of December 2023).

Today’s announcement will contribute to reduce the Group’s financial expense and accelerate deleveraging, while further strengthening and simplifying the Group’s portfolio.

The second disposal program will contribute improving the Groups’ Net debt/Adjusted EBITDA ratio objective beyond the “below 1.5x at December 31,2025”, that was part of the POWER25 plan presented at the Capital Markets Day in November 2022.