3 July 2014

Philips Lighting to spin off Lumileds and Automotive lighting businesses as stand-alone components firm

Royal Philips NV of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (the world's largest lighting producer) has announced that it will start the process of combining its Lumileds (LED components) and Automotive lighting businesses into a stand-alone company within the Philips Group, and will explore strategic options to attract capital from third-party investors for the business. Philips intends to remain a minority shareholder and customer of the new company, and will continue with existing collaboration.

“Philips’ strategy in Lighting is to intensify its focus on connected LED lighting systems and services, LED luminaires, and LED lamps for the professional and consumer markets,” says Royal Philips’ CEO Frans van Houten. “Both our Lumileds and Automotive lighting businesses are strong players in the lighting industry and ready to pursue more growth and scale, independently of Philips Lighting. As a world-leading lighting components business, they will have increased flexibility to attract additional investors to accelerate growth,” he adds.

“The combined business will be able to extend its leading portfolio of digital lighting components and achieve robust growth, serving even more customers in the industry, including of course Philips Lighting,” says Philips Lighting’s CEO Eric Rondolat. “By combining Philips Automotive lighting and Lumileds, the Automotive lighting customers will continue to benefit from a fully integrated end-to-end R&D and supply chain, enabling the adoption of LED technology in automotive applications.”

The process to combine Lumileds and Automotive into an integrated business within the Philips Group is expected to be completed in first-half 2015. Associated costs are expected to amount to €30m in second-half 2014. Sales of the combined businesses were about €1.4bn ($1.9bn) in 2013 (compared with about $1.4bn from LED sales for rival Cree Inc of Durham, NC, USA). Lumileds’ CEO Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre will be CEO of the new company.

Tags:  Lumileds

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